Marked for Life

In 1998, after Iris Wildthyme told Andrew that her life was a series of stories, Andrew mused that the story they could've been in at that moment may have been Marked for Life. (PROSE: Dog Days of Summer)

Behind the scenes
Marked for Life was the first published novel to feature Iris Wildthyme. It was also Paul Magrs' debut novel. There are several connections between Marked for Life and Magrs' later work.

In Marked for Life, Iris Margaret Wildthyme is a lesbian novelist who claims to have lived on Earth for 474 years and changed sex five times, "like ". Iris says that she spent some time with Marlene Dietrich in 1920s Berlin; Magrs' first two Doctor Who novels were named after films starring Dietrich and Iris is shown to be familiar with Dietrich in several stories in the Iris Wildthyme series, most prominently The Scarlet Shadow. Iris shows a love for Ride of the Valkyries in Marked for Life; this is also true of the time travelling Iris, as shown in Scream in Blue. At the end of Marked for Life, Iris transforms into a baby.

Darlington features in Marked for Life, the town would later become a prominent recurring location in the Iris Wildthyme series.

Magrs' next two novels - Does it Show? and Could it be Magic? - formed a trilogy with Marked for Life. Infant Iris reappeared in these novels.

The Blue Angel shows "equally valid" Obverse versions of the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner, and Compassion who live in Newton Aycliffe, the setting of the trilogy - although the town goes unnamed for all of Marked for Life and most of The Blue Angel. Just like Marked for Life, the Newton Aycliffe segments of The Blue Angel are set around Christmas. These segments also feature an Iris who is similar to the one in Marked for Life, but also has a broken double-decker bus that she keeps in the communal garden of her terrace. The final chapter of The Blue Angel has the Doctor and Iris walk nude through Newton Aycliffe in the middle of the night, just as Iris does with the characters Mark Kelly and Peggy in the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of Marked for Life.

The lesbian novelist Iris reappeared in the short story Hospitality in the 2010 anthology Iris: Abroad.