Canongate Books

Margaret Drabble 'in conversation'

Fri 31 January 2014

Hughes Hall

Margaret Drabble, DBE, will be ‘In Conversation’ with Mary Buckley answering questions on Cambridge days, the themes she explores in her novels and the issues about which she cares most. Afterwards she will take questions from the audience.

Margaret Drabble is a Cambridge graduate and internationally acclaimed for her contribution to literature. Her eighteenth novel The Pure Gold Baby (2013) has received outstanding reviews. The Observer described it as ‘profoundly stirring’ and the Independent lauded its ‘amazing emotional power.’

The Pure Gold Baby tells the story of Jess, an aspiring anthropologist, who becomes pregnant and finds herself with a dependent daughter who has learning difficulties. The story of Jess, her daughter Anna and her supportive social circle of young mothers in north London over a span of forty years raises issues concerning the tolerance of mental disability, what education systems can offer to those who are vulnerable and how an insatiably curious anthropologist can continue to be one with unexpected restrictions on travel and time.

Margaret Drabble has also written non-fiction, including biographies, and edited the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Her first novel, A Summer Bird Cage was published in 1963. Her third, The Millstone (1965), was awarded the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize and Jerusalem the Golden (1969) won the James Tait Black Prize. She received the E. M. Foster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973. In 1980 Margaret Drabble was made a CBE and in 2008 a DBE. In 2011 she was given the Golden Pen Award for ‘a lifetime’s distinguished service to literature.’

Cost: free