This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir

Jacqueline Winspear

Nov 2020 · RB Media · Narrated by Jacqueline Winspear

About this audiobook

The New York Times bestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs series offers a deeply personal memoir of her Kentish childhood and her family’s resilience in the face of war and privation.

After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather’s shellshock, her mother’s evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father’s torturous assignment to an explosives team during WWII; her parents’ years living with Romani Gypsies; and Jacqueline’s own childhood working on farms in rural Kent, capturing her ties to the land and her dream of being a writer at its very inception.

An eye-opening and heartfelt portrayal of a post-War England we rarely see, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing is the story of a childhood in the English countryside, of working-class indomitability and family secrets, of artistic inspiration and the price of memory.

About the author

Jacqueline Winspear was born in the county of Kent, England. She was educated at the University of London's Institute of Education. After graduation, she worked in academic publishing, in higher education, and in marketing communications in the UK. In 1990, she emigrated to the United States. She was working in business and as a personal/professional coach when she decided to try writing. Her first novel, Maisie Dobbs, won the Agatha Award for Best First novel, the Macavity Award for Best First Novel, and the Alex Award. She is the author of the Maisie Dobbs Mystery series. She has also won the Agatha Award for Best Novel, the inaugural Sue Feder/Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery, and the Bruce Alexander Award for Best Historical Mystery. Her title, A Dangerous Place, made The New York Times High Profile titles list. Journey to Munich, a book in the Maisie Dobbs Series, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2016.