Now there are countless academics across the literary world, who at this very moment, are charting the development of their favourite writer.
It will range from pondering on the influences and the impact of childhood experiences to describing the changes in the style of writing, along with a deep analysis of how one manuscript was revised and re-revised.
All of which makes fascinating reading and adds to our understanding, but it is so much more fun when the writer is your mum.
Not that mother is well known or wrote a lot.
As far as we know her published plays amounted to just a handful, her one novel was never finished, and there is no record of any of her works listed with either the British Museum or the English Theatre Guild.
Added to which what has survived in draft form is limited.
But there is enough to see just how mum’s writing changed between when she began and her work twenty or so years afterwards.
In particular there is one piece that she started in the April of 1942 as a letter home from servicemen to his wife.
It is a slightly humorous letter shot through with wartime slang and written in a colloquial style and amounted to just 150 words.
There may have been more but if there was it was lost or discarded.
In its place is a much longer version which runs to 38 pages and which has become more serious and while it leans heavily on wartime expressions, the earlier light hearted mood has gone.
It explores service life with all its petty irritations and the way the war was transforming lives and overturning accepted attitudes to the home and the role of married women.
And along with all this big stuff there are tiny glimpses of style.
The first draft began with “My dearest wife, I ham sitting ‘ere, with nothink to do but chew my pencil, nip outside and nip back again. So I thort I mite as well write to you”.
But was changed to “My dear wife, I said that I would write you a postcard sometime this week and here I am writing you a long letter. I am sitting here with the rest of the twerps, with nothing to do but chew my pencil.”
Of course my reflection’s on mother’s work will never become a PhD or be spoken highly of in academic circles, but it will bring me closer to her.
I was too young at the time to appreciate what she was writing or just how much of herself she poured into her work.
So I shall continue with the task and in the process tell everyone I can.
Location; 1942-1966
Pictures; mother at the typewriter, RAF Swinderbury, 1941, opening page of Sincerly Yours, 1942, and In the Mood, 1961.
All of which makes fascinating reading and adds to our understanding, but it is so much more fun when the writer is your mum.
Not that mother is well known or wrote a lot.
As far as we know her published plays amounted to just a handful, her one novel was never finished, and there is no record of any of her works listed with either the British Museum or the English Theatre Guild.
But there is enough to see just how mum’s writing changed between when she began and her work twenty or so years afterwards.
In particular there is one piece that she started in the April of 1942 as a letter home from servicemen to his wife.
It is a slightly humorous letter shot through with wartime slang and written in a colloquial style and amounted to just 150 words.
There may have been more but if there was it was lost or discarded.
It explores service life with all its petty irritations and the way the war was transforming lives and overturning accepted attitudes to the home and the role of married women.
And along with all this big stuff there are tiny glimpses of style.
The first draft began with “My dearest wife, I ham sitting ‘ere, with nothink to do but chew my pencil, nip outside and nip back again. So I thort I mite as well write to you”.
Of course my reflection’s on mother’s work will never become a PhD or be spoken highly of in academic circles, but it will bring me closer to her.
I was too young at the time to appreciate what she was writing or just how much of herself she poured into her work.
So I shall continue with the task and in the process tell everyone I can.
Location; 1942-1966
Pictures; mother at the typewriter, RAF Swinderbury, 1941, opening page of Sincerly Yours, 1942, and In the Mood, 1961.
Now we know where you got your writing talent from Andrew. A great talent. I don't know where I got my writing skill from, as no one in our families wrote. I sing also and there are no singers are in the three families I belong to. Keep up the good work.
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