Elaine Feinstein

Elaine Feinstein (born 24 October 1930, Bootle, Lancashire) is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator. Born in Bootle, Liverpool, Feinstein grew up in Leicester. Her father left school at 12 and had little time for books, but was a great storyteller. He ran a small factory making wooden furniture through the 1930s. She writes "An inner certainty of being loved and valued went a long way to create my own sense of resilience in later years spent in a world that felt altogether alien. I never altogether lost my childhood sense of being fortunate. Feinstein was sent to Wyggeston Grammar School by her mother "a school as good as Leicester could provide". She wrote poems from the age of 8, which were...