Welcome to the Spring issue of the Gazette for 2024. You will perhaps have heard that Carolyn Caughey, co-editor of our journal, has died, of cancer. She needed all her courage to cope with the suffering she had to endure. She died in a nursing-home on 11 March. Carolyn did much for the Society and meant a lot to those of us who knew her. She was Canadian and kept a home in Ontario, where she lived for a spell each summer. Her career, in publishing, was pursued in England. She became a senior editor with Hodder and Stoughton and gained a distinguished reputation. She was very good at her job. I’ve written my own tribute to her, which follows this introduction.
We’ve given Robert McGregor a rest for this issue but he’ll be back with the rest of his Campion biography in due course. His partial Chronology of Albert’s life is included here – with an invitation.
Ashley Bowden introduces us to Maggie Macfee, while Frank Swinnerton, who knew and admired Margery Allingham, celebrates Amanda. {I remember Val McDermid doing the same at the National Film Theatre in Margery’s centenary year}.
An unexpected pairing takes pride of place for this issue: Margery Allingham talks to John Le Carré about The Fine Art of Intrigue. Early in 1965, Margery interviewed him for an American radio network.
The go-between was the journalist Peter Wyden, whose cablegram to Margery on 21 January 1965 runs to thirteen pages. In April 1965, the interview was featured in ‘Ladies’ Home Journal’, with a revised introduction.
A telegram includes the following passage: ‘Allingham marvelous but greatly repeat greatly underplays herself. She great writer when Cornwall (sic) still washing elephants’. {David Cornwell was Le Carre’s true name.}. It is clear from the preliminaries that the organisers wanted a conversation between the two writers, rather than the interview Margery insisted on. She was determined to give credit where it was due and claimed a subsidiary role for herself.
margeryallingham.org.uk 