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Margaret Drabble

Dame Margaret Drabble is a novelist, biographer and critic. Her novels include The Millstone and Jerusalem the Golden; her most recent was The Pure Gold Baby. Subjects of her biographies have included Wordsworth, Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson

May 2023

  • Coronation Crowds 2nd June 1953 Mrs Birch and her eight-year-old son John, who have been sitting in the Mall outside London's Buckingham Palace since yesterday morning in order to be present for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Mrs Birch is wearing a patriotic top hat decorated with red, white and blue ribbons.

    Sherry trifle at the Smiths: how we watched the last coronation

    We were of a generation that couldn’t help but take an interest in 1953, writes Margaret Drabble, but Charles inherits a grotesquely unequal realm

September 2020

  • Diana Rigg Actress 01 May 1961 01 May 1961 CTC4498 Allstar Picture Library **Warning** This Photograph is a publicity still & can only be used for editorial purposes. Allstar Picture Library do not own the copyright of this images as it was supplied by a production/publicity/PR company or department of a film/music company for promotional purposes around the time that the photograph was taken. No commercial use can be granted for the use of this image.

    As Diana Rigg's understudy, I never tired of watching her – she was splendid

    Margaret Drabble
    At the Royal Shakespeare Company, the star’s comic timing was faultless – and her conversation was racy and rich

June 2020

  • Megan Nolan, left, and Margaret Drabble.

    Lockdown life in your 20s and 80s by Megan Nolan and Margaret Drabble

    Moving back in with parents, drinking too much, the loneliness of Zoom calls and feelings of detachment ... two writers in very different stages of life reflect on their circumstances

June 2019

  • Kenwood Ladies Bathing Pond - Writers Deborah Moggach and So Mayer have contributes to a new anthologie of stories, histories and politics of the Ladies pond in Hampstead Heath. Photograph by Amit Lennon Date: 24 May 2019

    The Ladies’ Pond: three writers dive in

    Hampstead Heath’s swimming pond for women is a much-loved institution and source of inspiration. Deborah Moggach, So Mayer and Margaret Drabble explain what it means to them

January 2019

  • Margaret Drabble.

    Books that made me
    Margaret Drabble: ‘Lee Child does all the things I could never do. I’m awestruck’

    The novelist, biographer and critic on laughing at Muriel Spark and never reading any Harry Potter

November 2018

  • A detail from The Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly

    Home is where the art is: Margaret Drabble on Gainsborough's family portraits

    He was known as an expensive painter who captured high society, but a rare exhibition of Gainsborough’s works at the National Portrait Gallery reveals a poignant story of parental love

December 2017

  • Fairy godmother type handing a youngster a book in a fairy woodland setting

    'If only I'd been warned!' - writers choose books to give to their younger selves

    Julian Barnes, Margaret Drabble, Tessa Hadley, David Nicholls and others choose reading matter that would have been useful when young

October 2016

  • Margaret drabble

    Margaret Drabble: ‘I am not afraid of death. I worry about living’

    As life expectancy increases, and scientists search for new ways to outwit mortality, we are beginning to fear old age and longevity more than dying. But who decides when it is the right time to go?

April 2016

  • Paula Rego’s Come to Me from her Jane Eyre series. This is the final work in Rego’s series and shows Jane in her later years. ‘Come to me’ refers to the blind Rochester calling her.

    Jane Eyre by Sarah Waters, Margaret Drabble, Jeanette Winterson and others

    ‘The shock and thrill of discovering this book, aged 13, continues to run in my veins’ … On the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth, writers and artists reflect on her greatest creation

March 2016

  • Via San Gregorio Armeno in Naples<br>Some people walking in the street in via San Gregorio Armeno in Naples. Naples, 1961 (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

    My hero
    My hero: Elena Ferrante by Margaret Drabble

    ‘The Story of the Lost Child’ has just been longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International prize

December 2015

  • Swiss Guards re-entering the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.

    The gift I'll never forget
    The ring Pat gave me is a reminder of time and mortality

    Margaret Drabble
    I wear it on my right hand, this fragile, damaged, antique micro-mosaic, a visible symbol of our long relationship

December 2014

  • Local lads look on with curiosity at Harrow schoolboys in 1937

    Ed Miliband has lost my vote if he kowtows to private education

    Margaret Drabble
    Margaret Drabble: The template of the British private school should be scrapped, not slavishly imitated in the state sector

August 2014

  • British pop artist Pauline Boty

    Weekend love special
    The one that got away: Margaret Drabble

    'Friendly, glowing, bronzed, curious, eager, impulsive: the world was all before her, and she knew it'

June 2014

  • bernardine bishop hidden

    Hidden Knowledge review – Bernardine Bishop's subtle modern morality tale

  • Books to teach in schools - Overhaul

    Back to school, Mr Gove: authors choose their GCSE set texts

May 2014

  • Margaret Drabble

    Margaret Drabble on the joy of ebooks

  • Fanny web

    Move over Lizzie Bennet – let's hear it for the unsung heroine

January 2014

  • Matt Kenyon right to die

    When it's time to go, let me go, with a nice glass of whisky and a pleasing pill

    Margaret Drabble

    Margaret Drabble: Advances in science that keep us alive for longer and longer, must be balanced by the freedom to die when we wish to

November 2013

  • Bernardine Bishop

    Books blog
    Margaret Drabble: Bernardine Bishop's miraculous achievement

  • Doris Lessing

    My hero
    My hero: Doris Lessing by Margaret Drabble

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