Margaret Drabble is one of Britain's most celebrated novelists and biographers, whose first novel was the Summer Bird Cage in 1963. She has won many literary awards over the years not least the honour of Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2008. A prestigious role in recent years was Editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Her latest book is called "The Pattern in the Carpet - a personal history with Jigsaws".
The Meet the Author event on 17th August, chaired with gentle pace and precision by Diana Hope, began with Margaret Drabble telling the story behind how her book about jigsaws came to be written. This was most entertaining (she has the talent as a stand up comedian!).
Visiting the National Gallery bookshop at Christmas time, she had the idea of writing a book which would be bought in museums as a gift. As a lover of jigsaws since childhood, she wanted to research its origins and write a history of this very British pastime to sell alongside mugs of Van Gogh sunflowers.
The research took her to the British Library, where she was able not only to see the first ever jigsaw made in 1766 - then called a dissected map - but she was also able to touch and assemble the pieces. She read about early jigsaw games in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.
An extremely funny episode she told was about a taxi driver who took her from the British Library to the Museum of London. Guessing that Ms Drabble was a tourist, doing the sights, he remarked "Doing London in a day?" to which she replied she was researching a book on jigsaws. He was interested and asked when the first one was made. He then suggested the art of mosaic was a type of jigsaw. Kevin the astute taxi driver, then became a key character in the book as she continued her research, driving the writer around London looking at mosaic architecture such as the Gherkin building.
"The Pattern in the Carpet" is also a memoir of her Aunt who would teach jigsaw making to Margaret as a young child, and who also loved jigsaws as an elderly lady in a nursing home. During Margaret's research, she found out that patients with semantic dementia can complete a jigsaw even if other mental faculties have diminished.
Jigsaws continue to be an important part of Ms Drabble's life and she has a photograph of a completed jigsaw of a favourite painting, which is now her laptop screen saver, much admired in the British Library. Be warned, adds our expert, a Jackson Pollock painting jigsaw is almost impossible!