Margaret Drabble

British novelist, biographer, and critic · United Kingdom · On the map · Writers · Born 1939 · age 87

Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd is an English biographer, novelist and short story writer.

Margaret Drabble is read about 248 times a day, in 26 languages.

A typical day, 30 days to 6 November 2026

The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 104 days, one point a day.

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A life in dates

2003St. Louis Literary AwardAward1993“I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history.”In their words2 January 1993The GuardianRead the whole statement

1987“In my business,’ she said, ‘I don’t think one has to retire. One gets wiser and wiser all the time. Until one dies. Dies into full knowledge.”In their wordsThe Radiant Way, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987)Read the whole statement

1980“The middle years, caught between children and parents, free of neither: the past stretches back too densely, it is too thickly populated, the future has not yet thinned out.”In their wordsThe Middle Ground (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980) p. 185Read the whole statement

“Men and women can never be close. They can hardly speak to one another in the same language. But are compelled, forever, to try, and therefore even in defeat there is no peace.”In their wordsThe Middle Ground (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980) p. 236Read the whole statement

1973E. M. Forster AwardAwardFellow of the Royal Society of LiteratureAward1967James Tait Black Memorial PrizeAward1965“Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We disregard them, we say they forget, because they have not the words to make us remember.”In their wordsThe Millstone (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1965) p. 148Read the whole statement

1963“How unjust life is, to make physical charm so immediately apparent or absent, when one can get away with vices untold for ever.”In their wordsA Summer Bird Cage (1963; New York: Popular Library, 1977) p. 28Read the whole statement

1939Born5 June 1939

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Margaret Drabble

4 statements, newest first

England's not a bad country. It's just a mean, cold, ugly, divided, tired, clapped-out, post-imperial, post-industrial slag-heap covered in polystyrene hamburger cartons.
1989 · A Natural Curiosity (New York: Viking, 1989) p. 308, Own words
Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.
31 March 1985 · The New York Times Book Review, Own words
The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much unintermittent gloom.
1975 · The Realms of Gold (1975; New York: Ivy Books, 1989) p. 140, Own words