Plainer Still

(Paperback)

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In this sequel to Catherine Cookson's collection of essays and poems, "Let Me Make Myself Plain", she offers a further selection of thoughts, recollections and observations on life - and death - together with more of the poems she prefers to describe as "prose on short lines". She reveals some of the qualities that allow her to draw upon the inner strength she needs to continue the battle for life - a life that has, for the last 50 years, given readers pleasure through the medium of her novels, each inspired by the harsh nature of her early years.

Author Bio

Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.