My mother, Marion Robson Briggs (1936-2015) was a dress designer, painter and sculptor, and a compulsive sketcher of the world around her. In life, her creativity seemed unremarkable to me: it was just who she was. She lived for over thirty years in Rottingdean, and her ashes are buried in the rose garden of St. Margaret’s church.
When I started writing a book about my other parent, I found myself looking at my mother’s artwork, packed away gathering dust since her death, with new eyes. A Chest of Drawings is an exploration of Marion Robson Briggs as an artist, and also as a character in a book about someone else.
“The Scientist Who Wasn’t There: a true story of staggering deception” won the Bridport Prize for memoir in 2023 and will be published by Ithaka Press on 5th June 2025.
The Scientist Who Wasn't There
What would you do to find out the truth about someone you love? A forensic, propulsive book about the line between fact and fiction.
Renowned scientist Professor Michael Briggs was many things: - A Space expert at NASA - An adviser to the World Health Organisation - A successful Big Pharma executive
In this hypnotic true story of academic glory, deception and a trail of destroyed lives, the daughter of scientist Michael Briggs - an internationally acclaimed academic whose compromised research had devastating consequences - investigates the mystery of her father.
A scandal broke out in 1986 when research he conducted was revealed to be compromised. Patients were also claiming that a pregnancy test he pioneered had caused devastating birth defects. Soon after his fall from grace, Briggs was dead, struck down by a mystery illness in a foreign country.
Briggs left behind a long list of publications, patents, and inventions. But he also left behind hundreds of people who believe they are victims of his negligence and who are still fighting for justice to this day.
And he left someone else: his daughter, Joanne. After decades of wondering who her father really was, Joanne decided to investigate for herself. In hypnotic prose, she uncovers the secret that shaped her father's entire life and made his story more fantastic than any science fiction. As she discovered, Briggs's greatest invention was himself.
Publisher: Bonnier Books Ltd ISBN: 9781804189726
To listen to an excerpt, click below...
Reviews
'A page-turner with a mystery to solve, and a meditation on what it means for a child to know their parents' Cathy Rentzenbrink
An exceptional, entirely unpredictable, real-life thriller, this is not about death but life: how it is lived and perceived, what is real and what is not. Told from the inside, where it hurts the most.In today's world, in the face of AI, fake news, the abandonment of fact checking and deep fake identities, Joanne, lawyer turned truth-sleuth, keeps you hooked throughout anticipating the next revelation as she crosses the boundaries of belief. Far, far stranger than fiction and far more salutary. Michael Mansfield author of 'The Power In The People'
Contact
The Grange Gallery, Rottingdean, East Sussex, BN2 7HA
