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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

When Florrie Maltby defies her father by refusing to marry Gervase Richards, she sets off a chain of events that will alter her life.  Instead she goes to London and becomes involved with the suffragette movement.  She’s imprisoned for her militant actions, and goes on hunger strike.  With her health deteriorating, there is one person who can save her – Gervase.

 

After a brief stay in the countryside to recuperate, Florrie returns to London to continue her fight for women’s rights.  Only the outbreak of the Great War puts a halt to her activities.  It is when James, her younger brother, is shamed by their father into volunteering, that Florrie enlists as a nurse and is sent to the Front.  Amidst the fear and horror of the hospital close to the trenches, she finds love.  But when her beloved brother is accused of desertion, help comes from a very unexpected source.

 

 

 

Upcoming Events 2009

 

Friday, 6th  March                    WHSmith, Skegness                                 9.30am to 11.30am

                                                 WHSmith, Boston                                   2pm to 3.30pm

 

Saturday, 7th March                  Waterstones, Lincoln                               11am to 1pm

                                                 WHSmith, Lincoln                                  2pm to 3.30pm

 

Sunday, 8th March                    WHSmith, Meadowhall                            11am to 3pm

                                                 Sheffield

 

Tuesday, 10th March                WHSmith, Gainsborough                          10.30am to 12.30pm

                                                 WHSmith, Retford                                   2pm to 3pm

 

Wednesday, 11th March            Waterstones, Boston                              10.30am to 11.30am

                                                 Oldrids, Boston                                       12.30pm to 2pm

                                                 Waterstones, Boston                               7pm “Meet the Author”

 

Friday, 13th March                   WHSmith, Grantham                               10.30am to 12pm

                                                 Downtown, Grantham                             1pm to 3pm

 

Saturday, 14th March                WHSmith, Grimsby                                  10.30am to 12pm

                                                 Waterstones, Grimsby                              2pm to 3pm

 

Tuesday, 17th March                 Bookmark, Spalding                                 10.30am to 1pm

 

Wednesday, 18th March            WHSmith, Louth                                    10am to 11.30am

                                                  MSR News                                              12pm to 1                                                (formerly Spencers)

 

 

Thursday, 19th March                 Perkins, Horncastle                                10am to 11.30am

                                                   Coningsby Bookshop                              1pm to 2.30pm

 

Saturday, 21st March                  WHSmith, Newark                                  10.30am to 12.30pm

 

Thursday, 16th April                 Werrington Library,                                 “Meet the Author”

                                                 Nr Peterborough                                        2pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Margaret Dickinson

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.

 

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

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Margaret Dickinson

Margaret Dickinson's novels are published in paperback by   Pan Books