<\/p>\n
When I was young, I knew nothing about the lives of the writers I read so avidly; Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, Kate Seredy (does anyone else remember The Good Master?) <\/i>\u00a0Noel Streatfield, Pamela Brown\u2026 They were all remote mysterious beings to me.\u00a0 There were no websites, no blogs, no school visits in those days, just books ranged austerely on library shelves, usually with \u00a0the dust jacket which might at least had managed an author photograph, lacking.<\/p>\n
Only Enid Blyton gave us a carefully edited glimpse into her happy life in Green Hedges with Gillian and Imogen,\u00a0 except that I never really believed in her existence. So many books came out in her name, I felt, even as a child, that she must be a committee. Anyway she was never a favourite.<\/p>\n
As for writing to one of my idols, it just would never have occurred to me. If I had done, I guess I would have tangled myself up in Dear Miss So-and-so<\/i>, and hoping they would forgive me<\/i> etc etc.<\/p>\n
How different it all is now. Even J.K. Rowling can be looked up on her website \u2013 fans can at least get the illusion they\u2019re in contact with her. Lesser mortals visit schools, hold workshops, answer emails. If a young reader contacts me, they\u2019re more likely to start the letter with \u2018Hi Frances\u2019 than\u00a0 \u2018Dear Miss Thomas.\u2019\u00a0 And good for them \u2013 as long as they spell my name correctly, (Francis is a bloke) I don\u2019t mind at all.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s all to the good that\u00a0 writers and the people they write for can come together in this way.\u00a0 That a child who might one day want to write can actually meet, and ask questions of,\u00a0 the adults who manage to do it.<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t think I\u00a0 could ever shake off my hero-worshipping attitude. Some years ago, meeting Judith Kerr at a party, I could only gush vacuously about how much we loved Mog\u00a0 – and that wasn\u2019t even my generation of readers, but my daughters\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Nowadays,\u00a0 I like to know all about the writers I read; I\u2019m very happy to tuck myself into a biography of Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, George Eliot, though what I know, or don\u2019t know doesn\u2019t usually affect my enjoyment of their books \u2013 it\u2019s a rather low-grade curiosity, I feel. As an adult, I don\u2019t especially want to meet other writers, unless I\u2019m going to like them as human beings. But it\u2019s different for children ; it\u2019s nice for them to be close to the magic, even if they take it for granted, don\u2019t even realise it\u2019s magic.<\/p>\n
In my adult life, I had two encounters with the writers of my childhood. One, a good review of one of my books from Geoffrey Trease, was one of the proudest moments of my life \u2013 I wanted to dance and sing around the living room, Geoffrey Trease liked my book! Geoffrey Trease liked my book!\u00a0 <\/i>Of course I had to write to him and thank him. But I tore up several attempts; I couldn\u2019t get the tone right, couldn\u2019t say, without gushing, just how extraordinary it was for someone I\u2019d idolised as a child \u2013 and whose books were one of the reasons I wanted to write myself \u2013 to encounter me as an adult and award me this accolade. In the end, I think I wrote rather a dull little letter \u2013 Dear Mr Trease, Forgive me but\u2026<\/i> or something. Well, I was never going to write Hi, Geoffrey,<\/i> was I?<\/p>\n
And the other occasion was even stranger. At a writers\u2019 event, someone whom I\u2019d read as a child \u2013 not an idol, luckily, was\u00a0 overcome by the hospitality and threw up over my shoes.<\/p>\n
Visible or Invisible? Does it matter? Not really. Except that things are different now; we\u2019ll never go back to the old ways, and really, remembering those scary formalities, those inexplicable social rules, it\u2019s probably a good thing.\u00a0\u00a0 Though being sick on someone\u2019s shoes is probably taking informality a bit too far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was young, I knew nothing about the lives of the writers I read so avidly; Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, Kate Seredy (does anyone else remember The Good Master?) \u00a0Noel Streatfield, Pamela Brown\u2026 They were all remote mysterious beings to me.\u00a0 There were no websites, no blogs, no school visits in those days, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}