Margaret Susan Limb (born 1946) is a British writer and broadcaster.

Biography

Limb was born in

Hitchin Hitchin () is a market town in the North Hertfordshire Districts of England, district of Hertfordshire, England. The town dates from at least the 7th century. It lies in the valley of the River Hiz at the north-eastern end of the Chiltern Hills ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and one of the home counties. It borders Bedfordshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Essex to the east, Greater London to the ...

. Her family moved to

Cheltenham Cheltenham () is a historic spa town and borough adjacent to the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort following the discovery of mineral springs in 1716, and claims to be the mo ...

where her father worked at

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. Primar ...

. Educated at Pate's Grammar School in Cheltenham, she studied Elizabethan lyric poetry at

Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicen ...

and then trained in education. While her first published book was a biography of the Antarctic explorer Captain Lawrence Oates co-authored with Patrick Cordingley, later works have been predominantly novels – many of them for young adults – and comedies for radio and television, often with a literary or historical setting. Limb's debut novel '' Up the Garden Path'' was adapted as a

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

sitcom A sitcom (short for situation comedy or situational comedy) is a genre of comedy produced for radio and television, that centers on a recurring cast of character (arts), characters as they navigate humorous situations within a consistent settin ...

, and subsequently broadcast on television on ITV. For Radio 4, she has written a number of comedy series (which pay unusual attention to music and sound effects): ''The Wordsmiths at Gorsemere'' (a pastiche of the poet

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Balla ...

and his circle at Grasmere, two series), ''The Sit Crom'' (set in the

English Civil War The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...

), ''Four Joneses and a Jenkins'' (a reference to ''

Four Weddings and a Funeral ''Four Weddings and a Funeral'' is a 1994 British romantic comedy film directed by Mike Newell. It is the first of several films by screenwriter Richard Curtis to star Hugh Grant, and follows the adventures of Charles (Grant) and his circle of ...

''); '' Alison and Maud''; and most recently '' Gloomsbury'', "a rhapsody about bohemians", about members of the

Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group was a group of associated British writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century. Among the people involved in the group were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, a ...

and starring

Miriam Margolyes Miriam Margolyes ( ; born 18 May 1941) is a British and Australian actress. Known for her work as a character actor across film, television, and stage, she received the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mrs. Mingott in Marti ...

and Alison Steadman. Other works include ''Growing Pains'' (a documentary about ageing), '' Hilaire Belloc'', ''Cities'' (six programmes of literary anthology). and the introduction to her Newnham contemporary Valerie Grosvenor Myer's biography of Harriette Wilson. Under the name Dulcie Domum, Limb wrote ''Bad Housekeeping'', a humorous weekly column in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

s ''Weekend'' section between 1988 and 2001. Collections of the columns, a feminist novelist's diaries of a rural idyll gone wrong, were published in book form. The books, reissued by Solidus Press in 2002, are listed below. In 1989, as Dulcie Domum, she coined the term "bonkbuster", which is a play on "blockbuster" and the verb " to bonk", which is

British slang While some slang words and phrases are used throughout Britain (e.g. ''knackered'', meaning "exhausted"), others are restricted to smaller regions, even to small geographical areas. The nations of the United Kingdom, which are England, Scotland, W ...

for "to have

sexual intercourse Sexual intercourse (also coitus or copulation) is a sexual activity typically involving the insertion of the Erection, erect male Human penis, penis inside the female vagina and followed by Pelvic thrust, thrusting motions for sexual pleasure ...

". In 2002 the ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

'' recognized this

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

, defining it as "a type of popular novel characterized by frequent explicit sexual encounters between the characters." Limb commented on the honour, "It's an unexpected event. People keep telling me I've made my place in history, so I can die happily now."

Personal life

Limb was briefly married in 1970, being the first of the five wives of the historian, Professor

Roy Porter Roy Sydney Porter (31 December 1946 – 3 March 2002) was a British historian known for his work on the history of medicine. He retired in 2001 as the director of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine at University College London ...

. She was married to Jan Vriend, a Dutch classical musician, from 1985 to 1989. She lives on a remote organic farm near

Nailsworth Nailsworth is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Stroud District in Gloucestershire, England, lying in one of the Stroud Valleys in the Cotswolds, on the A46 road, south of Stroud and about north-east of Bristol and Bat ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

. In the

1989 European Parliament election The 1989 European Parliament election was a held on June Wednesday 15 to Sunday 18 across the 12 European Union member state in June 1989. It was the third European Parliament election but the first time that Spain and Portugal voted at the sam ...

she was the Green Party candidate for the Cotswolds constituency.

Works

*''Captain Oates, Soldier and Explorer'' (with Patrick Cordingley), Batsford, 1982, *'' Up the Garden Path'', Transworld, 1984, *''Love Forty'', Transworld, 1986, *''The Wordsmiths at Gorsemere'', Bantam, 1987, *''Chicken Mission'', Orchard, 1988, *''Tree Trouble'', Orchard, 1988, *''Love's Labours'', Transworld, 1989, *''Me Jane'', Orchard, 1989, *''Big Trouble'', Orchard, 1990, *''Dulcie Domum's Bad Housekeeping'', Fourth Estate (reissued by Solidus Press 2002), 1990, *''Sheep's Eyes and Hogwash'', Heinemann, 1992, *''More Bad Housekeeping'', Fourth Estate (reissued by Solidus Press 2002), 1992, *''Come Back, Grandma'', Red Fox, 1993, *''Dulcie Dishes the Dirt'', Fourth Estate (reissued by Solidus Press 2002), 1994, *''Passion Fruit'', Heinemann, 1995, *''Enlightenment'', Heinemann, 1997, *''Dulcie Goes Native'', Severn House (reissued by Solidus Press 2002), 1998, *''Big and Little'', Orchard, 1999, *''You At The Back Stop Laughing'', Beaver Books, 1999, *''China Lee'' (reissued as ''You're Amazing, Mr Jupiter''), Orchard, 2004, *''Girl, 15, Charming But Insane'', Bloomsbury, 2004, *''Girl (Nearly) 16: Absolute Torture'', Bloomsbury, 2005, *''Girl 16: Pants on Fire'', Bloomsbury, 2006, *''Ruby Rogers is a Waste of Space'', Bloomsbury, 2006, *''Ruby Rogers: Yeah Whatever...'', Bloomsbury, 2006, *''Girl, 15, Flirting for England'', Bloomsbury, 2007, *''Zoe and Chloe: On the Prowl'', Bloomsbury, 2007, *''Ruby Rogers is a Walking Legend'', Bloomsbury, 2007, *''Girl, 16, Five-Star Fiasco'', Bloomsbury, 2010 *''Chocolate SOS'', Bloomsbury, 2012

References

External links

A ''Bad Housekeeping'' column by Limb (as 'Dulcie Domum') in ''Guardian Weekend'', The Guardian, London, 31 March 2001
{{DEFAULTSORT:Limb, Sue 1946 births People educated at Pate's Grammar School Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge 21st-century British women writers Living people People from Bletchley