MARGARET DRABBLE is the author of The Sea Lady, The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, and The Needles Eye, among other novels. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.

Drabble has famously been engaged in a long-running feud with her novelist sister, , over the alleged appropriation of a family tea-set in one of her novels. The pair seldom see each other and each does not read the books of the other.Read Less