‘Children Keep Author Writing’ (Sheffield Telegraph, 10 April 1951)

Kathleen Fidler (image by courtesy of her niece)

The children invited must have felt special.  I imagine them wearing their Sunday best and being carefully checked by their mothers before they left home, probably with family escort.  They would have taken with them the invitation – formal, white pasteboard with the city coat of arms and a rather nice font.

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Here are the words of the invitation (which is filed today in the local history section of the library) in case you cannot read it clearly from the image.

The Chairman and Members of the Libraries, Art Galleries and Museums Committee request the pleasure of the company of …………. at a meeting of members of the Hillsborough Junior Library which is to be addressed by Miss Kathleen Fidler, the well-known author and broadcaster of “Brydon” and “Mr Simster” stories, on Monday, 9th April, 1951, at 6.30pm.

The Lady Mayoress of Sheffield (Mrs Keeble Hawson) will preside.

Oh yes, the children would have been on their best behaviour in front of a famous author, the Lady Mayoress, the chairman of the Libraries Committee, the City Librarian and the local press.

The Sheffield Telegraph reported the visit the day after.  There were apparently 80 boys and girls present (a number that suggests very few refused the invitation).  Girls outnumbered boys three to one, and they were all ‘hand-picked for their receptivity’ by the librarians, the Telegraph remarked rather repressively.  Flowers were of course presented to the Lady Mayoress and Kathleen Fidler, by 13 year-old Anne Beresford and nine year-old Paula Mercer respectively.  Miss Fidler read for about 40 minutes from the ‘domestic adventures of the famous Brydon family and a charming fairy story’.  These were evidently much appreciated as, afterwards, most of the children besieged Miss Fidler with requests for autographs (this was the day of autograph books), and she ‘painstakingly signed every one.  It took 20 minutes’, said the Telegraph, hence the title above.

The Brydons Stick at Nothing by Kathleen Fidler

The Telegraph explained that the visit to Sheffield had a ‘pronounced family flavour’.  Kathleen Fidler brought along to Sheffield her husband, James Goldie, and her 79 year-old father, Francis Fidler, who lived in Sheffield as a boy.  They were met by her sister, who was married to Frank Pinion, the headmaster of local Woodhouse Grammar School, and a cousin who lived in Woodseats.

All in all, this visit seems to have been treated rather singularly.  Sheffield Libraries ran events often – exhibitions, story-tellings, lectures, discussion groups etc – and Miss Fidler was not by any means the only author to feature.  But why did the Lady Mayoress and various Council dignitaries attend?  Perhaps it was to promote the Council’s library services, or was it the Fidler family connection, or just someone who knew someone?  (It was by the way a busy time for the Lady Mayoress.  The next Monday she and her husband played host at the Town Hall to Winston and Clementine Churchill.  Winston was Leader of the Opposition, but became Prime Minister a few months later, in October 1951.  That visit made the front page of the Telegraph.)  At all events Kathleen Fidler’s visit to Sheffield is perhaps not that different from today’s book-selling strategies: although they may travel faster and do more literary festivals, authors still do readings and sign things.

Kathleen Fidler was a popular children’s author of the period.  Sixty years afterwards, she was remembered by one of the Reading Sheffield interviewees, Sheila Edwards:

…I joined two libraries because I enjoyed reading so much, I had a subscription to Boots library and I went to the Central Library in town … and I just read masses of books; I can’t remember what they all were now but, there were one or two I remember: Noel Streatfeild- I think she wrote books about ballet, Kathleen Fidler, another one called Malcolm but I can’t just remember what his surname was now…those were the main ones I remember…

Kathleen Fidler was born in England in 1899, trained as a teacher and rose to be a headmistress.  After marrying in 1930, she moved to Scotland and eventually settled in Lasswade, a village near Edinburgh, where, just like Sheffield, she often read to children in the local library.  Like many others, she started her writing career with stories for her own children.  In all she produced about 80 books (more than one a year), including series about two families, the Brydons and the Deans, historical novels like The Desperate Journey (1964) and animal stories such as Haki the Shetland Pony (1968).   Books from Scotland notes: ‘Her work has been praised for the depth and detail of research into the background of her stories.’

Some stories were broadcast on BBC Radio Children’s Hour.  For example, in 1946 there was  ‘The Mysterious Mr. Simister: a school mystery play in three parts by Kathleen Fidler’.  (The cast list includes Gordon Jackson, then in his early 20s but later to become famous as Mr Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs.)  Kathleen Fidler contributed to the much-loved BBC children’s programme, Jackanory, and wrote many schools programmes for the BBC and was ‘one of the pioneers of BBC Schools Broadcasting’.

