The Wheel of Fortune (190 page)

In contrast to these stories, Howatch’s novel
The Rich Are Different
is not a family saga. It tells a topical story about freewheeling cutthroat bankers in New York and London during the 1920s and 1930s, and is based on the life of Cleopatra, her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and her final battle with Caesar’s great-nephew Octavian. The sequel,
Sins of the Fathers
, describes what has happened to the survivors.

By the 1980s Howatch’s novels had sold millions of copies and had been translated into many languages. She had also returned to Europe. In 1975, she and her husband separated (they were never divorced) and she and Antonia lived in the Republic of Ireland for four years before moving to England in 1980. Eventually, they spent three years in Salisbury and then settled in London, where Howatch lived from 1987 until 2010.

While in Salisbury, the cathedral inspired Howatch to write the Starbridge series, six related novels about three very different Church of England clergymen and their families. The novels explored many ideas—religious, mystical, spiritual, ecclesiastical, and psychological—and focused with a new intensity on the subjects of obsessive love, addiction to power, the evil of violence, and the redemptive nature of forgiveness and love. One of the books,
Scandalous Risks
, won a literary prize, and the launch of the final novel took place at Lambeth Palace in the presence of the archbishop of Canterbury. Howatch used money from the Starbridge series to set up a lectureship at Cambridge University in theology and natural science, and is now a member of the Cambridge Guild of Benefactors as well as the Salisbury Cathedral Confraternity.

Her last three books, the St. Benet’s trilogy, form a spin-off from the Starbridge series and are set in London in the late twentieth century. They explore the borderlands where Christianity meets medicine, psychology, and the paranormal.

Howatch retired after publishing the final St. Benet’s novel,
The Heartbreaker
(2004), and now helps out with her family in Surrey.

Susan Howatch, age four, with a friend in 1944.

The first page of the penultimate draft of
The Dark Shore
, Howatch’s first published novel (printed in the United States in 1965). The final draft was typed.
The Dark Shore
was written in England, and Howatch sent for it after she immigrated to America in 1964.

Howatch in 1971, at the time of publication of her first international bestseller,
Penmarric
.

Howatch in 1977, around the time of publication of her bestseller
The Rich Are Different
. This photo was taken in Ireland, where she was living then.

Howatch in 1978 with her eight-year-old daughter, Antonia.

Howatch in the mid-1980s, at the time of publication of
The Wheel of Fortune
.

During a 1992 publicity tour, Howatch’s
Mystical Paths
took over the windows of a paperback shop in Oxford.

Howatch at a 1993 dinner party for fifty people at the Ritz Hotel London, given by Eddie Bell, then CEO and chairman of HarperCollins, to celebrate Howatch’s Starbridge novels. Bell is on the right; on the left is the Very Reverend Michael Mayne, who was then Dean of Westminster Abbey.

In 1999, Howatch was elected Fellow of King’s College London, from which she graduated with a law degree in 1961.

Four generations of Howatch’s family in 2006: Susan (standing, third from left), with her daughter Antonia (second from left), her mother (holding baby), and her three grandchildren.

Howatch in 2007 with her three best friends from high school—“the three sisters I never had,” says Howatch. They are celebrating the fifty-fifth anniversary of their first meeting. From left to right: Hazel, Susan, Gay, and Jan.