The Great Good Places

Margaret Drabble

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• eBook ISBN:
  9781837265381
• Year: 2026

'There aren't many chroniclers of our older years who do it so well, with such wit and realism and intelligence' TESSA HADLEY
'I have learned so much from Margaret Drabble's work' SALLY ROONEY
'One of Britain's most dazzling writers' New York Times
'Generous, perceptive and good-humoured' JOAN BAKEWELL
'One of the most thought-provoking and intellectually challenging writers around' Financial Times


We all age differently, some stoically, some angrily, some calmly, some with an unfailing spirit of adventure and an undimmed curiosity

From one of our finest literary voices, The Great Good Places is a luminous collection of essays, stories and memoir that traverses the experience of growing older and looking back on a life deeply lived.

Drawing on decades of reading, writing and observation, Margaret Drabble reflects on the complex business of ageing, the strange workings of memory – its wonders and its fragility – and on the 'great good places', the childhood homes, coastal sanctuaries and cherished libraries that shape who we are.

Rich with a lifetime's worth of insight and wisdom and peppered with Drabble's trademark lucidity and wit, The Great Good Places is an elegantly layered and profoundly moving meditation on time, place and the enduring power of recollection.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also by Margaret Drabble
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Retrospect: An Introduction
• Bryn: A Great Good Place
• The Writing Life
• The Three Photographers
• Filey
• The Avenue
• My Father
• Unfinished Portraits
• The Three Noble Yeomen
• The Art of Ageing
• The Isles of the Blessed
• The Leftovers
• My Mother
• A Day in the Life of a Weeping Woman
• Death
• Acknowledgements