THE AUTHOR OF MORE than sixty novels and several hundred short stories, Rosemary (Kenyon) Timperley (1920–1988) was a twentieth-century woman who wrote with a Victorian sensibility. Along with an enormous amount of general fiction, she produced scores of ghost stories that tend to be charming and gentle in tone, rather than terrifying.
Born in London, she worked as a schoolteacher and journalist before becoming a full-time writer in 1960, though she had sold her first story in 1946 to Illustrated magazine. She became a regular contributor to numerous periodicals, including the London Evening News, London Mystery Selection, Good Housekeeping, Reveille, etc. It was when one of her stories, “Christmas Meeting,” was selected for The Second Ghost Book (1952), the prestigious series edited by Cynthia Asquith, that she began to acquire a reputation as one of Great Britain’s foremost ghost story writers. She went on to become the editor of the Ghost Books for five years (1969–1973).
Several of her novels have been adapted for telecasts on the BBC, including The Velvet Smile (1961), Yesterday’s Voices (1961), and Juliet (1974). Many of her short stories have also been adapted for radio by the BBC, and she has written several original radio dramas.
“Harry,” perhaps her most famous story, has twice been adapted for film, first in 1960 as an episode of the Canadian television series First Person, then as a short American film titled Twice Removed in 2003. It was originally published in The Third Ghost Book, edited by Cynthia Asquith (London, James Barrie, 1955).