Catherine Cookson

You were both in TV, weren't you? Dave was a makeup artist.

Did you meet on a Catherine Cookson drama?

We did.

We met on a Catherine Cookson drama in 1992 called The Gambling Man with Robson Green.

So Dave was a very talented prosthetic makeup artist and hairdresser and, you know, he was just brilliant at it.

And I was established at that point because that really was my bread and butter.

I'm studying the

works of Catherine Cookson.

Professional development.

Yeah, so, and I was... looking through holiday kind of songs, and this one...

Today we join you from the fine city of Durham and are here with a keen audience of North Eastern readers at Durham Book Festival.

So we have a very fitting audience to consider the life and work of Catherine Cookson.

In this episode,

we're stepping back into life on Tyneside in the late 1920s to consider Cookson's 1953 novel, Colourblind.

Well, I think

that will all be revealed.

So today we're looking at just one of the 104 books that Catherine Cookson wrote.

As a writer, she was a phenomenon, producing so many books, creating a new genre of writing almost, and building a readership that ate up her books.

It's all their publications.

My mum might have the odd Catherine Cookson here and there.

But most of the books in the house are these religious books.

So you were checking each other constantly.

Yeah, I love the books.

I, uh, them and Katherine Cookson.

Like, my mother also loves them, and I, I adored them.

I love them.