In the title story a disillusioned businessman on impulse decides to call on an office colleague he has always slightly despised, and finds himself having to re-evaluate his own relationships in the light of what he finds. In three stories that make up The Forbidden Word Catherine Cookson traces the changes in attitudes to marriage and pregnancy that have taken place in the last seventy years. In other stories a shy batchelor begins to make friends among the people who like himself have taken refuge from the Blitz in the London Underground, and a much put-upon young woman makes up her own mind for the first time in her life to escape from domestic exploitation. These and other stories in this new collection have all the qualities that those who have enjoyed Catherine Cookson's earlier books have grown to expect, and will also introduce them to a whole new gallery of real-life characters.