CATHERINE THE GREAT

On the 25th anniversary of the bestselling author’s death, Caroline Roope turns the pages of the remarkable backstory of Dame Catherine Cookson

- Caroline Roope

The redoubtable Catherine Cookson could almost write a treatise on obscure methods of rhubarb cultivation and take it into the bestseller lists,” wrote the Liverpool Echo on the release of Dame Catherine’s 54th novel, The Upstart, in 1997. “She is such a byword for solid storytelling that her novels barely need reviewing,” the journalist raved.

Tyneside-born Dame Catherine never did write a treatise on rhubarb cultivation during her lengthy career as a writer – although had she done so, it would have no doubt been a success – but she did produce 104 titles over 58 years, sell more than 120 million books, and spend 17 years as the UK’s most borrowed author from public libraries.

“Solid storytelling” was certainly her stock in trade – after all, she had the most remarkable backstory of her own to tell – and 25 years since her death at the age of 91 in 1998, she continues to delight readers young and old today. But what was the secret to her success?

“I was born to write,” Dame Catherine wrote pragmatically in her autobiography, Our Kate. But she also had to accept that: “I wouldn’t write a word that anyone would really want to read until I threw off the pseudo-lady and accepted my early environment, me granda, the pawn, the beer carrying, the cinder picking, Kate’s [her mother] drinking, and of course my birth, for it was these things that had gone to make me. Also, to own to being a Northerner and all this implied.” Her own life would provide a lifetime of inspiration, and it all began on 20 June 1906 at 5 Leam Lane, a tiny two-bedroom house on Tyne Dock, South Shields in Tyne and Wear.