Winifred Watson 1906 - 2002

Winifred Watson, the author of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, died on August 5th 2002 aged 95.

In June 2002 she had written us a beautifully typed letter: 'Thank you for your cheque but I think I thank you more for your interest in a book written so long ago. Miss Pettigrew was always rather a pet of mine but my publishers were horrified when they first read it. I had written two rather strong dramas before it so when they received a book that was fun they wouldn't accept it. I can remember to this day looking up at him and saying, "You're wrong: Miss Pettigrew is a winner." But he just looked stubborn.

I wrote another straight novel and then, when they did publish Miss Pettigrew, I was proved right and they were proved wrong. France published it, Australia and even Germany was going to, only the war came. When it was published in America, Universal Studios bought the film rights and they wrote to me to tell me which of their star character actresses was to play Miss Pettigrew [Billy Burke of The Wizard of Oz fame]. But Pearl Harbour happened and all domestic films were thrown overboard with war-encouraging films taking their place. So it has caused me a kind of nostalgic pleasure that someone has again taken an interest in one of my characters.. I thank you most gratefully for your interest in one of my pet creations. I should think that most authors have a special fondness for one of their characters and I admit I always had a fondness for Miss Pettigrew.'

There was a long and very interesting obituary of Winifred Watson in the Guardian by Henrietta Twycross-Martin who wrote the Preface to the Persephone Books edition, in the Independent and in the Scotsman. The latter said that 'Winifred Watson's humorous and rather risqué 1938 novel about a governess mistakenly sent to the home of a nightclub singer instead of to a family of unruly children was reprinted in November 2000 and won warm critical praise.

'Winifred Watson wrote six novels in the 1930s and early 1940s, mostly about women changing their lives, flouting convention, and dealing with class tensions and extra-marital sex. They were well-reviewed and popular. But she gave up writing during the Second World War when she was rearing a son and dealing with a bombed home... She was rediscovered by the small London company Persphone Books when a reader (Henrietta Twycross-Martin) showed a copy of Miss Pettigrew, which had been her mother's favourite rainy-day reading, to the publisher; she searched the Newcastle phone book for Pickerings and kept calling until she found the surprised Winifred Watson, who replied, when asked if it was her, "I am she". "She was extremely modest," says the publisher, "tremendously happy and lovely, and that comes through in this book, which is full of merriment."'

Find out more about Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.

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