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R.I.P. Patricia Robins, 95 (aka Claire Lorrimer, British author: "Sea Magic," 1946)
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leno...@yahoo.com
Dec 9, 2016, 4:18:55 PM12/9/16
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She's best known for her romances, I believe.
Aka Patricia Denise Robins Clark and Patricia Clark, she was a WWII veteran.
She wrote at least five books for children, from 1934 to 1966. (Yes, 1934!)
http://clairelorrimer.co.uk/
http://clairelorrimer.co.uk/about.html
(long obit)
First half:
...Born Patricia Robins, 1st Feb 1921, she was the second of three daughters of Denise Robins, the bestselling novelist also known as ‘the Queen of Romance’, author of 160 novels. Patricia’s own novels sold over 10 million copies with fans including Jilly Cooper. Indeed Patricia was part of a romance writing dynasty spanning generations: Denise Robins’ own mother was also a novelist whose writing rescued the family finances after she eloped with an officer and the family jewels.
Patricia’s father, Arthur Robins had been twice wounded in WW1, the second time seriously and was invalided out of the Army. It was whilst recovering in hospital that he had met and married Denise who had nursed him as a volunteer 'VAD' nurse.
In her younger years Patricia was always getting into trouble with wickedly tomboyish ‘good ideas’. She once blew up the self-contained electrical generator that powered her house by plugging in a toy telephone set to the electrical socket and freed the goldfish into the swimming pool. As a distraction, her mother – then writing for Mills & Boon - gave her a portable Remington typewriter and so aged 12, Patricia began writing.
She was sent to school in Switzerland where she learned to speak French and ski. In 1937 aged 16, Patricia wanted to learn German and was sent to study near Munich, where she was housed with a Jewish German family.
She once found herself stuck in a traffic jam just a few feet away from Adolf Hitler, as he sat in an open topped car. At the time, he didn’t mean that much to her, but nearly eighty years later she still vividly remembered ‘meeting Hitler’s cold blue eyes.’...
She made many friends, both German and English, and her group of pretty young girls were in constant demand as partners for German Luftwaffe Officers who had to attend formal dancing lessons.
On her return to England she decided on a career in journalism and with her mother’s help secured a job as a junior editor with Women's Illustrated magazine, at the rate of £3 10s a week. Her mother’s career was at its height with London buses carrying adverts proclaiming 'Robins for Romance’ and she was well on the way to selling 100 million copies.
As war approached, Patricia decided to 'do her bit' and joined the WAAF. After basic training she was assigned to 'Special Duties.' With her language skills, Claire had longed to be a spy and, at first, was unaware of the importance of her duties in the filter room, tracking incoming enemy aircraft with the fledgling British radar system: ‘it seemed like I was to spend the war playing tiddly winks’.
In fact, not only were the WAAFs replacing men for active duty, but Pat's job as a filterer was vitally important, skilled work. Aircraft positions had to be ascertained by a combination of maths and intuition. Pat was given a commission, promoted and served at various locations throughout the war. The RAF had discovered early on that women were generally better at this than men and tributes to their work came from the very top:
‘All the ascendancy of the Hurricanes and Spitfires would have been fruitless but for the system known as the Dowding system. But it is the pivotal role of the Filter room within the system which allowed commanders at all levels to manage the battle from a common picture of the air’, Sir Winston Churchill.
Pat’s work with the Dowding System was highly classified and like those at Bletchley Park, all participants were sworn to a secrecy that continued for thirty years after the end of the war.
Following declassification, Pat and her former colleagues campaigned to receive recognition for their secret work during the war. And in 2014, in time for the 75th commemorations of the Battle of Britain, Pat was a guest at honour at the opening of the Bentley Priory Museum in Stanmore where she was able to show Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, a new bronze statue of her wartime self and others in a replica filter room.
During breaks for bad weather in her top secret war work, Pat first started writing romance stories for magazines. She and her girlfriends used this extra income as petrol money to get to NAAFI dances...
https://www.sundaypost.com/in10/chat/award-winning-writer-claire-lorrimer-wanted-war-spy/
(interview from this year)
Excerpts:
...As a child, I took it for granted that Mother went into her study and worked until lunchtime.
