A new literary editor looks among his acquaintance for potential reviewers. There was no one I approached more confidently in 1985 than Juliet Townsend (who died on 29 November). She had been a friend for 25 years and run a bookshop since 1977 with her husband John. They had looked over my own books to see what could and should be sold and sighed heavily when The Ingoldsby Legends appeared — apparently there is a copy in almost every English country house and no demand at all.
Townsend (pictured left in 1991) wrote an excellent children’s book on the Indian Mutiny, Escape from Meerut, and this neatly combined her two main subjects. On India, and in particular Rudyard Kipling, she had long been an expert (her father wrote his biography). Always eager to be enthusiastic and without a drop of malice, she championed him as his reputation ebbed and returned.
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