The Round Tower

Description

The award-winning, powerful love story from one of Britain's most popular novelists Vanessa Ratcliffe is just sixteen, daughter of one of the town's richest men. And in spite of her social standing and convent education Vanessa's provocative manner often draws envious eyes in her direction.Angus Cotton is a rough diamond, living in filthy Ryder's Row, but as engineer at Affleck and Tate he's worth his weight in gold. Angus has ambitious plans for his future, plans that had never included Vanessa - until now . . .The Round Tower is a beautifully imagined story of power, love, honour and greed and an award-winning novel from one of Britain's most popular novelists.

Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many bestselling novels established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.

Humour, toughness, resolution and generosity are Cookson virtues . . . In the specialised world of women's popular fiction, Cookson has created her own territory * Helen Dunmore, The Times *