Letters to Margaret

A sequence of letters from Hunter Davies to his late wife Margaret Forster, chronicling the ups and downs of his life since her death – by turns confessional, gossipy, touching, funny and bittersweet.

At the end of almost every day of their fifty-five years of married life, the publicity-shy author Margaret Forster would ask the naturally gregarious and outgoing Hunter Davies to describe to her the highlights of his day in the worlds of journalism and publishing. In the six years that have elapsed since Margaret's death, Hunter has continued these conversations with his wife, regaling her with accounts of the events and developments in his life – domestic, social, romantic, book-related, health-related and others – through a sequence of 'Letters to Margaret’. The letters are pure Hunter Davies: a feast of gossipy stream-of-consciousness that weaves together strands of confession, self-mockery, anecdote and touching remembrance of married happiness with Margaret.

Entertaining, informative, irreverent and indiscreet – and sometimes very touching – Letters to Margaret reveals an eighty-seven-year-old Hunter still raging against the dying of the light, and seeking consolation for life’s frustrations and disappointments (and the loneliness of widowerhood) through a sustained conversation with the woman he shared his life with for more than half a century.