‘Take away the glitz or grit, and many popular memoirs probably wouldn’t keep a reader turning pages for long. What Nicholas Royle, author and professor of English at University of Sussex, demonstrates in this portrait of his mother, Kathleen, is how skilful, honest and evocative writing can bring a person to life better than any film.

‘Royle admits he didn’t set out to write a conventional biography, and the finished book is “less a record of events than a grappling with what escapes words”. Nevertheless, his mother, a no-nonsense nurse and crossword loving autodidact emerges as a forceful, funny, talkative and practical woman whose love for her family knew no bounds.’

Sussex Life review Mother: A Memoir by local author Nicholas Royle for their June 2020 issue. Read online here.