Josephine Cox was born in Blackburn, one of ten children. At the age of sixteen, Josephine met and married her husband Ken, and had two sons. When the boys started school, she decided to go to college and eventually gained a place at Cambridge University.

She was unable to take this up as it would have meant living away from home, but she went into teaching – and started to write her first full-length novel.

She won the ‘Superwoman of Great Britain’ Award, for which her family had secretly entered her, at the same time as her novel was accepted for publication.