Born and living most of her life in London, Norma Clarke has had a varied career in teaching: in schools, colleges, adult education and, latterly, as a professor at Kingston University. While her two sons were small Norma wrote children’s fiction; later, when she taught literature at university, her work reflected her specialism in women’s writing in the eighteenth century, and her interest in Irish writers in London. Not Speaking is a family memoir about Norma’s Greek mother, English father and five siblings (including celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke) – but it is also a story about London, the city she loves.
