Désirée's Baby: From their pens to your ears, genius in every story

Enoch Arnold Bennett was born on the 27th May 1867 in Hanley, one of the six towns that formed the Potteries and that later joined together to become Stoke-On-Trent.

After passing entrance examinations for Cambridge University his solicitor father instead decided that he should work for him, unpaid, in his thriving office. In the evenings the young Bennett wrote or studied and one skill he developed was Pitman's shorthand which gave him entrance to a position as a clerk at a solicitor's off...