Dorothy Clewes, children's writer; Independent uk obit
Hyfler/Rosner
Children's writer
15 February 2003
Dorothy Mary Parkin, writer: born Nottingham 6 July 1907; married 1932
Winston Clewes (died 1957); died Seaford, East Sussex 8 February 2003.
Dorothy Clewes was a prolific writer, for children and for teenagers, whose
books enjoyed wide popularity in Britain and America for over half a
century. Her three Willie books illustrated by Edward Ardizzone, Upsidedown
Willie (1968), Special Branch Willie (1969) and Fire-Brigade Willie (1970)
were reissued with new illustrations by Caroline Crossland as The Adventures
of Willie in 1991, when the author was 84.
She was born and educated in Nottingham, and, worked until her marriage as a
secretary and a physician's dispenser. Her first novel, The Rivals of
Maidenhurst, was published when she was 18, in 1925. (Her father, the
architect Frank Parkin, was astonished when she received an advance of £100
from Nelson's.) It was while she was on a Mediterranean cruise from Tangier
to Tilbury that she met her future husband, Winston Clewes. She had her
portable typewriter; also on deck was another writer with his, and in 1932
they married, setting up in Beckenham, Kent.
I remember loads of plaster everywhere after a landmine in 1943, but life
had to go on, said Aunt Dorothy. She was a wonderful guide to painting,
literature and music. It was she who first introduced me to Kidnapped,
Treasure Island, Percy Westerman and Charles Dickens. It was she who
produced Mozart and Beethoven for me on HMV 78s and took me regularly to the
National Gallery to look at Augustus John's portrait of Madame Suggia
playing the cello, and to see Dame Myra Hess play the Mozart A minor piano
concerto with the RAF Orchestra, Boyd Neel conducting to the accompaniment
of the air-raid siren.
That same year she produced her second book, an adult novel, She Married a
Doctor. It was her version of the Nottingham family doctor, Dr Ironside.
After the Second World War her husband worked as a director of the food
company Crosse and Blackwell. The author of 11 novels himself (his
better-known brother Howard wrote the novels filmed as Green Grow the
Rushes, starring Richard Burton, 1951, and The Long Memory, with John Mills,
1952), he died in 1957, at the age of 51.
Dorothy, by then an established author, made Alfriston in Sussex her home.
Writing took over - more children's stories of smuggling, wild ponies,
summer-holiday detection and a blind man's dog. Her titles include The
Cottage in the Wild Wood (1945), The Stream in the Wild Wood (1946), The
Treasure in the Wild Wood (1947) and The Fair in the Wild Wood (1949); Henry
Hare's Boxing Match (1950), Henry Hare's Earthquake (1950), Henry Hare,
Painter and Decorator (1951) and Henry Hare and the Kidnapping of Selina
Squirrel (1951); The Adventure of the Scarlet Daffodil (1952), The Mystery
of the Blue Admiral (1954), Operation Smuggle (1964), Ginny's Boy (1973) and
Nothing to Declare (1976).
Her books for teenagers are thought by some to be the more successful,
notably Storm over Innish (1972).
Dorothy Clewes wrote over 70 books in more than 50 years and to the last
loved going to Silletts, her favourite Sussex "cottage restaurant".
Michael Parkin
