21 Facts About Margaret Drabble

Margaret Drabble wrote biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson and edited two editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature and a book on Thomas Hardy.

Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield, the second daughter of the County Court judge and novelist John Frederick Margaret Drabble and the teacher Kathleen Marie.

Margaret Drabble's father participated in the placement of Jewish refugees in Sheffield during the 1930s.

Margaret Drabble's mother was a Shavian and her father a Quaker.

Margaret Drabble joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1960, and, before leaving to pursue a career in literary studies and writing, served as an understudy for Vanessa Redgrave and Diana Rigg.

Margaret Drabble was married to the actor Clive Swift between 1960 and 1975.

In 1982, Margaret Drabble married the writer and biographer Sir Michael Holroyd; they live in London and Somerset.

Margaret Drabble's face is finer, prettier and younger, surprisingly young for someone who has produced so many books in the past sixteen years.

Margaret Drabble wrote of her distress at images of the war, her objections to Jack Straw about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and "American imperialism, American infantilism, and American triumphalism about victories it didn't even win".

Margaret Drabble wrote novels, she claimed in 2011, "to keep myself company".

Margaret Drabble maintained this approach for her first three books, having "liberated myself from the neutral critical prose of the university essay", which she nevertheless admitted she had enjoyed writing.

About a woman with a baby, Margaret Drabble made her character unmarried so as to avoid having to write about marriage or the baby's father.

Margaret Drabble used the personal experience of one of her own children's diagnosis with a lesion to inform her writing on the illness she gave the child.

Indeed, Margaret Drabble herself wrote The Millstone whilst pregnant with her own child, that is, her third.

Margaret Drabble admitted, years after writing The Millstone: "I didn't realise until many years later that some of the medical details I invented were way off the mark".

Margaret Drabble apologised to her readers in a preface to A Natural Curiosity and said a sequel had been unintended.

In 2009, Margaret Drabble announced she would cease to write fiction, for fear of "repeating herself".

Margaret Drabble's other writing includes several screenplays, plays and short stories, as well as non-fiction such as A Writer's Britain: Landscape and Literature and biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson.

Margaret Drabble edited two editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature in 1985 and 2000.

Margaret Drabble served as chairman of the National Book League from 1980 until 1982.

Margaret Drabble was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in Elizabeth II's 1980 Birthday Honours, and was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 Birthday Honours.