Award-winning writer Joan Lingard has passed away at the age of 90.
Lingard wrote around 60 novels for children and adults during her lifetime, many of them set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
She was born in the back of a taxi on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile in 1932 and moved to Belfast when she was two, where she lived until she was 18.
Belfast and Northern Ireland had a strong influence on her later writing.
An avid reader, Lingard has used up most of the books in her local library and used Christmas and New Year’s to order new books to read.
Her mother encouraged her to write her own book, angry at how quickly she finished reading.
Her first novel, Liam’s Daughter, was published in 1963, and she published her first children’s novel on July 12, 1970.
It was the first in Kevin and Sadie’s best-selling series of novels set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
She attended schools regularly after training as a teacher at Moray House in Edinburgh.
Tug of war and between two worlds was inspired by the fact that the husband’s family had to flee Latvia during the Second World War.
Her latest novel, Trouble on Cable Street, was published in 2014.
She is survived by her husband, Martin Berkhan. her three daughters. Five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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