The Seven Sisters - Tapa dura

When Candida Wilton arrives alone in London, divorced and rejected and without much money, she is filled with a strange sense of excitement. What can happen, at her age, to change her fortunes? How will she adjust to this shabby, violent, yet curiously attractive city? When Candida starts writing her diary, she expects that she will fill it with the small events with which she pads out her empty life, but she has always had a secret belief that despite all she is a lucky person. And she is, in a sense, right, for when an unexpected windfall brings her sudden riches, her horizons broaden: she will start, she thinks, with a trip abroad ...

Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and educated at Cambridge. She was awarded a CBE in 1980. Her many novels include THE RADIANT WAY (1987), A NATURAL CURIOSITY (1989) and THE GATES OF IVORY (1991), and THE PEPPERED MOTH (2000) all of which are published by Penguin. Among her non-fiction works are The OXFORD COMPANION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE (1985, 2000, edited). Margaret Drabble is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd and lives in London W10.