Jeanette Winterson

Books

Christmas Days

‘Packed with charm and beautifully illustrated, it’s a book that will solve your gift dilemmas and let you escape the less salubrious aspects of Christmas for a literary wonderland’ Stylist ‘Winterson’s winter tales unfailingly succeed in their endeavour to leave […]

The Gap of Time

‘A shining delight of a novel’ New York Times ‘Clever and beautiful…it soars’ Financial Times A baby girl is abandoned, banished from London to the storm-ravaged American city of New Bohemia. Her father has been driven mad by jealousy, her […]

The Daylight Gate

Good Friday 1612. Pendle Hill. A mysterious gathering of thirteen people is interrupted by a local magistrate. Is it a witches’ Sabbat? In Lancaster Castle two notorious witches await trial and certain death, while the beautiful and wealthy Alice Nutter […]

The Lion, Unicorn and Me

In this beautifully evocative retelling of the story of the very first Christmas, the humble donkey is chosen out of all the other animals, including the kingly lion and the proud unicorn. As his journey unfolds, he is touched by […]

About Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette was born in Manchester, UK, in 1959. Her mother was 17, and worked in a factory called Raffles, sewing overcoats for Marks and Spencer.

1 of 10 children herself, Ann couldn’t keep her new daughter and she was adopted by Jack and Constance Winterson who raised her in the nearby town of Accrington.

Constance Winterson, circa 1945

Jeanette’s new parents were Pentecostals – a religious evangelical group who read the read the Bible more or less literally, and believe in the Second Coming of Christ and the End of the World.

Jeanette was raised to be a missionary. Books were not allowed at home unless they were religious books. As Mrs Winterson pointed out, ‘The trouble with a book is that you never know what’s in it till it’s too late.’

There were only 6 books in the house, including the Bible, and Cruden’s Concordance to the Bible. But there was another book – an accident, a chance – Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. These stories of the Grail, of Lancelot and Guinevere, of Arthur and the Round Table became as central to Jeanette’s imagination as the Bible.

St Catherine’s College, Oxford

Jeanette attended a girls’ grammar school – Accrington High School For Girls, and later read English at St Catherine’s College Oxford.

In between, she was living in a Mini http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0122q55#), driving an ice-cream van, working in a funeral parlour and falling in love.

Her love affair with another girl at 16 meant that Jeanette had to leave home. Her mother asked her why she was still seeing this girl when she knew the consequences – homelessness. Jeanette replied – She makes me happy.

Mrs Winterson’s response was, ‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?’

She was a violent philosopher.

After Oxford Jeanette worked in the theatre for a while, at London’s The Roundhouse with the legendary Thelma Holt. ‘I did everything; wrote the programme notes, sold ice-cream, swept up, drove Thelma around, collated reviews and tried to sell advertising space to magazines like Time Out.’

In 1983, at a job interview at the newly formed Pandora Press (in the heyday of women’s presses in the UK), Jeanette started telling the boss interviewing her about her idea for a novel called Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

The boss was Philippa Brewster. She said, ‘If you write it the way you tell it, I’ll buy it.’

Jeanette didn’t get the job but she did write the novel and Oranges was published in 1985.

Mrs Winterson said, ‘It’s the first time I’ve had to order a book in a false name.’ 

I was lucky. The novel was a word-of-mouth success round the independent bookshops. Then it won a few prizes and got picked up by the press. Suddenly it wasn’t in the Jams and Marmalades sections anymore.

In those days you could live cheaply and I was able to write full-time, doing casual work to plug the gaps. By 1987, when The Passion was published, I was earning enough from my work and have done so ever since.

In 1994 Jeanette did two things; left London to live in the Cotswolds, where she still lives, and bought a derelict building in Spitalfields – London’s East End. At that time few people lived around the old fruit and veg market.

Over 2 years Jeanette rebuilt her building, and later put a shop back on the ground floor where it had been, on and off, since 1810. The shop Verde’s is still owned by Jeanette, and run by Harvey Cabaniss, who has made it into a successful business. Jeanette says, ‘It is beautiful to look at and it is as asset to the neighbourhood – especially now when the whole place is becoming a corporate playground.’

If you want to read about Jeanette and her life, buy the memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? 

In 2009 Jeanette met Susie Orbach, psychoanalyst and author of the classics, Fat is a Feminist Issue and Impossibility of Sex.

Susie had been separated from her partner of 34 years for 2 years, and Jeanette had also been 2years out of a break up with the theatre director Deborah Warner.

Susie and Jeanette began an unexpected and unlikely romance. They married in 2015.

Jeanette continues to live in the Cotswolds. Susie continues to live in London.

‘There are so many ways of managing love and life. Be creative!’

Jeanette grows a lot of her own food and is a partner in a small herd of rare breed sheep – the Lions of the Wold. 

‘I am a practical person. I like getting my hands dirty. I like nature, the earth, animals, living close to the land. If I am not reading, writing or sleeping I am usually outdoors whatever the weather.’

Jeanette has won numerous awards for her work and she is published in 18 countries.

She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester.