She was born as Maisie Gottlieb[1] in Oldham, northeast of Manchester, England, on 7 December 1924, the eldest of three children.
A clever girl, she wanted to study medicine though because of her mother's illness, and as the eldest child, she had to leave school at the age of 14 to help in the family business.
One of her stage plays, Happy Family, became the basis of a horror film Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly.
These include the 'Almonds and Raisins' series (Almonds & Raisins, Scattered Seed, Children's Children, Out of the Ashes, and New Beginnings), about a Jewish family who around 1900 fled anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire and emigrated to north Manchester in England.
In Almonds and Raisins[2] the newly arrived Sandberg family see a tram for the first time – a Manchester double-decker.