(1934– )
an English writer of novels. Her books include The Dressmaker (1973), which was made into a film in 1989, The Bottle Factory Outing (1974), Injury Time (1977), which won the Whitbread prize, and An Awfully Big Adventure (1989), also made into a film. Her later books have been based on real lives, The Birthday Boys (1991) on Captain Scott’s Antarctic expedition, Every Man for Himself (1996) about the Titanic , Master Georgie (1998) about the Crimean War and According to Queeney (2001) about Dr Johnson . Her work has been shortlisted many times for the Booker Prize . She was made a dame (2) in 2000.