Catherine Cookson

"I've always been a jabberer. I just talked. I see everything in images. The plot sort of unfolds. Even the dialogue. In the morning, it's all there to put down."

"You see, until I was 16 my world was a short straight line: Jarrow, East Jarrow, Tyne Dock and East Shield, running along the river. I had everything to catch up. It wasn't until I grew up and read Lord Chesterfield that I began my education. He became my tutor and the public library my university."

"When Tom's school was evacuated to St Albans during the war we had a little flat opposite the library. I took a book every day: Chaucer, Emerson, John Donne. Good plain writing, no hyperbole. I would have liked to have studied philosophy. Homespun philosophy, that's what you get in my books."

"[T]he trouble with Cookson is that she is not, when all is said and done, a terribly interesting writer. Her popularity is a notable phenomenon, true, but she does not have the kind of outsize literary talent that could do justice to her outsize themes."

"Mrs Cookson certainly has a remarkable gift for bringing a tear to the eye."

"Catherine Cookson in The Black Velvet Gown...has a story telling gift that would stop a runaway train."

"Catherine Cookson is at her most convincing when describing hardship and misery – her characters less powerful when happy and contented."