Margaret Drabble: Background information when reading The Pattern in the Carpet

Margaret Drabble

This article relates to The Pattern in the Carpet

Margaret Drabble was born in 1939 in Sheffield, England. Her father was a barrister, county court judge and a novelist. Her sister is the author A.S. Byatt. Margaret attended the Mount School in York from where she won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge to read English. She received a Starred First (First Class Honours with Distinction - which is rarely awarded). After graduating from Cambridge she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford where she understudied for Vanessa Redgrave.

She is the author of over 25 works of fiction, nonfiction, and biography. You may view a detailed bibliography here.

She married the actor Clive Swift (perhaps best known for his role as husband to Hyacinth Bucket in the British comedy Keeping Up Appearances) in 1960 and had three children. Following a divorce in 1975 she married the writer Michael Holroyd in the early 1980s. They live in London and Somerset (South-East England).

Drabble was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1980, and was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2008. In addition to honorary doctorates from seven other universities, Cambridge awarded her an honorary Doctorate in Letters in 2006.

Read a New York Times article about an afternoon with the literary couple.

Margaret Drabble's writing room, complete with jigsaw table:
Photograph by Eamonn McCabe, from a series of articles in The Guardian about writers' rooms.

Filed under Books and Authors

This "beyond the book article" relates to The Pattern in the Carpet. It originally ran in October 2009 and has been updated for the September 2010 paperback edition. Go to magazine.