From the acclaimed nature writer whose books include }Flora Britannica{ and }Nature Cure{, this is a biography of Flora Thompson, who wrote the }Lark Rise To Candleford{ books, which inspired the TV series. Retraces her life from a post office clerk who left school at 14 to sophisticated professional writer.

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a great English writer, who would never have described herself in such grand terms. Her novels were short, spare masterpieces, self-concealing, oblique and subtle. Loved and admired, and increasingly recognised as one of the outstanding novelists of her time, she remains, also, mysterious and intriguing. This biography - by a biographer whom Fitzgerald herself admired - pursues her life, her writing, and her secret...

A biography of the much-loved English novelist, who died in 2010, from her private secretary. Provides a personal insight into a fascinating literary life, and draws on a mass of unpublished letters and diaries to reveal the real woman behind the popular image.

'Three-A-Penny' describes what it is like to be a woman in a man's world - about the ups and downs of earning a living as a writer in the 1920s and 30s. Lucy Malleson wrote over 70 crime novels and was part of what is often referred to as the Golden Age of crime writing. But in order to be published she used a male pseudonym, and successfully concealed her true identity for many years. From the poignancy of the First World War and its aftermath to...

A memoir of Jacqueline Wilson's life as a teenager - her problems with her family, first love, her school life & her friends. Hear extracts from her real secret teenage diaries & the stories she wrote as a teenager.

Sorrow and joyin London's oldest suburb. . . Welcome to the East End. Life in Cockney London was tough in the post-war years. The government's broken promises had led to a chronic housing shortage, rampant crime and families living in squalor. But one thing prevailed: the unbeatable spirit of the East End, a tight-knit community who pulled through the dark times with humour and heart. Drawing on both family history and her own memories of growing...