A Chest of Drawings: The Uncollected Works of Marion Robson Briggs

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.