Forever Amber

The length of the book, the flash and roar and colour and excitement and general naughtiness, spring from the author’s passionate fascination. Quite simply, it entertains you in the most preposterous, flamboyant way * Atlantic *
Packed with melodramatic action, rich with historical background * New York Times *
Commercial fiction at its very best … This big, lush. historical novel is ready for the next generation of readers … It’s got the lot: passion, intrigue and adventure * The Bookseller *
A naughty great doorstep of a book published in 1944, did for Restoration England what Gone With The Wind had done for the Old South … The passage of time has meant that a book considered raunchy and risque on publication is now viewed as a classic * Daily Express *
The bodice-ripper of the year … Amber St Clare’s wanton progression through the court of Charles II is both saucy and moralistic - Amber loves > the only man she cannot have. Swords at the hip, hair to the shoulders, boots to the knee, Winsor’s cavaliers haven’t lost their rakish appeal * Independent *
Page-turning * Woman’s Own *
Bloody good read * New Woman *
Preposterously long and sumptuously naughty … Miss Winsor, if she felt so inclined, could justifiably claim to be the woman who invented the modern blockbuster. How subversive and fresh it seems, even to knowing twenty-first century eyes. It is the very opposite of dusty or coy… Who can resist a heroine who calls her enemies ‘stupid addle-pated boobies’ and ‘nasty old slubber-degullions’? Not me, that’s for sure * Observer *
No wonder the book caused trouble. Amber was a footballer’s wife before anyone had television; a serial fiancee before the engagement ring was born * Sunday Tribune *
I was awed by Amber’s courage, daring and strength. Re-reading the novel now is no disappointment. Like all bestsellers, Forever Amber revealed its age’s secret desires and myths. Amber St Clare is a heroine of enormous intelligence and resourcefulness. It may be time to recognise Forever Amber as a classic, and to appreciate Kathleen Winsor’s special brand of feminine genius * Guardian *

Kathleen Winsor was born in 1915 and raised in Berkeley, California. Aged 18, she made a list of her goals in life – one of which was to write a best-selling novel.

Forever Amber emerged after she became fascinated in the Restoration period her husband was studying. While he was away fighting in the Second World War, she wrote her novel. Despite being cut by four fifths, the published book was still nearly a thousand pages long. It was immediately banned in 14 US states for its heroine’s immorality (‘Adultery’s no a crime – it’s an amusement’), and, perhaps as a consequence, went on to become the biggest-selling novel of the 1940s.

Kathleen went on to write a number of other novels but none matched the staggering success – and notoriety – of her first. She died in 2003, having been married four times.

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