Janet Ellis on Puffin editor Kaye Webb
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Writer, broadcaster and Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis champions the life of Kaye Webb, who burst on to the children's publishing scene in 1961 and changed the industry forever.
With no publishing experience whatsoever, Kaye persuaded renowned authors like Roald Dahl and Nina Bawden to publish their hardback bestsellers as pocket-sized paperbacks that children could buy themselves. Hundreds of thousands flocked to join her Puffin Club with its riotous exhibitions, trips and competitions. Janet shares her memories of growing up abroad with her "portable kingdom" of Puffin books, and explains why Puffin and Blue Peter have a lot in common.
Janet is joined in the studio by Kaye's biographer, the writer Valerie Grove. They talk about Kaye's three marriages, especially the last, to cartoonist Ronald Searle, then one of the most famous men in the country. We also hear personal memories of Kaye from Clare Morpurgo, daughter of Penguin founder, Sir Allen Lane.
With thanks to Puffin Club expert Sherief Hassan, Philippa Dickinson and Emma Thompson. Photo courtesy of Seven Stories - The National Centre for Children's Books in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Presented by Matthew Parris. Produced by Sarah Goodman for BBC Audio Bristol.
Transcript
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| 0:42.7 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:54.0 | Hello, and in fact come in. |
| 0:56.4 | It's New Year's Eve, 1960, and you're invited to a party. |
| 1:03.4 | The setting? An incongruously modern steel and concrete house on Newton Road in Bayeswater, London. |
| 1:11.5 | It's got huge plate glass windows and it's stuffed full of treasures from around the world. |
| 1:18.4 | Your hosts, Fleet Street's golden couple, |
| 1:21.6 | editor, journalist, broadcaster, and today's great life, Kweb, |
| 1:27.1 | along with her husband, that renowned satirical cartoonist, Ron Walshaw. |
| 1:31.7 | K, Welcome's 1961, with no notion that this will be the year that we'll both make, |
| 1:46.4 | and in some ways break her. |
| 1:48.8 | It's the year she'll accept a job at Puffin, the children's imprint of paperback powerhouse |
... |
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