Hancox

Charlotte Moore was born in 1959. After reading English at Oxford and History of Art at Birkbeck College, she became a teacher for twelve years. She is now a full-time writer and in 2004 Viking published her acclaimed book about autism in the family, GEORGE AND SAM. For two years she wrote a highly acclaimed column called Mind the Gap in the Guardian. She lives in Sussex with her three children.

Hancox is the Tudor hall house in rural Sussex where Charlotte Moore grew up, and where she lives today. It's been in the family since her ancestor Milicent Ludlow, young, single and an orphan, took it on in 1891 and began to enlarge the house and manage the farm. Hancox tells the story of the house and the family over the following thirty years, in the long run-up to the First World War. 
In one sense it's a rural idyll: the arrival of the car disturbs this peaceful agrarian world, but apart from that the rhythms of the countryside go on as they had for centuries before. But all was not quite as it seemed: Milicent made a distinguished marriage but her husband harboured a secret. Milicent herself gradually succumbed to religious fanaticism. And the death of the youngest boy at Ypres devastated the family, bringing the idyll to a painful end. 
Using extraordinary archive material held at Hancox today, Charlotte Moore weaves an Edwardian tale of madness and jealousy, love and loss, heroism and tragedy.

Grandmother's Footsteps

Charlotte Moore was born in 1959. She read English at St Anne's College, Oxford, and history of art at Birkbeck College, London. She has published three novels, Promises Past, Martha's Ark and My Sister Victoria; a highly-praised account of her life with her two autistic sons, George and Sam, based on a column she wrote for the Guardian; as well as three biographies for children of Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth I and William the Conqueror.

When her husband died, it was clear to Verity that she would have to sell Knighton, the beautiful old house where her daughter, Hester, had grown up and where her mother before her had come as a young bride. But the move proved to be a beginning rather than an ending: it revealed a host of secrets which the three women had been harbouring. Successful, single and independent, Hester was determined to put to rest the legacies that she had inherited.

Charlotte Moore

A new updated edition of the classic book 
 
Charlotte Moore has three children: the two oldest, George and Sam, are autistic; the youngest Jake is not. In this extraordinary book, which combines personal memoir with the most recent known information on this most fascinating and elusive of conditions, she describes the circumstances of their birth, behaviour, diagnosis, treatment - and brilliantly conveys what daily life is like for a family with autism. It's an invaluable book for anyone with an interest in childhood and child development. 
 
George and Sam was published to huge acclaim by Viking Penguin in 2004 - it was immediately regarded as one of the key books on autism. In this new edition Charlotte Moore brings the story up to date by describing the boys' passage through adolescence and its impact on her family.

Charlotte Moore

Books by Charlotte Moore

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