Yvonne Roberts

Yvonne Roberts is an award-winning journalist who has worked in television and on many newspapers including The Sunday Times, the Observer and the Guardian.

She is the author of two non-fiction titles, MAN ENOUGH: MEN OF THIRTY-FIVE SPEAK OUT and MAD ABOUT WOMEN: CAN THERE EVER BE FAIR PLAY BETWEEN THE SEXES? She has also written three highly acclaimed novels, EVERY WOMAN DESERVES AN ADVENTURE, THE TROUBLE WITH SINGLE WOMEN and A HISTORY OF INSECTS.

SHAKE! will be published by Headine in summer 2004.

She has two daughters and lives in London.

Tom, 35, and Ingrid, aged 40, have been married for seven years and have a six-year-old child. Their relationship is in crisis. They want to make it work but simply don't know where to start.

Despite their best intentions, many couples find it increasingly difficult to stay together. And yet a substantial proportion of those couples who separate later regret splitting up and say they wish they had tried harder to mend the relationship. The question is: how? The vast majority refuse to go to counselling and, if they do go, they seek help on average six years too late.

In a unique experiment, Yvonne Roberts talks to Tom and Ingrid about their marriage over a 12-month period. Supported by relationship therapies Gillian Walton and family sociologist Penny Mansfield, she then tries to unpick the source of conflict between them and offer suggestions which might help put things right.

The result is an extraordinarily insightful anatomy of a marriage in distress, which will speak to anyone who has ever found themselves in a relationship in trouble.