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Spain, Nancy

Page history last edited by Jon 12 years, 2 months ago

Nancy SpainNancy Spain (1917-1964) was an English journalist and broadcaster. She grew up in Newcastle, the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Spain, a freeman of Newcastle and a prominent figure in local military and antiquarian affairs. He was something of a writer himself and appeared in a number of radio plays. He also used to broadcast commentaries on Newcastle United games. Nancy played tennis at the Portland Park club near St George's in Jesmond. This was known as 'the Lord's' as opposed to 'the Commons' along Osborne Road. As a child, Nancy remembered a heat-wave at Tarset in the North Tyne valley and pulling peaches from a garden at Hesleyside. She also recalls the Moorcock Inn and Greystead Rectory, where Basil Bunting was to live later.

 

Nancy went to Roedean (a family tradition) where Nancy began wearing 'mannish' clothes, and also developed the beautiful speaking voice which stood her in such good stead in her eventual media career. She played lacrosse for Northumberland and Durham, and hockey for the North of England, as well as acting on BBC radio in the Bridge Street studios, where she took over the star parts vacated by Esther McCracken (q.v.). During the war Nancy served in the WRNS on Tyneside, a period covered in her book Thank you, Nelson. She was a panel member in the first series of the long-running radio show, My Word!. Although a lesbian, she had a son by Philip Youngman Carter, the husband of Margery Allingham.

 

Nancy Spain became a celebrated columnist for the Daily Express, She and the News of the World in the 1950s and '60s and made many radio broadcasts, particularly on Woman's Hour. She later appeared on Juke Box Jury, though her inconsequential approach was by now unsuited to the times. Often in the news, and tempted to marry to seem 'respectable' she lived openly with the editor of She, Joan Werner Laurie, and was a friend of the famous, including Noel Coward and Marlene Dietrich. Her death in a light aeroplane crash on her way to the Grand National seemed almost an appropriate end to a flamboyant and high-profile career. Nancy is buried with her father in the church at Horsley, Northumberland. Noel Coward summed up: 'It is cruel that all that gaiety, intelligence and vitality should be snuffed out when so many bores and horrors are left living.'

 

As well as her books of memoirs, including Why I'm Not a Millionaire (1956), Nancy wrote a biography of Mrs Beeton (an ancestor) and a series of breezily amusing detective novels including Poison for Teacher. This is set in the wickedly-named girls' school Radcliff Hall, and has characters like the Reverend Partick-Thistle. Like Roedean, the school is set on the Sussex coast. Cinderella Goes to the Morgue (1950) is set in Newcastle and revolves round a pantomime at the Theatre Royal, a plan of which is inside the front and back cover. Her series characters were Miriam Birdseye and a couple, Johnny and Natasha DuVivien.

 

See also: http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/alternative-deathstyles-nancy-spain-and.html

 

Bibliography

 

Poison in Play (1945)

Death Before Wicket (1945)

Murder, Bless It (1948)

Poison for the Teacher (1949)

Death Goes on Skis (1949)

Cinderella Goes to the Morgue (1950)

R in the Month (1950)

Not Wanted on Voyage (1951)

Out Damned Tot (1952)

The Kat Strikes (1955)

 

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