Jacky Gillott's early death seems a great waste. Her five novels show considerable and unusual talents: a strong sense of the possibilities of structure, an outlandish humor, a capacity to deal with public events with the assurance with which she dealt with private life, and above all a willingness to commit herself strongly to her own moral and political principles. At the time of her suicide at age forty, her achievements had by no means matched her apparent abilities.

Jacky Gillott was born in Bromley, England, in 1939. In 1960, she took her B.A. at University College, London, where she studied English, and went on to work as a reporter on the Sheffield Telegraph, following a well established English theatrical and journalistic tradition of gaining experience in the provinces. In 1963 she began to establish her long career as a radio journalist, working for the BBC's Radio Newsreel . Later she...