Liverpool 08 interview

Is Capital of Culture a Good Thing?

Margaret's recent interview on Legal TV. Includes a reading from Now You See Me

I am the sixth of nine children, born in Liverpool, the daughter of a taxi owner and a nurse. Books were an escape, allowing solitude amidst the constant noise and activity of a house full of children. I spent a great portion of my childhood living one fantasy or another, and was constantly in trouble for daydreaming. My mother was always quoting If at me: ‘If you can dream and not make dreams your master/If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim’.

I attended Notre Dame High School for Girls, in Liverpool. I loved making up stories, and began several novels between the age of ten and seventeen, but I hated being told what to write and disliked creative writing tasks in school. My English teacher wrote on one of my reports that my efforts lacked imagination.

When I was sixteen, the family moved out to Runcorn, but I returned to Liverpool to go to University – against my parents’ wishes – to study Environmental Biology. In my second year, my dad refused to sign the grant forms, and I had to forge his signature to complete my education. He later relented and puzzled over how I managed to continue my studies - I didn’t have the heart to tell him... The grant was meant to provide term-time subsistence only, so I supported myself through university first by charring, and later by working as a park ranger on the Wirral, taking guided walks.

After graduation, I taught biology and general science, first in St Helens and later in Liverpool’s Walton Comprehensive School. I began teaching on the Wirral in 1987, first as a biology teacher, and later as head of the dyslexia unit in an independent school. At the age of thirty, after a serious illness, I discovered that my desire to write had emerged from its dormant period and was clamouring for attention.

After five years of hard work, and three unpublished novels, Goodnight, My Angel, was accepted for publication and was shortlisted for the First Blood Award for debut crime fiction.

I continued to teach (and dream), until 1998, gained an MA in Writing, worked freelance for the Open College of the Arts, completed the first year of a degree course in psychology (then dropped out), and I now tutor MA Writing students at Liverpool JMU.

I started my first series with The Dispossessed, based in Liverpool, and featuring Detective Chief Inspector Rickman and Detective Sergeant Foster. I should also mention Naomi Hart – some folks have fallen for the elegant and rather remote Detective Constable… The sequel, Now You See Me, is now out in paperback, and I am currently redrafting the third in the series.