Before Lynn

Fourteen years into her marriage to a bad-tempered police officer, Sheila Cordwell paid a lone visit to a cinema in Brighton. There she found the plot of Ryan's Daughter shocking because it so closely mirrored the state she was in herself, trapped in a loveless marriage. With two young children and very little money, Sheila made a desperate decision and started a new life by the sea - at King's Lynn. Born in 1937 in the inter-war years, Sheila grew up before sex education, sociology and women's groups took the lid off unsatisfactory sex and its effects on marriage. Yet Sheila recounts her honeymoon night in Dorset, and sexless holidays in Devon with her husband, Alan. Here is a volume of autobiography that will strike a chord with many women who face a bad temper - and worse - in their marriage. Would you have the courage to do what Sheila did? Sheila is an artist, now seventy-two, and lives in Downham Market with her husband, Derek. Being arthritic, she bought a typewriter to tell her sons about her early life and also why they had to leave Tring. She is now working on her second book about her life, After Lynn.