Margaret Thomson Davis was born in Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland on May 24, 1926. She left school and began a lifelong practice of observational writing. While writing stories and sketches for magazines, she worked in factories and nurseries. She wrote more than 35 novels during her lifetime including The Breadmakers, A Baby Might Be Crying, A Sort of Peace, The Dark Side of Pleasure, In Light and Dark, Goodmans of Glassford Street, and the Clydesiders trilogy. She also wrote two autobiographies entitled Making of a Novelist and Write from the Heart. She died on June 14, 2016 at the age of 90.