PREFACE

Dear Reader,

If you have shelled out some of your hard earned on this slim volume from long ago then it might help to know a little about how it came into being and changed the life of its teenage author forever.

I was the daughter of two professional writers. At the tender age of six I was left with my grandmother while my mother went off to something called ‘rehearsal’. She had written a comedy which had gone from the Royal Court Theatre to the West End where it had a very successful run. My father on the other hand wrote crime novels. Added to which my aunt was a novelist. So writing and writers were everywhere in my childhood.

But as I discovered, wanting is one thing – breathing life into your words quite another. My first attempt at the age of ten was a crime novel entitled ‘Death’s Ticket’. My parents were impressed with what they called the ‘plot’. I am sorry to tell you I learned to hate that word. Every time one of my family saw me scribbling they would ask ‘what’s your plot?’ or they would say ‘I hope you’ve got a plot’. A famous writer told my aunt you should be able to write a novel about someone going to post a letter. I know what he meant but having attempted it at the age of somewhere around eleven I have to tell you it is no picnic.

Actually writing about a picnic would be a ball compared to that blasted letter. By the age of twelve I was attempting to write romantic literature at which my aunt was very successful, but my pen kept faltering when it came to the hero and heroine kissing. Talk about where do the noses go – I had no idea where anything went.

All in all, by the age of seventeen I had almost given up on the idea of ever being able to string words together and be able to write more than ‘by Charlotte Bingham’, which I did quite a lot – only trouble being there was nothing preceding it. And still the word ‘plot’ haunted me, until I started to go to the Opera and read the programme notes. Suddenly the clouds parted – here at last were plots written out clearly and precisely. This gave me hope. I started a novel which was destined to be full of people being very heavy towards the heroine, but then life intervened – not for her, for me – and I became a debutante and went to endless balls dressed in evening dresses and wearing long white gloves. Many of the balls were delightful and very romantic.

But still the stone in my – usually a satin evening shoe – was this feeling that I hadn’t completed a book, until one evening when I moaned to my parents that after so many parties and balls I hadn’t yet met ‘a superman’.

‘Write about that,’ they said. ‘Stop writing dreary, write comedy.’ Well, by that time I was causing mayhem at MI5 as a secretary (see MI5 and Me) – and had only evenings to write. My social life had taken me to the downstairs bar at the London Ritz where I noted that a tomato juice was only two shillings, and the nuts and crisps were free! This was great as the lunch hour at MI5 was an hour and a half, so down I went to the lower floor with my pen and paper and scribbled my comedy, closely watched by Laurie and Edward the barmen who replenished the nuts at very regular intervals. Of course the Society balls and parties had to go by the wayside. Now there was a centre to my life – I was writing a book to make people laugh. Inevitably I suffered a wobble (here). Was it funny? My father, realising this, wrote me a note: ‘Carry on kid, you might make a hundred pounds!’ That was incentive enough, for, as you will discover in the book – the bank manager rather haunted our house.

Finally the book was finished.

It was April and I was on ‘safe lock up’ duty at MI5. There was a light spring pink to the sky. As I sauntered down Bond Street towards Piccadilly I conceived of a revolutionary idea. I would go to the downstairs Ritz Bar – even though it was not in my lunch hour. Laurie and Edward did their best to conceal their surprise.

What to drink? A tomato juice seemed a bit tame, so I ordered something I had never drunk before – but which I thought was the kind of drink that a mature writer should down. I was looking at it with some trepidation when a voice at my shoulder said, ‘Charlotte Bingham, what are you doing seated at the Ritz Bar with a whisky in front of you?’

It was my father’s agent looking as good humoured and relaxed as he always did. Thereafter followed a great deal of banter centred on my having finished my first book, and – to this day I wouldn’t know why – he insisted he would like to read it. I actually tried to dissuade him, but a few days later, it being Easter, he retired to his country house and read what was then entitled ‘Search for Superman’.

Of course I never dreamed that he would like it. I imagined he might give me a pat on the head and tell me to go on trying. Instead he rang me at MI5 and said ‘I can sell this anywhere. I’ll be in touch.’

And he was. Another telephone call the following day and he told me he had just had an offer from Heinemann for £350. It didn’t seem possible. I stared round the room after I put the receiver down. It seemed to have changed, it was full of colour and light. I had always dreamed of becoming a writer, and now at long, long last, at the what-seemed-to-me-an-already-ancient age of eighteen, was a WRITER. From now on it would be ‘Something Something Something’ by Charlotte Bingham. I say ‘Something Something Something’ because Heinemann didn’t like the title and I was, rightly, told to change it. And so Coronet Among the Weeds came into being.

I thought that was that, and as far as I was concerned that was quite enough to last me for the next eighteen years. But, probably because of my age, Coronet Among the Weeds became of immediate interest to the press. When Heinemann flew with it to the legendary Frankfurt Book Fair they gave out chapters on the plane, so that by the time they arrived at the airport all sorts of other publishers were interested, and it sold to ten other foreign publishers (I am still very big in Albania). It was bought by a Sunday newspaper for serialisation. By now my parents were less than happy. They had always thought I might sell it, but not that I would also become improbably famous – and improbably famous I had become. There were vast posters all over the country advertising the serialisation – pictures of their daughter everywhere, and photographers from all over the world besieged the house. Fed up with all the attention I was getting, they banished me to France. In those dim and distant days no one could refuse parental edicts until they were twenty-one.

I reappeared some months later to be guest of honour at a Foyles Literary Luncheon held at the Dorchester with a glittering top table of famous people. I learned that speech so well I was saying it in my sleep, nevertheless I went so white before the hammer went down and the words ‘LORDS LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, pray silence for Miss Charlotte Bingham’ – that the press table who had noted my extreme pallor sent me a note: ‘cheer up, it will be over soon!’

I remember the end of the speech in which I wished that we lived in a world ‘where manuscripts were never sent back and flowers would grow under our feet.’ At any rate Heinemann were terribly pleased and Christina Foyle told them she had never heard cheers like it – which I put down to deep sympathy for my extreme youth.

After that my life became almost too incredible – with author tours and television shows and a stay at the Plaza in New York which was so extended that the staff nicknamed me ‘the second Eloise’. I was the toast of the Harvard Pudding Club, and met many famous writers who were kind beyond words.

I still hardly believe what happened to me, but it did, and there is no denying the fact that it was a wonderful start to what turned into a life of writing. However before you read on dear reader, remember that this was written a long, long time ago, by an eighteen-year-old in an attic bedroom on a borrowed typewriter. I only hope it raises a smile.