After her death in 1980, the Kathleen Fidler Award was instituted for children’s literature, for previously unpublished authors of novels for children aged 8 to 12, alongside the prestigious Carnegie and Kate Greenaway prizes.  I haven’t been able to discover more than a couple of the winners: in 1984 Janet Collins for her novel, Barty; and Cathy MacPhail for Run, Zan, Run in 1994.  The award closed in 2002.

Kathleen Fidler is clearly less well-known today than back in 1951, although some of her books are still available, as reprints, second-hand copies or e-books.  Why this fading?  A novel like The Desperate Journey, about twins, Kirsty and David, who lose their home through the notorious 18th century Highland Clearances, remains enjoyable. If there is not much subtlety, the characters are nevertheless vivid and there is a very strong sense of place and an exciting storyline.  But of course, while historical and animal stories are always popular, she wrote no space saga or fantasy novels about attractive vampires.

the Brydons go canoeing by Kathleen Fidler

Her contemporary novels about the Deans and the Brydons may just be too dated, the Brydons for example being about a family evacuated to the countryside during WWII. There are at least nineteen stories about them.  The Brydons Stick at Nothing, a pacey story about a series of local burglaries, is presumably fairly typical.  The Brydons’ world – the Lancashire countryside – is conventional, comfortable and secure (and it is heartening that the children firmly reject the suggestion of adults that local working-class children may be responsible for the burglaries).  The children are, in the classic way, ‘nice’, middle-class and largely free from adult supervision.  The Brydon girls appear confident but tend to do what their protective brothers tell them.  To today’s children the lives of the Brydons and their friends must seem as far from their own lives as the lives of Victorian children.

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Kathleen Fidler was clearly a great success on the day of her visit to Hillsborough Library.  I wonder whether she had a lasting influence on the children who met her.  A book read in childhood can seize the imagination and change everything afterwards forever.

Have you read Kathleen Fidler’s books?  Do you remember her visit to Sheffield, or any similar events in local libraries? Please let us know.

By Val Hewson

Access Sheila Edwards’ transcript and audio here.

Dorothy Latham’s Reading Journey

Dorothy was born in 1931 in Catcliffe, between Rotherham and Sheffield, and grew up there, attending Woodhouse Grammar School.  Dorothy became a civil servant, working in careers guidance and employment.  She married Derek, who ran his own plumbing and heating business and they had two sons.

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Even now I’m always reading, you know…

Always a passionate reader, Dorothy talked of reading in bed from childhood, on the bus to and from work and in the evenings while her husband pursued practical hobbies like joinery and repairing machinery.

I’d often, to be quite honest, read on the buses.  I mean you had a long journey sometimes…I still try half an hour in the evenings before I go to sleep in bed. It relaxes me.

But she was conscious of her reading tastes and interests changing over time. ‘I think you alter as you get older on what you like.’

Dorothy’s reading habit was inherited from her mother.  She recalled being told Rupert the Bear bedtime stories and then reading for herself: ‘…once I could read, you know, I just didn’t put them down’.  This included, you sense, reading to cope with the disruption of the Second World War, when Dorothy remembered standing in her garden and watching Sheffield being bombed in the middle of the night.

The first book Dorothy really loved was the ever-popular Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery.

My absolute passion was Anne of Green Gables…I adored all the series. If I’d have had a daughter – which I didn’t. I had two sons – she would have been called Anne…I adored it, and I – I was just absorbed with it.

Within her family, books seemed to be a means of both enjoyment and self-improvement.  ‘You know my mother was always encouraging me…in that kind of life.’  Dorothy was unusual in her village in winning a scholarship to Woodhouse Grammar School.  There she was introduced, as children usually are, to Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and other classics.  ‘It was always the English that I was good at.’  Meanwhile the war made buying books and much else difficult, and so Dorothy and her mother often borrowed from the private Red Circle library: ‘…I was brought up in an ordinary household but somehow I got the best’.

As she grew older, the reading habit grew stronger.  Dorothy’s father was very protective of her, and she spent many evenings reading at home rather than going out.

It may sound strange but I was encouraged in…erm…I mean I never went out. I suppose I was too young in the war but I’d meet some people and they were out dancing and doing all that. Well my father wouldn’t have, he – he was very protective. You could say I missed it really.

