Stranger than fiction was the theme of this fascinating online workshop by Ian Skillcorn, given to members of the SWWJ earlier this week.
Ian, is founder and director of Wyndham Books, which reissues bestselling fiction by some of the twentieth century’s most successful English language novelists
In this session, Ian told us of the interesting tales of the lives behind three best-selling authors from the 20th Century.
These three authors were Ursula Bloom, CL Skelton and Naomi Jacob.
Ursula, a British novelist, biographer and Journalist was an ambitious writer who wrote over 560 books, a feat which earned her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most prolific female writer.
Amongst many other things, she tracked down Dr Crippen’s mistress after she went into hiding and was also mistaken for being a spy by the Germans in World War I.
Ursula was also an agony aunt for a publication in her day and was unique in that not only did she reply to all of her readers who wrote to her, but also visited some of them to help them solve the issues they had.
Her determination to become a successful writer in many forms, took her from Fleet Street to beyond.
The second author Ian spoke about was CL “Clem” Skelton – whose Hardacre novels have recently been adapted for a television series, The Hardacres, on Channel 5.
Clem was a Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain before becoming an actor, performing on the West End stage. He later joined a religious order, took part in expeditions to find the Loch Ness Monster and turned to fiction writing, producing gothic novels and later, writing that led to the Hardacre books.
The third author we heard about, was Naomi Jacob – a celebrated novelist who also wrote a series of autobiographical works.
A love of the theatre led her to become a character actress on stage and in film, notably opposite John Geilgud in The Ringer (1936). She also associated with the Du Mauriers, Henry Irving, Marie Lloyd and Sarah Bernhardt.
In 1935 Naomi Jacob was awarded the Eichelberger International Humane Award, for outstanding achievement in the field of humane endeavour, for her novel Honour Come Back. She was forced to reject the award when she discovered that a previous recipient had been Adolf Hitler.
Naomi was famous for her flamboyant appearance— crew cut hair, and wearing a monocle.
In the 1960’s she was a regular on radio, in particular on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour.She is best remembered for her seven-novel Gollantz saga.
After Ian’s presentation, there was a Q&A, for members to delve deeper into what they had just heard.
One of the things Ian spoke about was the challenges of publishing books where the writer quite understandably used language and perception from another time, some if which may not be used today.
Ian summed this up perfectly by saying that a lot of historical fiction, written by the authors such as these, were once contemporary fiction of their day, so the language was fitting for that time.
He said there were hard decisions to make when having to make changes to books written in a different era – he said sometimes books might not be re-published as they would not want to ever change the story or the plot, but instead it could be a minimal change of substituting a word
This is just a taste of what we heard about the personal lives behind these writers, but it shows how their personal stories influenced their writing, proving that fact can indeed be stranger than fiction.
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