Diary of an Ordinary Schoolgirl

The diary of an ordinary schoolgirl living in Carlisle in 1954 -- a perfectly preserved period piece from one of the UK's favourite novelists

The diary is slight, but very sweet. You would be pleased to find it in your Christmas stocking… Margaret is a good egg. You like her more and more… If you were happy at school, Forster’s diary will bring it all back. If you were unhappy, she will make you wistful for what you missed.

Unmissable: a neat  little green clothbound time machine

Funny, acute and revealing by turns... a tantalising, nostalgia-inducing glimpse into a young life and a lost world

A heady mix of bookish teenage passions and 1950s nostalgia

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.

23 February 
Results rolling in! Algebra, 6th = 74%. Not bad. Latin = 55% Thrilled! History top = 85% smashing! Geography, disgusting, 2nd = 67%. 
 
In 1954 in Carlisle lived an ordinary 15-year-old schoolgirl called Margaret. She would go on to become an acclaimed writer, the author of the novels Georgy Girl and Diary of an Ordinary Woman as well as biographies and memoirs. But this is her diary from that year; her life. Hers might be a lost world, but her daily observations bring it back in vivid, irresistible detail. 
 
7 May 
Wonderful feat accomplished yesterday by Roger Bannister! At last, the 4 minute mile. Glad an Englishman got it before anyone else. 
 
24 July 
Bought a pair of shorts – white, very short with two pockets. Super but rather daring! 
 
2 September 
Mum’s coming back on Saturday. Miss her every minute! I'll never marry and have a family -- housekeeping for two for a week is bad enough -- but for life!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

'This is the most exciting sort of biography to read, or to write: the myth-dispelling biography which overturns an old story, and does so most convincingly' New Statesman

This is the most exciting sort of biography to read, or to write: the myth-dispelling biography which overturns an old story, and does so most convincingly'

If it is a test of a good biography to send the reader hot-foot to the subject's works, Margaret Forster's has succeeded triumphantly

This biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, written with reference to Browning correspondence only recently available, argues that the poet was a strong and determined woman largely responsible for her own incarceration in Wimpole Street. The author traces her life from her early childhood and adolescence and explores her marriage. She draws a picture of early Victorian family life and aims to show that Elizabeth was a considerable and dedicated poet, self-willed, witty and courageous. Forster has also edited the companion volume "Selected Poems" of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and is author of several other biographies.

How to Measure a Cow

The gripping final novel from the much-loved &amp; bestselling Margaret Forster

The work of a novelist in her prime… The narrative is taut and suspenseful, the characterization complex and dynamic.

Brilliantly drawn… Atmosphere and characters linger long after the novel ends

Deft, intriguing and gripping. Forster never disappoints.

This is Margaret Forster's last novel, sadly, and it's full of reminders of what made her such a shrewd and arresting chronicler of women’s lives

An exemplary final work … wonderfully well-observed

It is Forster’s acute scrutiny of the economy of friendship that hooks.

Her simple, direct prose never strikes a false note

Amply displays her formidable talent as a storyteller, undiminished to the end, and her marvellous ability to anatomise the lives of her characters while still enabling them to emerge fully realised in the reader’s imagination… The novel is a rich inquiry into the nature of friendship… Forster is, as ever, brilliant at the telling details that illuminate her characters’ inner lives… A fine last novel by an outstanding writer, it will disappoint neither longstanding admirers nor newcomers to Forster’s work. Above all, it is a novel about the abiding human need to love and to be loved, a need that Forster makes clear is beyond measurement.

Forster is very good at the slow reveal, gradually illuminating the more questionable aspects of Tara's character as well as the crime that changed her life. She's also brilliant on the complexities of ordinary people, particularly women: the little ways they deceive themselves, their quickness to judge and their clumsy determination to be kind

Margaret Forster writes the most amazing prose, tight without a superfluous word and still with the ability to convey crystal clear images to the reader… She weaves loyalty, betrayal, friendship, honour and honesty with wonderful characterisation into an absorbing story.

Characters are cleverly drawn and the north/south divide well depicted

Margaret Forster…excelled at writing about complex relationships between women… Forster’s skill is to show how very different characters shift and develop according to what life throws at them.

A more nuanced take on the potential recuperative powers of the rural environment than many others novels written in this vein.

The first five chapters of Forester’s novel are a remarkable exercise in withholding and revelation by minute increments… There is much in it to admire, from the distinctive resonance of her deceptively plain style to her descriptions of landscape.

Margaret Forster is excellent at painting the picture and her dialogue is always A1.

‘Compelling…taut and suspenseful’ Guardian 
 
Tara Fraser has a secret. 
 
Desperate to escape herself and her past, she changes her name, packs up her London home and moves to a town in the North of England where she knows no one. 
 
But one of her new neighbours, Nancy, is intrigued by her. And as hard as Tara tries to distance herself, she starts to drop her guard. 
 
Then a letter arrives. An old friend wants to meet up. Struggling to keep her old life at bay, Tara soon discovers the dangers of fighting the past.

A Family and Their Times 1831-1931

Rich Desserts and Captain's Thin

In 1831 John Dodgson Carr, son of a Quaker grocer, set off to walk from his home in Kendal to Carlisle, determined to launch a great enterprise. Within 15 years, Carr's of Carlisle had become one of the largest baking businesses in the world -and is a by-word for biscuits to this day. Following his trail to Carlisle (where she herself was born and grew up), Margaret Forster brings 19th-century daily life into vivid focus and charts the rise and rise of a middle-class family like the Carrs, ambitious, innovative yet sternly religious. This is history as it was lived by the men and women both above and below stairs - from the shop floor to the comfortable bourgeois homes of the paternalistic Carrs. We see the conflict between religion and profit, the family feuds and the changing face of a city through this compelling historical narrative, told with Margaret Forster's characteristic blend of scholarship, readability and marvellous attention to the texture of everyday life.

