BIOGRAPHY: So Much to TellBy Valerie Grove Penguin, 302pp. £18.99
THE FIRST PROPER book I ever read, the first with chapters and hardly any pictures, was a Puffin. It was a 1970s edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and I was five years old when I lost myself in its pages, proud that I could understand its every word except dryad and naiad. But I didn't notice the words "Editor: Kaye Webb" on the book's first page, words that appeared in every Puffin title for 20 years, including most of my childhood favourites.
Kaye Webb shaped not only my reading but also that of most book-loving children in Ireland and Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s. As the editor of Puffin Books she was a passionate advocate of both children's literature and child readers, and for more than 20 years she ensured that a Puffin on a book's spine was synonymous with quality. She published everyone from Helen Cresswell and Noel Streatfeild to Roald Dahl and Joan Aiken, all of whom became her friends. But as Valerie Grove's excellent new biography shows, her private life was much less satisfactory.
She was born into a family of printers and journalists - her beloved father, Arthur, wrote for this newspaper in the 1920s - and began working for various small publications in the 1930s. But she first showed what she was capable of doing in 1940, when she joined the staff of Lilliput, a lively literary magazine that became hugely popular during the war years; Grove vividly depicts the excitement and terror of literary London at the time.
Webb first encountered Ronald Searle when he sent cartoons to Lilliput. ("I liked his jokes," she said later. "And I loved his handwriting." Who could resist that inky Searle scrawl?) Searle spent most of the second World War in a brutal Japanese prison camp, and when he returned to England he finally met Webb in person. Webb had already been married twice, but she couldn't resist him. Grove's depiction of their initial romance is very touching, not least because the reader knows it would end so unhappily years later. They married in 1948, several months after Webb gave birth to their twin son and daughter.
The Searles spent the 1950s surrounded by the most exciting writers and artists of the day. Their striking modern house, filled with curiosities and Searle murals, was the setting for fantastic parties - the guests at one 1952 event included Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, Clement Freud and Edward Ardizzone. But in 1961 Searle left his wife with no warning, leaving a note. As Grove shows, she never really got over him.
She did, however, throw herself into her work. Shortly before Searle's desertion Webb had taken the job of editor at Puffin Books, the children's division of Penguin. She understood the importance of good children's books, and was a tireless champion of "her" authors. She received so many letters from readers eager to communicate with authors and fellow fans that she founded the groundbreaking Puffin Club and its magazine, Puffin Post, organising not only some extraordinary author events but also lively weekends away. (During one trip to an island inhabited by real puffins, Webb and the young "Puffineers" were almost shipwrecked.)
But she couldn't run Puffin forever, and, although she wasn't exactly pushed out, the publishing world was changing, and she retired in the early 1980s - although many of the books she had chosen over the years have stayed in print to this day. But she found life away from her beloved Puffin very difficult. She missed being part of a lively world, and her failing health - she suffered very badly from painful arthritis for years - made her even more isolated.
Grove's previous books on Dodie Smith and John Mortimer have shown her to be a biographer with a light touch. She deftly manages the vast dramatis personae - the downside of biographies of very sociable and busy people - and the book is full of wonderful nuggets of information. (During the war, we're casually told, Webb was the "third best shot in the Fleet Street women's rifle brigade".) Grove's affection and admiration for Webb - whom she interviewed in the early 1980s and met several times afterwards - are evident. And infectious: it's impossible to read this book and not wish you could have met this charismatic, funny and generous woman.
But Grove doesn't shy away from showing how overbearing and bossy Webb could be. (After her retirement, she told her friend Joan Aiken that she was feeling low "because of not being at the centre of things".) Nor does Grove demonise Webb's ex- husband. She shows how Searle's callous desertion devastated his wife, but she is scrupulously fair to the artist himself, acknowledging that he had long felt uncomfortable in the social whirl that Webb loved so much and in which he felt trapped.
For all her faults Webb remains a fascinating and heartbreaking character, and Grove's account of her life is sensitive, lively, insightful and utterly unsentimental. This exemplary biography will entertain and inform even those who grew up in a Puffin-free world. But those who grew up reading and loving Webb's selections will realise just how much we owe this extraordinary woman.
Anna Carey is a freelance journalist and former member of the Puffin Club
