The speaker for our monthly meeting in June was Miranda Pender, who reminded us that this was her third visit to Boreham WI.
This time she was here to tell us about Norah C James, who was her grandfather’s first cousin.
None of the members had heard of her before the talk, but we certainly knew a great deal more about her by the end of the evening! It turns out that Norah James was a very notorious author from the 1920s, who in the year 1929 was put on trial for publishing obscene material.
Such a scandal ensued that the whole world was anxious to hear the details and thus made her and the publishers quite a lot of money.
Norah James came from a fairly wealthy family and was well educated at the Slade School of Art.
Her studies were interrupted by the First World War, after which she became interested in the poor situations of the working classes.
After the Second World War she wrote some short stories, children’s books and started on her ‘Mills and Boon’ type fiction, which continued into the 1970s.
Miranda finished this extremely interesting evening with some of her own songs, written by her during the Covid lockdown. They were based on some of the books written by Norah during her life and made a fitting end to what had been a very informative talk.
Penny Bolton
