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For a brief introduction to any of Margaret
Dickinson's novels please click on the relevant cover picture Margaret Dickinson's new novel
. JENNY’S WAR
Is it possible for a ten-year-old girl to fall in love? Jenny Mercer thinks so. Evacuated to Lincolnshire from the East End of London at the outbreak of war, she is frightened of the wide open spaces and the huge skies. But the kindly Thornton family soon makes her feel welcome. And no one more so than Georgie, the handsome RAF fighter pilot who is caught up in the battle for Britain’s survival. When Georgie is posted missing, presumed dead, Jenny is devastated.
More heartbreak is to come when Jenny’s mother Dot decides she wants her daughter home, Jenny is forced to come back to live in the city which is now under almost daily attack from enemy bombers. Dot’s ‘fancy man’, Arthur Osborne, treats Jenny kindly. But is Arthur only interested in the girl because she can be useful to him? No one will suspect a ten-year-old of being involved with the Black Market.
When the law comes a little too close for Arthur’s comfort, the family flees the city and heads towards the hills and dales of Derbyshire. There, Jenny is caught up in a life of deception. All she really wants is to go back to Lincolnshire. For Jenny has never given up hope that one day, Georgie will come back…
SIGNING EVENTS 2012
Friday 17th February W H Smith, Skegness 9.30am - 11.30am W H Smith, Boston 2pm – 3.30pm
Saturday 18th February Waterstones, High Street, Lincoln 11am – 1pm W H Smith, Lincoln 2 – 3.30pm
Tuesday 21st February W H Smith, Gainsborough 10.30am to 12.30pm W H Smith, Retford 2 – 3pm
Wednesday 22nd February Waterstones, Boston 10.30am – 12pm Oldrids, Boston 12.30 – 2pm
Friday, 24th February W H Smith, Grantham 10.30am – 12pm Oldrids, Downtown, Grantham 1 – 3pm
Saturday 25th February W H Smith, Grimsby 10.30 to 12pm Waterstones, Grimsby 2 – 3pm
Monday, 27th February Walkers, Sleaford 11am – 1pm
Wednesday 29th February W H Smith, Louth 10 – 11.30am MSR News, Louth 12 – 1pm Wrights, Louth 2 – 3pm
Thursday 1st March Perkins, Horncastle 10 – 11.30am Coningsby Bookshop 1 – 2.30pm
Saturday 3rd March W H Smith, Newark 10.30am – 12.30pm Boyes, Lincoln 2.30 – 4pm
Tuesday 6th March Bookmark, Spalding 10.30am - 12.30pm Waterstones, King’s Lynn 2.30 – 3.30pm
Wednesday 7th March Waterstones, High Street, Lincoln 12 – 1pm
Friday 9th March W H Smith, Meadowhall, Sheffield 11am – 3pm
Friday 16th March Walkers, Stamford 10.30am -12pm Walkers, Bourne 1.30 – 3pm
Saturday 17th March W H Smith, Beverley 11am - 1pm
Thursday 22nd March W H Smith, Harrogate – 12 – 2pm
Friday 23 March W H Smith, Scarborough 11am – 1pm
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Born
in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Margaret Dickinson has spent most of her life
in the county, moving to the East Coast from Nottinghamshire at the age of
seven. She began writing at the
age of fourteen with the ambition to be in print
and her first novel was published in 1968 when she was twenty-six. Seven others followed this between
1969 and 1984 but then, because of family commitments, Margaret was unable to
write for seven years. In 1991,
encouraged by her husband to begin writing again, Margaret had that little
piece of luck that everyone needs - she found a wonderful agent, Darley
Anderson, who advised her to write a regional saga with a strong woman as the
central character. In
1993 Pan Macmillan offered a two-book contract for Plough the Furrow, the first in the Fleethaven Trilogy, and its
sequel, Sow the Seed, which were
published in 1994 and 1995 respectively. It seemed as if Margaret had found her niche; writing
romantic fiction and bringing to life her love of the sea, the Lincolnshire
landscape and its people. Reap the Harvest, published in 1996,
completed the trilogy. Church
Farm Museum at Skegness - a “living” museum - was the model for Brumbys’ Farm
and the setting was Gibraltar Point. In
1997 The Miller’s Daughter,
inspired by the windmill at Burgh-le-Marsh, near Skegness, was published and
in the following year Chaff Upon the
