February 5, 1942

The British Council has this writeup on writer Susan Hill:

'Novelist, children's writer and playwright Susan (Elizabeth) Hill was born in Scarborough, England, on 5 February 1942.

'She was educated at Scarborough Convent School and at grammar school in Coventry, before reading English at King's College, London, graduating in 1963 and becoming a Fellow in 1978.

'Her first novel, The Enclosure, was published in 1961 when she was still a student. She worked as a freelance journalist between 1963 and 1968, publishing her third novel, Gentleman and Ladies, in 1968. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1972 and was a presenter of BBC Radio 4's 'Bookshelf' from 1986 to 1987. In 1996 she started her own publishing company, Long Barn Books, editing and publishing a quarterly literary journal, Books and Company, in 1998.

'She won a Somerset Maugham Award for I'm the King of the Castle (1970); the Whitbread Novel Award for The Bird of Night (1972); and the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Albatross (1971), a collection of short stories.

'Since then she has written many other novels ...[such as] Mrs de Winter (1999), a sequel to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. The Woman in Black (1983), a Victorian ghost story, was successfully adapted for stage and television and is one of Susan Hill's most commercial successes. Her recent novels include the series of Simon Serrailler crime novels and various further ghost stories.

'Susan Hill is also the author of two volumes of memoir, The Magic Apple Tree: A Country Year (1982), about her life in rural Oxfordshire during the 1970s, and Family (1989), in which she writes about her early life in Scarborough.
....

'Susan Hill is married to the Shakespeare scholar Professor Stanley Wells. She moved back to the sea, but this time to North Norfolk, in 2013. '

This synopsis soon needed updating, for we noticed this snippet:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/.../Husband-of-The-Woman-in-Black-author-Susan-Hill-exi...
Dec 8, 2013 - Susan Hill, the author of 'The Woman in Black', has left her husband of 38 years and is now living with a woman scriptwriter.

And this bit of news, for which the link itself may suffice:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/28/authors-angry-after-susan-hill-accuses-bookshop-of-anti-trump-censorship.

The question of the quality of Susan Hill's writing arises, and we noted this book review includes a plot summary of  her crime novel, The Various Haunts of Men, (2005):

'Susan Hill's career has developed from early literary success, to the lucrative writing of sequels to Rebecca, to this foray into the English crime thriller, the first of a trilogy of 'Simon Serrailler' novels. You know the kind of thing: Serrailler is the detective chief inspector of Lafferton, a shire town famous for its cathedral, its walking country and, since his arrival, for its serial murderers.'
...
'[After leaving a claustrophobic marriage, the heroine of this story feels liberated.]
In this dangerous and heady spirit, she meets her new ...[boss] for the first time in his mother's front room - she has been invited round for tea after choral society - and falls instantly in love. So much so, that every detail of that encounter becomes burned on her memory: 'the winter light through the leaded windows, the faint snore of one of the ginger cats asleep on the old sofa, the smell of hot tea, the sight of a pot of deep purple crocuses on the window ledge'. And, not least, the detective's long fingers curled round his steaming mug of Earl Grey. How could she resist?

'Thereafter Freya privately determines to do anything she can to attract his attention. She lurks in bushes outside his house ..and, most of all, she craves incident room briefings. Serrailler only has to mention words like embezzlement, or talk of 'wretched drug problems', ...and Freya fears that her 'legs would not hold her'.....

'Quickly, she realises that the way to her man's heart is to solve the pile of missing persons cases bedevilling the sleepy town. Somehow, these seem linked to the rise of New Age quackery in the village of Starly, so Freya, ...infiltrates the shady world of faith healers and psychic surgeons, acupuncturists and crystal-sellers....'

My readers can draw their own conclusions.