The Locksmith of London: A Tale of the Gordon Riots of 1780 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781530363407)

The writer was born 1927 in rural Essex of working class parents. My mother (Liverpool Irish, of the first generation to get the vote), was determined I should have a good education. I won a scholarship. I was an only child, who read hungrily, loved cinema and had a passion for acting. Aged 12, I was evacuated to a mining village. Returning home with the War still on, aged 17, to my mother's despair I won another scholarship, this time to RADA. It was a mistake. Acting was not enough, I needed to see the whole canvas. My talent was for directing. Married to an engineer whose firm sent him back to Cambridge, it also gave me the opportunity to study for qualifications as a Teacher of Speech and Drama. The breakthrough came after I began coaching young actors at a professional Theatre School in London. They begged me to take them to the Fringe of the Dublin Festival in 1961 with three modernist plays. It was a perilous adventure, but the reviews were good. At a time when Laurence Olivier was assembling his Company for the Chichester Festival Theatre, I was taken on. I worked wherever I was needed. It was a pivotal moment in the History of Theatre and it led to the founding of the National Theatre. Television experience was to come later, as part of a small team on a series at the Inner London Education Television Service. When the studio closed I studied for an Honours Degree in Teaching English and Drama (1974) and taught in a large multi-cultural comprehensive school in London, where I was witness to the Brixton Riots. Retiring early, I came to work in Portsmouth, joining the Birthplace Branch of the Dickens Fellowship and founding Alchemy Theatre as well as teaching privately. I still enjoy working with people of all ages and retain my energy and enthusiasm for theatre and Dickens, and pretty well everything else.