Born in Carlisle, Margaret Forster was the author of many successful and acclaimed novels, including Have the Men Had Enough?, Lady's Maid, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, Is There Anything You Want? , Keeping the World Away, Over and The Unknown Bridesmaid. She also wrote bestselling memoirs - Hidden Lives, Precious Lives and, most recently, My Life in Houses - and biographies. She was married to writer and journalist Hunter Davies and lived in London and the Lake District. She died in February 2016, just before her last novel, How to Measure a Cow, was published.
If it is a test of a good biography to send the reader hot-foot to the subject's works, Margaret Forster's has succeeded triumphantly * The Times * This is the most exciting sort of biography to read, or to write: the myth-dispelling biography which overturns an old story, and does so most convincingly' * New Statesman *