RESULTS

Biographer and novelist Margaret Forster has 'edited' a series of diaries begun by Millicent in 1914, continuing until her death in 1995. Through Millicent's eyes we witness the most astonishing events of the 20th century, including two world wars, the suffragette movement and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. There are also personal tragedies and joys including lost loves, the death of close friends and the pleasure and pain caused by family.
'An authentic record of how a century of English women were shaped - or, rather, distorted - by war.' The Guardian

What do Mrs H., Rachel, Edwina, Ida, Sarah, Dot, Chrissie have in common? They're all women, but they're fat, thin, old, young, professional, incompetent - and appear as diverse as human nature can be. But they are all survivors. This compelling novel follows the ripples that go out into ordinary lives, women's lives in particular, which have been scarred and changed by a shared experience, all connected by the same hospital clinic in a small Northern town.This is a novel about what it means to live in the shadow of disease and with its scars, whether mental and physical, looking back over one's shoulder while trying to go forward. You can trip up or, if you're careful, you might make it.... At its heart is a strong, difficult but finally vulnerable, old woman. Mrs H. is generous and helpful to a (sometimes comical) fault, and lives alone with a secret that she tells no one but that finally explains everything..Her niece is a young doctor who can't take the strain, and who wants something different from life. Alongside them are the other walking wounded, getting on with their lives: Ida, once beautiful and now hiding her scars under layers of fat; tiny Dot who is stronger than she seems; Edwina, a mother who lives vicariously through others, even her wild daughter; Rachel, who finds almost too late what it's like to soar above the crowd; and not to mention the men in their lives. From the marvellous ambivalence of the title question, it leaves us with a whole lot more to consider about life and its infinite variety.

A fictionalised account of the life of Elizabeth Wilson, maid to the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The author first became interested in Wilson, as she was known, when researching her biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and went on to capture aspects of her life in this novel.

Angela Bradbury has an appalling mother - self-effacing, self-sacrificing, expert at emotional blackmail. But in her relationship with her eldest and very difficult daughter, Sadie, Angela realises that she is imposing the same resentments and guilt that her mother inflicted on her.

A follow-up to Margaret Forster's Hidden Lives (a family memoir of three generations of women), this account takes up the story of her gritty northern father. She looks back at his life and character, evoking incidents from her Cumbrian childhood, his working life and his stubborn old age.