Valerie Grove on Kaye Webb, at 5x15

Add this video
to your playlist

Valerie Grove on Kaye Webb, at 5x15

28 Oct 2010

Speakers: Valerie Grove

Author and literary biographer Valerie Grove speaks here about her latest project, an account of the life of the “brilliant,and revered” children’s book editor Kaye Webb. Though she concedes that “only those who have to read aloud, night after night, often the same book” have strong feelings about children’s literature, Grove tells of how she was drawn into Webb’s life by the “love story” between her and the cartoonist and creator of St. Trinian’s, Ronald Searle. From their initial courtship - Webb’s first husband divorced her when he realised she was pregnant with Searle’s twins - to the abrupt end of their seemingly blissful family life, when Searle absconded to Paris with a theatre designer called Monica, Grove describes how their romance shaped the narrative. As she says herself, “where would the story be without the love?”