Inspired by a musical based on a book about books by my favourite children's author, I come home to find that he has no known middle name. Instead, today's is his Norwegian mother's whom he described as having 'a crystal-clear intellect and a deep interest in almost everything under the sun'.
She became a single mum when her one-armed husband (he lost it after he fell off a roof and a drunk local doctor mistook a fractured elbow for a dislocated shoulder at the age of fourteen) died of pneumonia on a fishing trip to the Atlantic. Her only son, the author, was three. She remained in Wales where they had moved to give their children an English education and brought up her four off-spring and two step-children alone. 'She was a great teller of tales', he said of her.
When she died he found that she had saved every one of the letters he had sent her from boarding school in bundles held together with green tape.
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