Juliet Townsend

Action man and teller of tales

issue 13 December 2003

The other day I came on an old exercise book dating from the early 1940s in which my brother, then aged nine, had embarked on one of his many unfinished novels.

The missionary looked out of the window of his little hut deep in the African jungle. ‘The savidges are attacking, Mary,’ he cried. ‘Quick, pass me the Martini Henry rifle and then the elephant gun. I will show them what happens when they attack the servant of the true God!’

Ever the muscular Christian, he then pumps the advancing hordes full of lead, but he and his wife are eventually slaughtered and their baby son taken to be raised by the ‘savidges’, whereupon the influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs abruptly takes over from that of Rider Haggard

It was not only schoolboys who fell under the spell of this extraordinary storyteller.

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