Raised by a ‘scary’ father and a ‘terrible snob’ of a mother, the Tracy Beaker author has always understood the loneliness that marks so many young lives. But at 77, she’s never been happier

Archived version: https://archive.ph/HSmIX

‘I wanted to be No 1. But a certain JK Rowling came along’: Jacqueline Wilson on rivalry, censorship – and love

Interview by Simon Hattenstone

Raised by a ‘scary’ father and a ‘terrible snob’ of a mother, the Tracy Beaker author has always understood the loneliness that marks so many young lives. But at 77, she’s never been happier.

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    I half-expect it to be opened by a giant butler called Lurch with a forbidding: “You rang?” Instead Jaqueline Wilson, aged 77 and slight as a pipe cleaner, answers with a smile warm enough to heat her huge home.

    Her mother was a “terrible snob” who insisted that theirs was a better class of council estate and that she’d only ended up with Wilson’s father because all the good men were away fighting in the war.

    “A girl sitting there reading a book, looking gormless.” Her mother chose Wilson’s clothes till she left home and refused to let her wear jewellery.

    By then she’d already had a full life – leaving home at 17 to write for the girls’ magazine Jackie in Dundee, marrying at 19 (another dysfunctional relationship) and having her “wonderful” daughter Emma (a professor at Cambridge university) at 21.

    The living room and hall are crammed with all-sorts: artworks galore, ceramics, rubber toys (for her two dogs, Molly and Jackson), a telescope, a rocking horse, and on it goes.

    Even the table in front of me turns out to be a book – underneath the glass top are the loose pages from an ancient copy of Jane Eyre that has fallen to bits.