A Corner of Paradise

In 1973, Brian Thompson kissed the impossibly glamorous Elizabeth North for the first time, in a busy supermarket car park along the Leeds ring road. This is the story of the unexpectedly joyous consequences ones to baffle many, not least themselves until her death, aged 78. Both were writers, though they came from opposite ends of the social register she an Admirals daughter, he the descendant of unruly Cockney eccentrics. She was by nature a solitary, while he was loud, incurably facetious and needy. From a tiny Harrogate terrace, to the deeply un-picturesque French farmhouse where they spent their summers, Brian and Liz battled their way to a heart-rending goodbye in an Oxford hospital ward. In many ways, their partnership was an exercise in asymmetry yet, despite the conflicts, they emerge in this deeply-felt memoir as a couple who were lucky enough to find their corner of paradise in one another.