When the Gallachers received an invitation from the Duke of Moorshire to attend an evening at Lea Hall, Maggie was overwhelmed. She could still scarcely believe her eyes, even if it was a long-overdue honour – after all her husband Rod had done for the town. She did not see the invitation as the rock on which she was to perish; nor was she prepared for the reaction of her family. Her son Paul, daughter Elizabeth and daughter-in-law Arlette were as delighted as she was but the effect on Sam, Arlette’s husband, was to bring his smouldering hatred of his mother to flashpoint. But had Maggie, or any of the Gallachers, forseen how it would turn out, how irrevocably it would change the lives of the family she loved so dearly, she would have torn that invitation into tiny pieces and thrown them all on the fire.
Author
Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, who Catherine believed was her older sister. Catherine 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 contemporary woman novelist. She received an OBE in 1985, was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993, and was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne.
