Scripts
Film scripts I have recently written an original film script called ‘Orange Blossom’. It is about an old lady who is in hospital suffering from a haemorrhage. Before she dies, she needs to unburden herself and tell her only son about his true paternity. He is not only determined not to hear what his mother […]
Short Stories
The Idiot The car screeched to a stop as it rounded the corner to the hotel. Several small boys ran across the road and away down the hillside.‘Blast you!’ shouted Albert, leaning on his horn, ‘I might have hit one of you.’But the boys were already away. Running down the hill with the idiot boy […]
Film & Television
After giving birth to four children I started writing for television and got regular commissions to write half hour plays for Jackanory Playhouse. They were mostly a satirical take on conventional fairy stories. I was also commissioned to script a film adaptation of a children’s book ‘My Father Sun-Sun Johnson’. I have recently written an […]
Confessions of an Imperial Childhood
I am currently writing, ‘Confessions of an Imperial Childhood’. Born and brought up in British India in the 1940’s, with a war raging in Europe, loved and indulged by Indian servants, on the eve of Independence in 1947 my family and I had to leave forever. The book is about my subsequent experiences, first for […]
Blood for our Blood
‘Blood for our Blood’ is the true story of my mother’s cousin, a brilliant young surgeon, who was stabbed to death in the Lady Reading hospital in 1932 by a hospital orderly. Although the orderly was arrested and hanged with undue haste, the true reason for the murder was never discovered. Reading through the letters […]
Acting
After leaving school, I got a one-way ticket to England from Africa and immediately went to drama classes. At the first lesson the guy teaching said ‘are you going to take this professionally?’ And I said ‘yes’. My parents cut me off without the proverbial penny so I not only had to earn enough to […]
Drums on the Night Air
‘Drums on the Night Air’ is a memoir about a year spent in the newly independent Congo in 1963 and ‘64. Patrice Lumumba, the democratically elected Prime Minister, had recently been assassinated and the country was in chaos. The palm olive plantation where we were living was close to Stanleyville, the location of Conrad’s Heart […]
Adventures in the Congo
My husband was working for a multinational company in Leopoldville (Kinshasa). I’d never been anywhere before that where there was no law and order and such dire food shortages. There wasn’t even enough proper food to feed my baby. But then we got caught up in a war, which was terrifying. We both wanted to […]