Wind took the Manor House at Alford as the setting for the characters in
the story. Grimsby was the
inspiration for The Fisher Lass,
evoking the dramas of those who are born to the fishing way of life and
described by the publishers as ‘...a love story as powerful and restless as
the mighty North Sea.’ This was
published in 1999. Spalding and
district was the setting for The Tulip
Girl published in August 2000 and The
River Folk, inspired by Margaret’s birthplace, Gainsborough, was
published on 22nd June 2001. Tangled Threads, a story with the
Nottinghamshire framework knitting and lace industries in the early 1900s as
the setting was published in May 2002 and its sequel in 2003, Twisted Strands, followed the lives of
the same characters affected by the Great War. Margaret’s novel for 2004, Red Sky in the Morning, returned to the Lincolnshire Wolds and
evoked the era of the Second World War and its aftermath. The
Workhouse Museum at Southwell in Nottinghamshire was the inspiration for Without Sin, published in April
2005. As always, Margaret’s
characters and storylines are completely fictitious, though the background
research at the museum was fascinating. Pauper’s Gold, published in April
2006, is an emotional story of love and survival, set in a Derbyshire cotton
mill and the silk town of Macclesfield. In the 1850s life was harsh for the
pauper apprentices, children taken from workhouses and bound to their masters
for years. And, with the onset
of the American civil war, a cotton famine caused greater hardship in the
mills of England. Wish Me Luck, published by Macmillan and Pan Books in April 2007, is set in Lincolnshire during World War II. The shout line on the book cover says it all: "Love and Laughter, Tears and Courage in a Time of War".
Sing As We Go, published in March 2008, again has the Second World War as its setting and is the story of a girl who, after tragedy and heartbreak, joins a concert party to entertain troops, hospitals and war workers.
Wherever Margaret travels, she is never “off duty” when it comes to finding ideas for her novels. On her first-ever trip abroad in 2004 to Davos, in Switzerland, which in the early part of the twentieth century was a centre for the treatment of tuberculosis, Margaret found fascinating information that led to writing Suffragette Girl. The story begins and ends with the heroine, Florrie, in Davos, but in between she becomes a suffragette, a VAD nurse in the front line in the Great War and even takes part in the General Strike of 1926.
Margaret’s novel for 2010, Sons and Daughters, is set in the flat marshland near the Lincolnshire coast; an area with its own unique ‘character’. Charlotte, the heroine in Sons and Daughters, is treated very cruelly by her father, Osbert, who craved a son. The only love and laughter at home is to be found in the farmhouse kitchen with the servants, Mary and Edward, and with the workmen on her father’s farm. Though she doesn’t realise it at first, Charlotte is loved by everyone in the small community, especially by the children who attend her Sunday School. It is only when a widower, Miles Thornton, and his three sons come to live at the Manor that Charlotte’s world is turned upside down and she begins to see that her life of duty and obedience to her father is not what it should be. And then Osbert comes up with a preposterous suggestion that shocks Charlotte and all those who care about her.
To
celebrate the Millennium, Margaret was invited by the Skegness Playgoers to
write a community play. Embracing Tides, featuring the life of
a fictional family throughout the twentieth century in Skegness, was staged
at the Embassy Theatre, Skegness, on 23rd, 24th and 25th November, 2000, and
also on 1st December as the Playgoers’ entry for that year’s Play
Festival. The production won
five of the Festival’s thirteen awards. Margaret still lives in Lincolnshire. She has been married to Dennis for over forty four years and has two grown-up daughters and is now a proud Grannie.
Thank you for visiting my website Best wishes
Margaret Dickinson Margaret Dickinson's novels are published in paperback by
Pan Books
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