BRUSHES WITH CELEBRITY - FROM BLYTON TO BENJAMIN

As well as being the current archivist to the Society of Women Writers and Journalists, I've started updating my personal collection of photographs, features and of course memories covering many years of meeting and greeting hundreds of  fascinating folk. This work is going to take time as it covers a lifetime starting with my favourite writer Enid Blyton whom I met when I was a Brownie aged seven and received my own writer’s badge at London’s Central Hall. I remember climbing the dusty steps onto the stage, it was certainly a mind-blowing event to shake  hands with my heroine, author of the Magic Faraway Tree, Sunny Stories and so many other books available to us in those early days.

Sixty years later and still keen on writing and meeting other authors and journalists, it was a pleasure to meet, chat to and photograph Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE at a recent gathering in London.  As we all know, Floella Benjamin appeared on our television screens in the 1970s presenting Play Away and Play School,  but she was already a published author and concentrates on books for children - some twenty of them at the last count. Perhaps the most memorable is Coming to England which is a great read and is now part of the academic curriculum - a tremendous literary success.