Josephine Cox: Child Of The North

Memories of a Northern Childhood.

'Everything I have touched in my life figures in my books. Every single book I write has something that has happened to me or my family or to my friends.'

Josephine Cox was born in Blackburn during its decline as the cotton-waving capital of the world. Life was hard but characterful, the joys and tragedies of her youth later inspiring her multi-million selling novels.

One of ten children, Jo knew poverty, hunger and the charity of the Ragged School. Between births her mother worked in the cotton mills, her father on the roads. Sleeping up to six in a bed - "three top, three bottom" - her family lived among the tightly packed, working-class terraces of Blackburn. But Jo never felt victimised or shamed.

But hand in hand with poverty came deprivation and domestic difficulties. At the end of her tether, Jo's mother gathered her children around her in the bus station one day and said "We're leaving . . ." Jo was fourteen years old. Not only did she lose her friends and father, but her brothers were left behind too. This is the loss out of which Jo's novels were born.

'Child Of The North', written with her co-operation, and illustrated with period and specially commissioned colour photographs, unveils the world of Josephine Cox - her own story, told for the first time.