Beginner’s Pluck: Having a baby was catalyst for her writing

Maggie Armstrong's 'Old Romantics' is a is a medley of her experience and hearsay

Maggie Armstrong started writing fiction when a late aunt, writer Grace French, suggested she should write a story about a woman who wanted something.

A dreamy, lazy child, Maggie never read a book.

“I was hopeless at school,” she says, “but I was good at drawing, and I liked making up stories in my head.”