Girl from Leam Lane

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

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

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

The author unlocks Cookson's complex character using her many books as the keys. Cookson had a tragic childhood and through her writing exorcised her own demons to triumph as an author.

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.