A celebration of the drama and intensity of the mother-child relationship, Margaret Drabble's The Millstone won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1965. It is the Swinging Sixties, and Rosamund Stacey is young and inexperienced at a time when sexual liberation is well on its way. She conceals her ignorance beneath a show of independence, and becomes pregnant as a result of a one night stand.

Although single parenthood is still not socially acceptable, she chooses to have the baby rather than to seek an illegal abortion, and finds her life transformed by motherhood. Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood.

All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. 'Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine . . . what spirit is here' Sunday Times 'One of our foremost women writers' Guardian' The novelist who will have done for late twentieth-century London what Dickens did for Victorian London' The New York Times