Catherine Cookson’s previous collection of essays and poems, Let Me Make Myself Plain, was published in response to the enthusiastic reception of a series of late night radio Epilogues. Following the remarkable success of that volume, she had compiled a further selection of thoughts, recollections, and observations on life – and death – together with another collection of the poems she preferred to describe as ‘prose on short lines’.
In the whole of her extensive writing, Catherine Cookson expressed her thoughts and feelings with remarkable candour and considerable wit. Above all, though, it was her down-to-earth common sense that shone through, as the forthright nature of her views expressed the hard-won philosophy of life she had developed for herself.
In Plainer Still, she revealed many of the qualities that allowed her to draw upon the great inner strength she needed to continue the battle of life – one that had, for the past fifty years, given her readers endless pleasure through the medium of her many novels, each of them inspired by the harsh and uncompromising nature of her early experiences.
In the whole of her extensive writing, Catherine Cookson expressed her thoughts and feelings with remarkable candour and considerable wit. Above all, though, it was her down-to-earth common sense that shone through, as the forthright nature of her views expressed the hard-won philosophy of life she had developed for herself.
In Plainer Still, she revealed many of the qualities that allowed her to draw upon the great inner strength she needed to continue the battle of life – one that had, for the past fifty years, given her readers endless pleasure through the medium of her many novels, each of them inspired by the harsh and uncompromising nature of her early experiences.
