Charlotte Ryton

Writing stories has always been at the centre of my life. As a child in Somerset I wrote stories about Exmoor ponies. As a teenager in Edinburgh I wrote a Jacobite novel - derivative of The Flight of the Heron. Then I became a teacher and I wrote stories for the young people I taught. As my parents were actors I also wrote plays and some of them were produced - and I even got paid for them: Daughters of Jerusalem, Katherine the Queen and Sergeant Daisy. But I have always wanted to write longer fiction so when I retired I decided to do that. One of my favourite series of books since I read Jo of the Chalet School was the Chalet School series but like most school stories it ignored the servants who kept the whole enterprise going. I worked as a 'maid' in a boarding school before going to University so I decided that my story would look at what it was like to be a servant girl of fourteen when other fourteen year olds were playing hockey and learning French. The underdog has always been the one I cheer and as a history teacher I know that history is written by the winners so I am working now on a story for young people about the Celts from their point of view and discounting the fantasies that the Romans wrote about them. And next - well maybe I'll go back to that Jacobite story or.....