“The house was always full of important people, authors and so on. I just thought it was a bit of a nuisance, as I had to put on my best dress!”
A tomboy who just wanted to play with her rabbits and ignore Noel Coward, Ian Fleming, Jon Pertwee and Ivor Novello as they came to visit, Claire’s life changed when her mother gave her a portable Remington typewriter of her own.
“She was incredible, writing more than 160 books, more than her good friend, Barbara Cartland,” says Claire, “and I still have the typewriter.
“What do I think of computers? I would love to shove mine down the loo!
“It comes with little boxes saying: ‘Do you want to do this?’, ‘Press this,’ and I don’t want to do any of those things.”
Another thing she didn’t want to do — at first, anyway — was her secret work to track enemy aircraft during the Second World War, the famous Dowding system.
Claire had wanted to be a proper spy and felt this might be a bit tame, but as even Winston Churchill would acknowledge, it was vital work and we wouldn’t have seen off Hitler without it.
“I was too young, but in retrospect, I feel proud of that time,” admits Claire, who recently showed Prince Charles and Camilla the filter room where she worked.
“By the end of it, when Churchill talked of ‘The few’, that was probably the proudest moment of my life.
“I really liked Charles and Camilla when I met them...
...Once told to put more sex in her novels by her American publishers, what does she think of today’s raunchy books?
“You should leave some things to the imagination,” she says. “Think of those Victorian days, when a gentlemen would look at piano legs and think of an attractive woman!”
Like me, she couldn’t think of anyone still writing at the age of 100. So does Claire envisage herself breaking the mould and still publishing new works after a century?
“I hope I’m not going to live to over 100!” is her surprising response.
“I don’t think that once you’ve lost your marbles, there’s much point in carrying on!”
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/award-winning-romantic-novelist-claire-lorrimer-dies-446231
(includes old photo)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Robins
(booklist, categorized)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.arts.books.childrens/patricia$20robins%7Csort:relevance/rec.arts.books.childrens/RmeRXnQEflY/8h7aUiBumMsJ
(birthday post, with partial booklist and book covers)
Lenona.
Aka Patricia Denise Robins Clark and Patricia Clark, she was a WWII veteran.
She wrote at least five books for children, from 1934 to 1966. (Yes, 1934!)
http://clairelorrimer.co.uk/
http://clairelorrimer.co.uk/about.html
(long obit)
First half:
...Born Patricia Robins, 1st Feb 1921, she was the second of three daughters of Denise Robins, the bestselling novelist also known as ‘the Queen of Romance’, author of 160 novels. Patricia’s own novels sold over 10 million copies with fans including Jilly Cooper. Indeed Patricia was part of a romance writing dynasty spanning generations: Denise Robins’ own mother was also a novelist whose writing rescued the family finances after she eloped with an officer and the family jewels.
Patricia’s father, Arthur Robins had been twice wounded in WW1, the second time seriously and was invalided out of the Army. It was whilst recovering in hospital that he had met and married Denise who had nursed him as a volunteer 'VAD' nurse.
In her younger years Patricia was always getting into trouble with wickedly tomboyish ‘good ideas’. She once blew up the self-contained electrical generator that powered her house by plugging in a toy telephone set to the electrical socket and freed the goldfish into the swimming pool. As a distraction, her mother – then writing for Mills & Boon - gave her a portable Remington typewriter and so aged 12, Patricia began writing.
She was sent to school in Switzerland where she learned to speak French and ski. In 1937 aged 16, Patricia wanted to learn German and was sent to study near Munich, where she was housed with a Jewish German family.
She once found herself stuck in a traffic jam just a few feet away from Adolf Hitler, as he sat in an open topped car. At the time, he didn’t mean that much to her, but nearly eighty years later she still vividly remembered ‘meeting Hitler’s cold blue eyes.’...
She made many friends, both German and English, and her group of pretty young girls were in constant demand as partners for German Luftwaffe Officers who had to attend formal dancing lessons.
