Maisie Mosco

Maisie Mosco was born in Oldham, the eldest of three children. Her parents were of Latvian Jewish and Viennese Jewish descent, and both sides emigrated to England around the turn of the 20th century. A clever girl, she wanted to study medicine but her mother's illness meant that, as the eldest child, she had to leave school at the age of 14 to help in the family business. At the age of 18 she joined the ATS and ended the war helping to teach illiterate soldiers how to read. After the war, she edited a Manchester Jewish weekly newspaper, the Jewish Gazette, subsequently writing radio plays for the BBC, followed by 16 novels between 1979 and 1998.