Ida Pollock (April 12, 1908)

Ida Pollock, now resident in Lanreath, Cornwall, celebrated her 100th birthday in April 2008. Her daughter Rosemary says the day began with delivery of a birthday card from the Queen, followed the arrival of numerous friends and family members bearing gifts and flowers. Ida was particularly pleased to receive congratulations from the Romantic Novelists' Association, and several publishers including Mills and Boon, also celebrating their centenary this year.

Ida was born in Kent on April 12th 1908. From the age of ten she wanted to be a writer, and by the time she was nineteen several of her stories had been printed in major magazines. Early in the war she took a job in London, where she remained through much of the Blitz.

While visiting a publisher's office she met her future husband, the charismatic Major Hugh Alexander Pollock (1888-1971), DSO, married to the publisher's daughter, Enid Blyton. A later chance encounter with him, in the dark days at the beginning of World War II, was to change her life. Hugh was back in the army and Commandant of a school for Home Guard officers. Feeling Ida should be out of London, he offered her a post as civilian secretary. She accepted, and as the months went by their relationship intensified. In May 1942, he was sent overseas and Ida was present when her mother's Sussex home was devastated by a German bomb, but she was not seriously injured.. The following year, however, the Pollock's marriage was in difficulties, and after their divorce, Enid remarried with Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters and Hugh remarried with Ida at London's Guildhall register office, six days after Blyton's marriage. Soon they had a daughter, Rosemary Pollock, also a romance writer.

( Read more... )

Source: http://www.lanreath.com/page2.html

( Vintage Covers )