About this item
Known for the wit of her writing, in her lifetime Catherine Cookson became the UK's most widely read novelist. When the Cookson Estate discovered the unpublished manuscript of Saint Christopher and the Gravedigger in the attic of her home, they unearthed a gem for Cookson's many fans.Gravedigger John Gascoigne lives in Downfell Hurst with his wife, Florrie, their three children and his mother, Gran. John is a deep thinker but extremely taciturn - a man of few words and many grunts. Which is why everyone is alarmed when he's hit on the head by a cricket ball, and it suddenly seems as if the words won't stop. What's more, he says he is talking to Saint Christopher - only no one else can see the saint, and they're beginning to worry John's not quite right in the head .
About the Author
Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master.
Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists.
After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997.
For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.
Photograph from the Catherine Cookson Collection, Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Centre at Boston University
