Margaret Forster Livres

'These were the nights when the German bombers growled through the sky, their bellies full with steel and cordite. When the moon was low their dark shapes and still darker shadows came over the coast. On one of those nights it all began for me - war, after all, starts many things, and even though I wasn't born for another twenty-five years, my story began there.' It is May 1945 and as church bells ring out Victory in Europe over the Norfolk saltmarshes, Goose's daughter Lil is born. But as Lil enters Goose's world, her father leaves it, in a makeshift boat bound - or so the story goes - for Germany, his home. Forty years later it is Lil's son, Pip, who begins to make sense of his family's fragmented history. Who was his grandfather, who fell from the sky into Goose's life and then disappeared as suddenly as he came? What was the truth of his mother, Lil, who lived and lost her way between the creeks and the samphire? And what does it all mean for Pip?

The narrative unfolds through the edited diary of Millicent King, a woman born in 1901, capturing her experiences from the eve of the Great War through the tumultuous events of the twentieth century. Her journey takes readers from bohemian London to 1920s Rome, encompassing her social work and wartime efforts as she drives ambulances during the London bombings. This poignant blend of fiction and reality offers a richly textured portrayal of an ordinary woman's life against the backdrop of significant historical upheavals.

On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins to keep her journal and records the dramas of everyday life in a family touched by war, tragedy, and money troubles. This title presents the 'edited' diary of this woman, born in 1901, whose life spans the twentieth century.

The story of the author's ninety-six-year-old father, Arthur, and her brave & witty sister-in-law, Marion, battling with cancer. Through these two lives, so closely bound with her own, the author looks with wonder at the sheer tenacity of the human spirit.

The story of a woman who helped mould the famous Winston Churchill

Margaret Forster's grandmother died in 1936, taking many secrets to her grave. Where had she spent the first 23 years of her life? Who was the woman in black who paid her a visit shortly before her death? The search for answers took Margaret on a journey into her family's past. This is a memoir on how women's lives have changed over the century.

A biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning written with reference to Browning correspondence only recently available, arguing that the poet was a strong, determined woman largely responsible for her own incarceration in Wimpole Street.

‘I was born on 25th May, 1938, in the front bedroom of a house in Orton Road, a house on the outer edges of Raffles, a council estate. I was a lucky girl.’ So begins Margaret Forster’s journey through the houses she’s lived in, from that sparkling new council house, to her beloved London home of today. This is not a book about bricks and mortar though. This is a book about what houses are to us, the effect they have on the way we live our lives and the changing nature of our homes: from blacking grates and outside privies; to cities dominated by bedsits and lodgings; to the houses of today converted back into single dwellings. Finally, it is a gently insistent, personal inquiry into the meaning of home.

Rebecca , published in 1938, brought its author instant international acclaim, capturing the popular imagination with its haunting atmosphere of suspense and mystery. du Maurier was immediately established as the queen of the psychological thriller. But the more fame this and her other books encouraged, the more reclusive Daphne du Maurier became. Margaret Forster's award-winning biography could hardly be more worthy of its subject. Drawing on private letters and papers, and with the unflinching co-operation of Daphne du Maurier's family, Margaret Forster explores the secret drama of her life - the stifling relationship with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier; her troubled marriage to war hero and royal aide, 'Boy' Browning; her wartime love affair; her passion for Cornwall and her deep friendships with the last of her father's actress loves, Gertrude Lawrence, and with an aristocratic American woman. Most significant of all, Margaret Forster ingeniously strips away the relaxed and charming facade to lay bare the true workings of a complex and emotional character whose passionate and often violent stories mirrored her own fantasy life more than anyone could ever have imagined.

What do men run away from? Not war, not physical hardship, but the day-to-day emotional demands of impossible domestic situations. That's women's work. This is a story of female courage, where black comedy turns to disturbing pathos revolving around the rights of an indomitable woman