Let me tell you about Dame Catherine Cookson (1906-1998). An illegitimate child born in the slums of Jarrow in the North East of England, she never knew her father; she believed her grandparents were her parents and that her mother was her sister. She worked in a laundry until she married at the age of 22. She was unable to have children, and this, on top of her deprived childhood and the fact that whenever she heard the word ‘illegitimate’ or ‘bastard’ caused knots in her stomach, resulted in her having a nervous breakdown at the age of 39. But Catherine Cookson then went on to spend over fifty years writing more than one hundred books, which to date have been translated into 17 different languages and have sold over 100 million copies. That is the equivalent to selling over 5000 books a day, every day for 50 years. And that figures continues to grow to this day.

Let me tell you about Dame Catherine Cookson (1906-1998). An illegitimate child born in the slums of Jarrow in the North East of England, she never knew her father; she believed her grandparents were her parents and that her mother was her sister. She worked in a laundry until she married at the age of 22. She was unable to have children, and this, on top of her deprived childhood and the fact that whenever she heard the word ‘illegitimate’ or ‘bastard’ caused knots in her stomach, resulted in her having a nervous breakdown at the age of 39. But Catherine Cookson then went on to spend over fifty years writing more than one hundred books, which to date have been translated into 17 different languages and have sold over 100 million copies. That is the equivalent to selling over 5000 books a day, every day for 50 years. And that figures continues to grow to this day.