Mothers' Boys

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.

"Margaret Forster has the gift of making you care deeply about what happens to her characters" Scotsman "This is Forster writing at her very best" Daily Mail "How does it feel to be the mother of a juvenile thug? Or the mother of that thug's hapless victim? It is the pain of such mothers that Margaret Forster explores most brilliantly in her dark, harrowing and extremely topical novel" -- Val Hennessy Daily Mail "Forster is remarkably honest, skilful and perceptive" Observer "Margaret Forster has a remarkable gift for taking huge social issues and welding them into minutely observed human dramas that are perfect portraits of the way we live now...The story grips and the heart bleeds for these good mothers who are, like all mothers, never good enough" -- Polly Toynbee Sunday Express