Biography

Margaret Drabble was born on June 5, 1939 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, UK. She is a writer, known for A Touch of Love (1969), Isadora (1968) and It's a Woman's World (1964). She has been married to Michael Holroyd since 1982. She was previously married to Clive Swift.

I won't be able to stand there and say 'This is a wonderful book, my best ever'. I can't do that Jeffrey Archer stuff because at school we were taught not to advertise ourselves: only showing off on stage as someone else was allowed. But I can talk about how the short stories were written, why they got into print, and why I haven't written more short stories.

[on the relationship with her sister and fellow writer A.S. Byatt] She may not have known what she had done until she had written it. Writers are like that. But it's a mean-spirited book about sibling rivalry and she sent it to me with a note signed 'With love,' saying 'I think I owe you an apology'." [Since then, the only book of Byatt's that she has read is Possession] a wonderful book; I think I sent her a postcard saying so. I think she wrote me a note about The Waterfall [in 1969]. It's irresoluble now. It's sad, but beyond repair, and I don't think about it much any more.

[on her unfinished novel "Butterfly"] I had been struggling with the novel for some time before my daughter Rebecca fell ill, and as her illness progressed I knew I would not even want to try to finish it. When she died, on Easter Tuesday, April 2017, I knew my life as a novelist was over. I had ceased to be the person that I once was, and I had lost the source from which I used to write. Maybe it had dried up; maybe I had lost access to it. I don't know which.