FIDRA BOOKS Newsletter

• Forthcoming Titles
• Elinor Lyon
• Victoria Walker
• Joanna Cannan
• Titles in Print

COMPETITIONS IN THIS ISSUE

Fidra Books Newsletter

Victoria Walker

All material in this supplement is © of and reprinted with kind permission of Fidra Books (www.fidrabooks.com)

We are delighted to be able to announce that our Christmas title this year will be The Winter of Enchantment by Victoria Walker. First published in 1969, this is a magical tale and one of the most sought-after children’s books, with copies selling for over £1000. I first read this 25 years ago, and loved it and I’m delighted to be reprinting it. W e will be publishing Victoria’s second book, The House Called Hadlows, next year. This is what Victoria has said about how she became a writer.

“Thirty-five years ago, when I was twenty-one, I was idling away time at my parents’ house in the country, wondering what to do next. I had been living in London and taking music lessons and it had dawned at last that I had no musical talent whatsoever. So with no particular end in view I found my mother’s portable typewriter and wrote a story for children. Of course I wrote it for myself, really. I may have looked grownup -a heavy Juliette Greco fringe, so much eyeliner that my father complained that it was like looking down the barrels of the guns of Navarone over breakfast, reeking of Shalimar and French cigarettes (rolled in papier mache for super sophistication)-but I was extraordinarily naive. It simply never occurred to me to get a job or to think of a career. Instead I spent eight months, off and on, writing this story just as it came into my head, sentence by sentence, with no idea of how it would finish or what I would do with it when it had.

"One evening I went out to dinner with a friend in London. In the late Sixties the Bistro D’Agran -I’m not sure how you spell that -was a well-known Hooray Henry haunt behind Harrods. It was unlicensed so customers had to bring their own bottles of wine. I can’t remember who the friend was but at the table next to us were two men who asked to borrow our corkscrew. During the conversation that followed one of the men revealed that he was a publisher. Without a blush I told him that I was within days of finishing a manuscript. It did not occur to me that he might be constantly bothered by people asking him to look at unsolicited manuscripts. Generously he said I could send it to him for appraisal. I did. A few weeks later, during which I had heard nothing and had practically forgotten about it, he sent me a contract. That was Bill McCreadie of Rupert Hart-Davis (now of Aurum Press)and the story came to be called The Winter of Enchantment.”

Excerpt from May2004 Ibooknet Newsletter – Ibooknet is the Independent Booksellers’ Network – over 50 booksellers with over half a million rare and collectable books on­line.

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