The Moth - Tapa dura

Robert Bradley, a young man of independent mind and spirit, gave up his job in the Jarrow shipyards to work at his uncle's old-established carpenter's shop in a small village. Life with domineering Uncle John and his family did not always prove easy, however, and on Sunday Robert was glad to set off alone exploring the Durham countryside. At a friendly wayside inn he heard talk about Foreshaw Park, the sadly run-down estate of the once wealthy Thorman family, and walking home in the moonlight he had his first strange encounter with Millie, the ethereal girl-child of that house whose odd ways and nocturnal wanderings had led to her being known locally as 'Thorman's Moth'. The time came when a sudden and dramatic turn in Robert's affairs brought him a much closer involvement with the Thormans of Foreshaw, and especially with the elder daughter Agnes who shouldered so many of the burdens of this troubled household and who alone of all her family loved and protected the frail unworldly Millie. But this was 1913, and anything beyond the most formal relationship between servant and mistress had to face the barriers and injustices of a rigid social hierarchy that was soon to perish in the flames of war.

Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.