How true love led Helen Forrester to leave Mersey for Indian exile

Robert Bhatia reveals in new biography how his mother, the author of Twopence to Cross the Mersey, agonised over leaving Liverpool

Certain books gain a reputation for changing lives and Helen Forrester’s 1974 autobiographical novel, Twopence to Cross the Mersey, is regularly cited as a big influence – particularly by women. The columnist and writer Caitlin Moran once chose it as the book by a female author that had most affected her, saying it was responsible for making her “start to educate myself about the history of England”.

Now, for the first time, the unconventional love story that took one of Liverpool’s best-loved daughters away from the banks of the Mersey is to be told in a biography that draws on Forrester’s accounts of her courtship and marriage.

Related: Helen Forrester, bestselling memoirist, dies aged 92

Continue reading...