Born 90 years ago, the much-loved Dame was shortlisted five times for the Booker Prize - the most that any author has been shortlisted without actually winning
According to Queeney
Written by Beryl Bainbridge
- Longlisted
- The Booker Prize 2001
- Published by Duckworth
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Beryl Bainbridge’s masterly evocation of Dr Johnson, arguably Britain’s greatest Man of Letters, in all his wit and glory
In the late 18th century, Johnson has completed his life’s major work (he compiled the first ever Dictionary of the English Language) and is now running an increasingly chaotic life. With every passing day he becomes further torn between his strict morality and his undeclared passion for Mrs Thrale, the wife of an old friend…. A story of love and friendship, brilliantly narrated by Queeney, Mrs Thrale’s daughter, as she looks back over her life.
Beryl Bainbridge
Beryl Bainbridge, who died in 2010, was a Booker Prize heroine
More about Beryl Bainbridge Other nominated books by Beryl Bainbridge
Beryl Bainbridge explores the British experience of the Crimean War through the adventures - and hidden secrets - of her enigmatic central character
Beryl Bainbridge’s fictional history chronicles the fate of the privileged passengers of the Titanic on its doomed maiden voyage
A darkly comic novel about class, the long shadow of war, and unrequited first love
Surprises abound in Beryl Bainbridge’s unsettling comic novel, praised by fellow author Graham Greene as both ‘outrageously funny and horrifying’
The mundane and the macabre collide in Beryl Bainbridge’s darkly comic tale about the shockingly unexpected consequences of a young girl’s heartbreak
