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Writer whose bestselling novels were based on the people and communities she had known in the north of England
Josephine Cox, who has died aged 82, could have stepped out of the pages of a novel by Catherine Cookson or Barbara Taylor Bradford. Brought up in poverty with a father who drank his wages, she earned pennies from storytelling and went on to write more than 60 novels that sold more than 20m copies, beginning in her late 40s with Her Father’s Sins. Her most recent, Two Sisters, was published in February, though it is likely there will be posthumous publications.
Cox was one of the most borrowed authors and therefore one of the biggest earners of the Public Lending Right scheme, and her childhood experience of poverty ensured she was a champion of the library service. Invited to a reception at No 10, she gave the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, a piece of her mind, jabbing his chest and reminding him that poor people could not afford to buy books. As austerity devastated the service, she wrote to MPs, telling them that libraries weren’t “just somewhere to borrow a book; they are cultural and very necessary”. A plaque outside Blackburn Central Library records her work as a patron of Darwen borough library services. Continue reading...