Clare Mulley is the award-winning author of 'The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, Founder of Save the Children'. Clare first came across Eglantyne as a fundraiser at Save the Children in the 1990s and started her biography with the support of the charity when she left to have her first child, thereby showing far less commitment to the cause than Eglantyne who remained childless and dedicated to the fund throughout her life.
Since leaving Save the Children Clare has worked as a fundraiser for Sight Savers International and sat on the fundraising advisory board of The World Development Movement. She is currently a trustee of the national charity Standing Together Against Domestic Violence.
In 2007 she won the Daily Mail Biographers’ Club prize for 'The Woman Who Saved the Children', which is published on 24th April 2009. All author royalties are being donated to Save the Children.
Clare now lives in Saffron Walden and is working on her second biography.
For more info visit www.claremulley.com
Eglantyne Jebb died in December 1928, and was buried in a cheap wooden coffin at St George’s Cemetery in Geneva. From her grave it is just possible to see Mount Saleve, the imposing mountain just south of the city which Eglantyne had loved, and had climbed many times to help clear her head and gain some perspective on the issues that were concerning her.
This Saturday I got my first taste of spruiking. I always have books to sign and sell after giving a talk, but this was different; the real hard-core ‘roll up, roll up ladies pll-llease… I have cabbages, I have cherries, I have a new biography as featured on Women’s Hour…’ in the front of a Waterstones shop in Bury St Edmunds.
I am a very nosy person. What could be a more legitimate excuse for delving into the fascinating life, letters, unpublished novels, houses, bottom drawers, last will and testament… of someone who intrigues you, than writing their biography? Aware of the potentially invasive nature of the role, I once described it as psycho-stalking, and was duly ticked off by a more established writer.
Having researched, written and launched the book I am now in the middle of what is apparently the author’s main job – promoting the thing. For me this mostly entails giving a number of talks, including a few for Waterstones bookshops where I speak as part of a panel talking about ‘Women in History’.
19 May being the 90th anniversary of Save the Children, it also seemed an auspicious day to launch the book. Save UK’s Vice President, Gordon Campbell Gray, who also happens to own One Aldwych among a collection of small-but-perfectly-formed hotels around the world, very generously provided the venue, drinks and eats, and some fabulous flowers left over from a visit by Bill Clinton set the room off perfectly. Eglantyne was done proud, while her waste-not-want-not was also appeased.
90 years ago this week Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy launched a new fund to help provide milk and aid to the children in Europe who were starving to death – 800 a day in Germany – as a result of the post-war British economic blockade.
Oh dear, I have found a new way to delay doing any work… checking the online Amazon sales ranking of my biography of Eglantyne Jebb – SCF’s founder. The ranking is a kind of scary irregular pulse that tells you how any book is selling compared to all the rest in Amazon’s warehouse on an hour-by-hour basis.
After seven years of researching the life of Save the Children’s founder, my biography of Eglantyne Jebb has finally published. It’s not the same as having a child of course, nothing like, but I do feel like I am losing protective control of this long nurtured thing and sending it off out there on its independent shelf-life
As I started my research the residue evidence of Eglantyne’s life got more and more intriguing. Eglantyne had no children of her own but the granchildren of her elder brother still live at The Lyth, the magnificent Shropshire home in which Eglantyne grew up. Lionel Jebb and his wife Corinna were wonderfully supportive during my research, inviting me to stay with them
Hello – I have just been planning my first public talk about the book and someone told me that people are generally much more interested in what goes on behind the scenes in writing a biography, than your actual subject… I hope there is some truth in this because my biography of Eglantyne wears its research on its sleeve a bit
