It’s going to be a big day – but as we enjoyed our first few ‘unified’ hours I had no idea that the day would also bring together a real family. I certainly didn’t think I would be moved to tears – twice!
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 What could be a more legitimate excuse for delving into the fascinating life, letters, unpublished novels, houses, bottom drawers, last will and testament… of someone who intrigues you, than writing their biography?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.
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.
Today is Save the Children’s 90th Birthday and we are celebrating with Save the Children Norway staff altogether in the Harare office. It is also the 20th birthday (not to the day) of the UNCRC. Luckily for me, I had the chance to also celebrate the birthday with children rather than just with Save the Children staff… it felt right to watch children launch their hopes and vision for children’s rights into the sunny, blue Zimbabwean sky on Save the Children’s birthday.
As we say Happy Birthday to Save the Children next week – let’s say thank you to Save the Children supporters, all over the world, for making it happen!
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
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
Hello, my name is Clare Mulley and I am ‘the woman who wrote’ The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, Founder of Save the Children, which is published on 24 April. And now – I am delighted to report – I am also a guest blogger on this website!
