Gillian White

Page Updated: 30/01/02

Gillian White

Grandfather's Footsteps

The Sleeper

Mothertime

and

Books By Gillian White

About the Author (Photo by John Alexabder)

Bibliography

Audio Tape ISIS (2001)

Grandfather's Footsteps
Jessica seems to have everything desirable - a glamorous job and a handsome Italian lover . . . but all is not well. Her lover wants a baby, and Jessica is unable to give him one. It is her secretary, plain, common Brenda, who can give her what she needs, for Brenda is pregnant.
And so a bargain is struck. It is strictly business but Jessica has not allowed for Brenda’s family, or for the appalling twist of fate that moves them from their council estate in Pimlico to right next door.
A bittersweet tale of two cultures colliding.
Jilly Bond has worked extensively in theatre and radio for the past twelve years.
Her credits on stage include Miranda (and Antonio!) in The Tempest, Fiona, the ‘girl’, in When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout and Anita in Ayckbourn’s A Small Family Business.
She is regularly heard in dramas for Radio Four and the BBC World Service. Among her roles is Susan Grantly in The Barchester Chronicles. She has read numerous Afternoon Stories for Radio Four and is also a director and writer. She lives in London with her husband and two children
Unabridged: 8 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 10 hrs 13 mins

Audio Tape - ISIS (2000)

The Sleeper
A mystery from the past becomes a terrifying ordeal in the present, and a traditional family Christmas turns into a nightmare.
In a wintry resort an old woman goes missing from her residential hotel for the elderly, the inappropriately named Happy Haven. And in a remote farmhouse not far away, the Moon family gathers for its traditional Christmas. Clover Moon, the farmer's wife, looks forward to the forthcoming festivities with quiet desperation and dread. She knows that her mother-in-law, Violet, regards her as an inadequate and unsuitable wife for her beloved only son, but when strange accidents start happening she begins to wonder whether Violet could actually be trying to kill her. And what dreadful secrets in Violet's own childhood are coming back to haunt her? As gales and blizzards cut off power and maroon the Christmas gathering, where did the body come from that is swept into the farmhouse cellar by the rising flood water?
Tracey Lloyd trained as an actress at RADA and worked in the theatre until her third child was born. She then pursued a career as a freelance writer, with periods spent in East Africa and the South Pacific. As part of a professional partnership, Tracey specialised in the use of drama in language teaching and went on to take a degree, followed by a certificate in the teaching of English as a foreign language. Since then, she has combined writing with freelance work as a language and voice teacher.
Unabridged: 4 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 11 hrs 30 mins

Hardback
ISIS (2000)

Mothertime
Christmas Eve, North London. The Townsend children have hung up the last strand of tinsel, and all is aglow with the mystery of Christmas.
And then their mother staggers home drunk, Caroline Townsend, ex-beauty, failed actress, divorcée, has just been jilted by her lover. Will Christmas be doomed again this year?
It is time for desperate measures.
Wildly funny, completely original and full of insights about marriage, adolescence and the lethal defences we all use to hide behind, Mothertime is worth a decade of psychotherapy - and is far more entertaining.
Juliet Prague was born in London to Dutch/German parents. She trained at the Drama Centre and has worked extensively in theatre, TV and audio. Her theatre appearances include An Evening with Gary Lineker at the Theatre Royal Windsor, Square Rounds with the Royal National Theatre, Woyzeck with Hull Truck, as well as seasons with Birmingham Rep. and the Northcott Theatre, Exeter. On television she was in Comedy Wavelength and puppeteer and presenter on the children's series TTV.
Unabridged: 10 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 11 hrs 45 mins

About The Author
Adopted as a baby bay a wealthy industrialist and his wife, Gillian White was brought up in a middle class home in Liverpool and sent to private school. But by the age of fifteen she had been expelled from three schools and sent to a home office approved school for three years, in need of care and protection. Searching for life's thrills and spills she found them, and more, on the streets of sixties London. After three unforgettable years locked up when she learned more about life than she has before or since, she trained to be a journalist and spent five years on a newspaper in Essex. During this time she married the paper's chief reporter and started her family of four.
She exchanged an inherited jade collection for a herd of Friesian cows after her father died, and bought a small farm in wildest Cornwall. This enterprise soon folded, as predicted, so Gillian and her family moved to Devon to farm near Dartington Hall School, which their four children attended.
The school closed down after a notorious national scandal and Gillian invited the remaining pupils and teachers to start a new school in her farm house. The school survives today and is thriving, but Gillian found the noise and over-population of her home hellish and was driven to her bedroom, and this is when and why she started to writes. In the ten years since then three of her novels, Rich Deceiver, The Beggar Bride and Mothertime have been adapted for BBC television, and The Sleeper is to follow soon.
Gillian says that the most pleasing part of being a novelist is that she is allowed to be eccentric! She lives in Totnes with her husband. Her children and grandchildren live nearby.

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

Grandfather's Footsteps (ISIS, 2001)

The Sleeper (ISIS, 2000)

Mothertime (ISIS, 2000)