Book description
A fascinating insight into the life of one of the country's bestselling
and best-loved authors, marrying her work with her extraordinary life,
and looking at her rise to fame and fortune against all the odds.
'Everything I have touched in my life figures in my books. Every single
book I write has something that has happened to me or my family or to my friends.'
Josephine Cox was born in Blackburn during its decline as the
cotton-weaving capital of the world. Life was hard but characterful, the
joys and tragedies of her youth later inspiring her multi-million
selling novels.
One of ten children, Josephine knew poverty, hunger and charity.
Between births, her mother worked in the cotton mills, her father on the
roads. Sleeping up to six in a bed, her family lived in the tightly
packed, working-class terraces of Blackburn. But Josephine never felt
victimised or shamed.
Transforming their closed-in community into one that inspired 'another
kind of love, a deep sense of belonging' were the characters Josephine
writes about in her novels with such fondness and feeling.
But alas reality was not always so easy. Hand in hand with poverty came
deprivation and domestic difficulties. At the end of her tether, Jo's
mother gathered her children around her in the bus station one day and
announced they were leaving Blackburn. Josephine was fourteen years old.
Not only did she lose her friends, she also lost her brothers too who
were left behind. 'Belonging to a street, to a place, to a family, is
the most important thing.' Out of this tremendous loss, Josephine's
novels were born. Piers Dudgeon is a writer, editor and photographer.
Born in 1949, he worked for ten years as a publisher in London before
starting his own company and developing books with authors as diverse as
John Fowles, Ted Hughes, Daphne du Maurier, Catherine Cookson, Peter
Ackroyd and Susan Hill. He has written fifteen works of non-fiction,
including the no. 1 bestselling biography of Catherine Cookson, The Girl
from Leam Lane, as well as feature articles for the Observer, the Daily
Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday.
