Forever Amber

Kathleen Winsor was born on 1915 and raised in Berkeley, California. Aged 18, she made a list of her goals in life – one of which was to write a best-selling novel. Forever Amber emerged after she became fascinated in the Restoration period her husband was studying. While he was away fighting in the Second World War, she wrote her novel. Despite being cut by four fifths, the published book was still nearly a thousand pages long. It was immediately banned in 14 US states for its heroine’s immorality (‘Adultery’s no a crime – it’s an amusement’), and, perhaps as a consequence, went on to become the biggest-selling novel of the 1940s. Kathleen went on to write a number of other novels but none matched the staggering success – and notoriety – of her first. She died in 2003, having been married four times.