Sea Lady（ISBN=9780156034265）

　　A pleasure to read ... utterly engrossing Guardian 'The Sea Lady proves [Drabble] remains one of the most thought-provoking and intellectually challenging writers around.' FT magazine Drabble excels at describing the minute detail of human behaviour...The Sea Lady is a potent tribute to lost dreams and harsh realities. The Independent An intelligent, full-bodied, big-hearted book Daily Mail

　　Humphrey Clark and Ailsa Kelman spent a summer together as children in Ornemouth, a town by the gray North Sea. Now, as they journey back to receive honorary degrees from a new university there--Humphrey on the train, Ailsa flying--they take stock of their lives, their careers, and their shared personal entanglements, romantic and otherwise. Humphrey is a successful marine biologist, happiest under water, but now retired; Ailsa, scholar and feminist, is celebrated for her pioneering studies of gender. Their mutual pasts unfold in an exquisite portrait of English social life in the latter half of the twentieth century.

　　Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and educated at Cambridge. She was awarded a CBE in 1980. Her many novels include The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989), The Gates of Ivory (1991), The Peppered Moth (2000), The Seven Sisters (2002) and The Red Queen (2004) all of which are published by Penguin. Margaret Drabble is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd and lives in London.