Sue Read was a "difficult" child: strong-minded, strong-willed and given to temper tantrums. Shortly after her father's death, in order to give her mother a much-needed break, a child psychiatrist recommended that Sue should be sent to a mental hospital, but "only for a fortnight". She was 12 years old and remained there for five and a half years. Much of that time was spent in Ward 19, a locked ward containing the most severely disturbed and violent adult female patients. "Only For a Fortnight" is Sue Read's own account of her life. It portrays her childhood: her taciturn father; her loving but puzzled mother; her years in mental hospital; her gradual, but eventually total, release from institutional life; her marriage; the births of two children and the traumatic effect that the death of her second child had on her. Sue Read is now 34 and lives with her husband and children in Stevenage.