About me
I was born one hot July day in Barnes, West London, in 1929. I was the adored, and possibly spoilt, only child of a beautiful Irish actress and a Scottish doctor, whose adoring patients sometimes expressed their appreciation by lavishing me with presents, such as the seventeen rabbits I was given on one early birthday. Due possibly to the spoiling, I was sent to boarding school at the age of ten - a Catholic one.
In 1940 I, my mother, and my cousin Christopher (see my book 'Uprooted') were evacuated to Saskatoon in the Canadian prairies where I, at least, spent five happy years, hardly missing England at all. Only upon our return to my war-torn bankrupt country in 1945, did I feel there might be something shameful about having missed the war.
I refused to resume my formal education. I had my heart set on being an actress. Luckily for me, my mother insisted on my 'learning a trade' - shorthand-typing - before allowing me to go to drama school (RADA), after which I spent several years finding out the hard way (weekly rep) that I was not destined to become a star like my mother.
Meanwhile, my beloved dad died, and I had to get serious about earning a living. I became a very unwilling secretary and a freelance journalist. Luckily for me, in 1955, the BBC TV monopoly ended, and viewers got a second channel. Though, to my chagrin, nobody remembers this now, I was one of the first two women news reporters on British TV - ITN - years before the BBC caught up. I interviewed a lot of celebrities in my six years at ITN, and not just show-biz names (Charlie Chaplin, Maria Callas, Audrey Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Louis Armstrong, Agatha Christie among others) but news makers. We also pioneered vox pop street interviews.
News organisations always have down-time, and during some of mine I wrote a novel (till then I'd 'only' done plays and a few short stories). It was called The L-Shaped Room and it changed my life, becoming an unexpected best-seller and a successful movie starring the lovely Leslie Caron. Warned by mother, agent and publisher not to be a one-book author, I had my second novel, An End to Running, ready before my first came out, and from then on, I called myself a writer.
I've been writing ever since.
My first children's book was a take on the fable of King Midas. But before anything could come of that, I met my fate, in the irresistible form of Chaim, my beloved Israeli, on leave In England to study sculpture. To be brief, I followed him back to his kibbutz In Western Galilee, intending of course, to lure him out of there, as I didn't see myself as a daughter of toil on a farm. Nine years later! To my surprise (and my family and friends' dismay) I loved It there, becoming in succession a farmer (chickens, guavas and vines) and a teacher of English as a foreign language which I adored, and was good at. Acting and teaching feed into each other.
By the time we returned to Britain in 1971, we were married (in Cyprus) and had three lively little boys. I then had to get stuck in to earning. I wrote book after non-best-selling book, until I stumbled upon the idea of bringing a toy plastic American Indian to life in a magic cupboard. This was helped in no small part by my youngest son, Omri, for whom it started as a bedtime story! Even though by today's progressive rules I misnamed him, my little Native American has done very well for me, selling millions of copies, and being turned into a movie in 1995.
Our boys grew up, and Chaim sadly died, and I am now living with my kind middle son, Gillon, and his sweet wife, Olga - just outside Shepperton, UK and still hoping to have more books published. Some folks just don't know when to quit!
There was an old lady called Lynne
Who should have been shoved In the bin.
But she keeps on going,
Shows no signs of slowing -
And - no. It's not down to the gin.