On her return to England she decided on a career in journalism and with her mother’s help secured a job as a junior editor with Women's Illustrated magazine, at the rate of £3 10s a week. Her mother’s career was at its height with London buses carrying adverts proclaiming 'Robins for Romance’ and she was well on the way to selling 100 million copies.
As war approached, Patricia decided to 'do her bit' and joined the WAAF. After basic training she was assigned to 'Special Duties.' With her language skills, Claire had longed to be a spy and, at first, was unaware of the importance of her duties in the filter room, tracking incoming enemy aircraft with the fledgling British radar system: ‘it seemed like I was to spend the war playing tiddly winks’.
In fact, not only were the WAAFs replacing men for active duty, but Pat's job as a filterer was vitally important, skilled work. Aircraft positions had to be ascertained by a combination of maths and intuition. Pat was given a commission, promoted and served at various locations throughout the war. The RAF had discovered early on that women were generally better at this than men and tributes to their work came from the very top:
‘All the ascendancy of the Hurricanes and Spitfires would have been fruitless but for the system known as the Dowding system. But it is the pivotal role of the Filter room within the system which allowed commanders at all levels to manage the battle from a common picture of the air’, Sir Winston Churchill.
Pat’s work with the Dowding System was highly classified and like those at Bletchley Park, all participants were sworn to a secrecy that continued for thirty years after the end of the war.
Following declassification, Pat and her former colleagues campaigned to receive recognition for their secret work during the war. And in 2014, in time for the 75th commemorations of the Battle of Britain, Pat was a guest at honour at the opening of the Bentley Priory Museum in Stanmore where she was able to show Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, a new bronze statue of her wartime self and others in a replica filter room.
During breaks for bad weather in her top secret war work, Pat first started writing romance stories for magazines. She and her girlfriends used this extra income as petrol money to get to NAAFI dances...
https://www.sundaypost.com/in10/chat/award-winning-writer-claire-lorrimer-wanted-war-spy/
(interview from this year)
Excerpts:
...As a child, I took it for granted that Mother went into her study and worked until lunchtime.
“The house was always full of important people, authors and so on. I just thought it was a bit of a nuisance, as I had to put on my best dress!”
A tomboy who just wanted to play with her rabbits and ignore Noel Coward, Ian Fleming, Jon Pertwee and Ivor Novello as they came to visit, Claire’s life changed when her mother gave her a portable Remington typewriter of her own.
“She was incredible, writing more than 160 books, more than her good friend, Barbara Cartland,” says Claire, “and I still have the typewriter.
“What do I think of computers? I would love to shove mine down the loo!
“It comes with little boxes saying: ‘Do you want to do this?’, ‘Press this,’ and I don’t want to do any of those things.”
Another thing she didn’t want to do — at first, anyway — was her secret work to track enemy aircraft during the Second World War, the famous Dowding system.
Claire had wanted to be a proper spy and felt this might be a bit tame, but as even Winston Churchill would acknowledge, it was vital work and we wouldn’t have seen off Hitler without it.
“I was too young, but in retrospect, I feel proud of that time,” admits Claire, who recently showed Prince Charles and Camilla the filter room where she worked.
“By the end of it, when Churchill talked of ‘The few’, that was probably the proudest moment of my life.
“I really liked Charles and Camilla when I met them...
...Once told to put more sex in her novels by her American publishers, what does she think of today’s raunchy books?
“You should leave some things to the imagination,” she says. “Think of those Victorian days, when a gentlemen would look at piano legs and think of an attractive woman!”
Like me, she couldn’t think of anyone still writing at the age of 100. So does Claire envisage herself breaking the mould and still publishing new works after a century?
“I hope I’m not going to live to over 100!” is her surprising response.
“I don’t think that once you’ve lost your marbles, there’s much point in carrying on!”
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/award-winning-romantic-novelist-claire-lorrimer-dies-446231
(includes old photo)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Robins
(booklist, categorized)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.arts.books.childrens/patricia$20robins%7Csort:relevance/rec.arts.books.childrens/RmeRXnQEflY/8h7aUiBumMsJ
(birthday post, with partial booklist and book covers)
Lenona.
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