My Life in Houses

I was truly moved by Margaret Forster's ingeniously structured and beautifully written memoir... A really wonderful book

A beautiful exploration of her life in relation to the homes she has made'

Such a clever idea. It's a memoir sited in bricks and mortar... social and personal history spliced together

Until its shocking, throat-catching end, this latest book is a deceptively simple trek evoking everywhere [Margaret Forster] has lived

Reads like one of Forster's well-loved novels: full of sharp observation and gentle wit

In both books and homes, we find wry humour and a great deal of poignancy

Like sitting down for tea with a highly intelligent woman and chatting, not so much about "a room of one's own" as "a home of one's own"... fascinating and touching

This is a lovely and touching evocation of what home means to one woman, and within this is a universality that many will connect with

A meditation on our emotional connection with houses, it is also a perceptive portrayal of changing domestic life in 20th and 21st-century Britain

A wonderful, and affecting book about what makes a home, and the effect where we live has on how we live our lives

An enthralling account of her relationship with the houses she has loved... I think many people reading it will respond -- as I did -- to her very personal bond with the houses she has occupied, changed and drawn comfort from... and it is so movingly honest

Virginia Nicholson, author of SINGLED OUT

Even if you’re not familiar with Forster’s novels, you’ll love the nostalgic trawl through seven houses over 70-odd years

This is the quietest and gentlest of autobiographies

[Forster] is a compassionate notice, she doesn’t give in to nostalgia, and she captures beautifully in this wise, observant book a life and a world

Quietly compelling, straightforward but profound, this book is an unsentimental but affecting life story with a difference. Highly recommended

A powerful memoir… [Forster] evokes the idea of the human body as a home beautifully

This beautiful and profound book is not so much about a passion for - or indeed the occasional aversion to - a series of places, but an exquisite personification, an exploration of a relationship that alters just as all human relationships do, sometimes intense, sometimes disappointing, often reassuring and above all providing protection, continuity and occasionally a means of survival.

My Life in Houses…is warm, direct, beautifully written and described without self-pity her struggle with the cancer that killed her. She was a writer of rare talent.

Lovely, unsentimental memoir… An extraordinarily effective way of conveying just how much stuff, both physical and emotional, a life contains.

This author has given us many good books in her lifetime. The final chapters of this one are very emotional as she was obviously aware that her illness was getting progressively worse. A gentle, thoughtful and moving book.

A gently insistent, personal inquiry into the meaning of home.

A wonderful backwards glance at the changing nature of our accommodation… A gently insistent, personal inquiry into the meaning of home.

‘I was born on 25th May, 1938, in the front bedroom of a house in Orton Road, a house on the outer edges of Raffles, a council estate. I was a lucky girl.’ 
 
So begins Margaret Forster’s journey through the houses she’s lived in, from that sparkling new council house, to her beloved London home of today. This is not a book about bricks and mortar though. This is a book about what houses are to us, the effect they have on the way we live our lives and the changing nature of our homes: from blacking grates and outside privies; to cities dominated by bedsits and lodgings; to the houses of today converted back into single dwellings. Finally, it is a gently insistent, personal inquiry into the meaning of home.

The Unknown Bridesmaid

A dark and compelling story of family secrets and self-discovery from the author of Diary of an Ordinary Woman and Shadow Baby

Nobody  is better than Margaret Forster, with her clear calm prose, at  delineating the fault lines of the ordinary, unexceptional and hidden  lives

Makes such uncomfortable reading that at times you can barely turn the page, but it’s so compelling that you have to

Perfectly paced and with superbly drawn characters, this is a compelling story skilfully told

Margaret Forster is a brilliant and prolific writer... her latest novel is one of her best… It's a gripping read

Margaret Forster is a brilliant and prolific writer... her latest novel is one of her best... The book it most reminded me of, curiously enough, was Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending... Barnes, of course, won the Booker for his novel. I hope that Margaret Forster gets the recognition she deserves for this one

There is no one to match [Forster] for the way her assured,subtle and careful prose can detail the insecurities, torments and problems of what are, to all surface appearances, just nondescript, unremarkable and often half-lived lives

Margaret Forster has a deft and idiosyncratic touch

A story which becomes steadily more gripping

A brilliantly uncomfortable read about the art of forgetfulness

Brilliant... You won't put this book down until its emotional end

Only one person knows what happened that day… 
 
 
 
Julia was the only person who knew what happened that day. 
 
But she didn’t tell the police. And then it was too late. 
 
Now, years later, her secret looms large. 
 
Is it really too late? And if she does tell, can she bear the consequences?

Margaret Forster

Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up, coping with the tragedies and upheavals of women's lives from the First World War to Greenham Common and beyond. 
 
This is the &lsquo;edited&rsquo; diary of an individual woman, born in 1901, and a story of the twentieth century. On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins keeping her journal, vividly recording the drama of everyday life. From bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s, through social work and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London, this is a story both fictional and true. Full of the texture of life, beautifully observed and evocative, it tells the story of an ordinary woman&rsquo;s life against the huge canvas of the last century. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.

Margaret Forster

Books by Margaret Forster

Series by Margaret Forster

Against War

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