The Girl from Leam Lane

Catherine Cookson, the illegitimate daughter of an Irish barmaid, was born 100 years ago in a run-down area on the south bank of the Tyne. Forty-four years later her debut novel, Kate Hannigan, established Catherine as a bestselling storyteller of rare talent.

Catherine Cookson was born 100 years ago in a run-down area on the south bank of the Tyne. Forty-four years later her début novel, Kate Hannigan, established her as a bestselling storyteller of rare talent. But what readers didn't realise was that Kate Hannigan also represented the first step of

SPECTATOR BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 Britain's empire has gone. Our manufacturing base is a shadow of its former self; the Royal Navy has been reduced to a skeleton. In military, diplomatic and economic terms, we no longer matter as we once did. And yet there is still one area

Born to an impoverished young Englishwoman in 1906, illegitimate and unwanted, Catherine Cookson lived a life marked by cruelty and neglect. At 22, reeling from a broken love affair, she left home in search of a new life. After five years in a workhouse laundry, she was finally able to

The historical novel has been one of the most important forms of women's reading and writing in the twentieth century, yet it has been consistently under-rated and critically neglected. In the first major study of British women writers' use of the genre, Diana Wallace tracks its development across the century.