Marriage did not stop Dorothy’s reading: ‘…when I got married I had to limit myself to what I did but I’ve always, always loved the reading’.  Her husband and mother-in-law were not much interested in books (indeed she thinks her husband was dyslexic), but her father-in-law was, to borrow a phrase from Anne of Green Gables, a ‘kindred spirit’.  He told her, for example, about finding a ‘wonderful book’ which she must read: Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.

And you know, I’d discuss books with him and all sorts and you see my eldest son, his first memory of being taken to a library was being taken by his grandpa.

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Dorothy sometimes made compromises between reading and looking after home and family:

…you know I thought I could just be a bit of a monkey and sit down and read and not get on with what I was doing. I mean my husband never bothered, I could have done what I wanted really. I mean you have to look after the children and things and I tried to look after my parents. So you’ve got to fit things in, haven’t you?’

 

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Warwick Deeping’s Sorrell and Son was an example: ‘Oh, yes! Oh I thought that was fantastic. I found it…it absorbed me, yes it did. I didn’t want to put it down.’

By now L M Montgomery had been replaced in Dorothy’s favour by Emily and Charlotte Bronte.  She liked Jane Eyre but her favourite was Wuthering Heights. ‘Soooo romantic and now I just think: “oh, not so much”.’  The past was always interesting.  Dorothy liked history and so looked for classics like Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope and also lighter, historical novels by writers like Georgette Heyer, Margaret Irwin, Baroness Orczy and Jean Plaidy.  But her reading was very wide.  She happily quoted: Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, Margaret Mitchell, Catherine Cookson, Rosamund Pilcher, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, P D James, Ellis Peters, Edgar Wallace, Anthony Hope, Nicholas Monsarrat, Dennis Wheatley, Betty Neels, Arnold Bennett, A J Cronin, Nevil Shute, J B Priestley, Somerset Maugham and Howard Spring.

When it came to books vs television and/or film, Dorothy preferred books:

If I’ve read a book and it’s made into a film, I’m disappointed because your mind works with the book and when I read them, they don’t, they’re not the same…I’ve always felt let down… [Filmmakers] don’t go into the detail and I don’t think they realise that when you read your brain is working out and in your brain visually you are imagining the positions and the circumstances…

(Not that Dorothy disliked all adaptations: Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice and The Forsyte Saga all gave her a lot of enjoyment.)

Dorothy’s sight, hearing and mobility deteriorated as she got older and over time she relied more and more on the home library service and audiobooks.  ‘I’ve been very grateful for that, very grateful.’  She let others choose her books but she would give feedback: ‘…sometimes I say “oh I did like that” and then they send me a lot, you know. Because I’m, I’m very choosey and they know exactly what I like’.  This did get her into trouble once when a friend picked up a book from the library, which turned out to be more explicit than she usually read.  ‘Phft do you like this stuff then?’ he said.  Dorothy had to explain how the book had been chosen without her looking at it.  Sadly she couldn’t recall the title or author, but she remembered it as ‘very, very embarrassing’.

This reliance on libraries throughout her life gave Dorothy strong views about their value.

‘I was so annoyed when I came here that they sold the library… I thought it was disgusting…and they said “Well, you can go into town” and I thought I’d come here because I was disabled and I thought no library! I thought that was a shame. I hope we don’t lose the libraries.’

After years and years of reading, did Dorothy re-read the favourite books of her youth?

I don’t know about Anne of Green Gables. I absolutely was besotted with it…and I mean now I don’t want to read it. Also I though Wuthering Heights was so romantic, I don’t anymore now, I don’t know, I think it’s a bit over the top.  It doesn’t seem quite real.  But as young person I was telling everyone that’s my favourite book. I must have been about 20, I don’t know. Yeah, that was my favourite and I don’t think it is anymore. I think you alter as you get older on what you like.

Asked if reading changed her life, Dorothy agreed.

…as I’ve got disabled, I have to say I’d be quite lost without my books because I have to fight against getting depressed. I’m not but…because of how I am, I’m not one for just needlessly sitting about like this.  I like to be occupied…I’ve switched off from what I can’t do because I’m filling my life with things that I can and that may sound strange but it’s no good…I’ve reached a good age.  I’m 80 in a month and, and I think “well, I’ve done quite well really”.

 

By Val Hewson

Access Dorothy’s transcript and audio here