After the Second World War, her family moved to Hampstead, London, and eventually settled in Shoreham, Kent, from where she attended Tonbridge Grammar School.
[5][4] Characterised by Publishers Weekly as "finely wrought and touching",[6] the novel is set in the 1950s and focuses on April, an eight-year-old girl from Streatham who is forced to move to Kent when her parents decide to run a tearoom.
[8][9] Peter Bradshaw commented on her "consistently beautiful writing"[10] and a review in The Times called the novel "an exceptional performance".
[11] Mackay has been described as "a skilled observer of the British class system and its discontents",[12] receiving praise for her short stories as well as her novels.
...This new collection of short stories (some drawn from previous publications) showcases her genius for building comedy from terseness and compression.
"[16] Mackay was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999,[17] and was also appointed Honorary Visiting Professor at Middlesex University.