Forster, Margaret, 1938-....

Epithet: author

Margaret Forster was born in Carlisle in 1938. She was educated at the county high school in Carlisle and at Somerville College, Oxford, where she was awarded a degree in history. The day after she finished her finals she married journalist Hunter Davies. She became a schoolteacher in Islington, North London between 1961 and 1963, before embarking on a writing career. Since 1963, Margaret Forster has worked as a novelist, biographer and freelance literary critic, contributing regularly to book programmes on television, to Radio 4 and various newspapers and magazines. She was a member of the BBC Advisory Committee on the Social Effects of Television from 1975-77 and of the Arts Council Literary Panel from 1978-81, as well as the chief non-fiction reviewer for the London Evening Standard from 1977-80.

During her long career as a biographer and novelist she has written over thirty works of fiction and non-fiction. Her first novel, 'Dame's Delight' (1964), was published when she was 24 and her second, 'Georgy Girl' (1965) made her name and was filmed in 1966 with a screenplay by Margaret Forster and Peter Nichols. Her other novels include 'Have the Men Had Enough?' (1989), the bestselling 'Lady's Maid' (1990), 'Mother's Boys' (1994), 'The Memory Box' (1999), 'Good Wives' (2001), and 'Diary of an Ordinary Woman' (2004). Forster's published non-fiction includes 'The Rash Adventurer', 'William Makepeace Thackeray', 'Significant Sisters' and 'Elizabeth Barrett Browning'.

Forster's biography 'Daphne du Maurier' was meticulously researched and she was allowed access to previously unpublished letters and papers which revealed that, in contrast with her external persona of easy charm, du Maurier shied away from the limelight and social gatherings and her private and inner life was often one of emotional extremes. Forster's biography argues that throughout her life, du Maurier felt that her inner sense of identity was repressed and she referred to this as 'the boy in the box' who, from time to time would emerge to take control of Daphne, the woman. This ambiguity in her sexuality appears to have been heavily influenced by the claustrophobic relationship she had with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier.

Forster's biography was the winner of the Fawcett Society Book Prize.