PAMELA BROWN (1924–1989) was a British writer, actor, then television producer. She was just fourteen when she started writing her first book, and the town of Fenchester in the book is inspired by her home town of Colchester. During the Second World War, she went to live in Wales, so her first book, The Swish of the Curtain, was not published until 1941, when she was sixteen. She used the earnings from the books to train at RADA, and became an actor and a producer of children’s television programmes.