Welcome to my Web Site and I hope you enjoy its new style. This web site was originally written a long time ago and I never seemed to get around to keeping it up to date. But at last I have been able to give it a complete overhaul.
The quote above is from a recent review of my first, and still most popular book, ‘Private Keep-Out!’  There is another even more recent review below as well.

When I am asked how I came to be a writer, I have to say that I don't know because I seem always to have been writing stories, or poems, or plays.

As a child, I used to tell my sister bedtime stories - and when I was in the Open Air School (my second book, ‘Knock and Wait’ is about that time in my life), which was a bit like a hospital and a school combined, I was given the job of telling stories to the girls there.

So, writing and reading have always been two of the most important and necessary things in my life.

 I always tell others who want to write, get together with other people who feel the same and have fun whilst you develop as a writer.

August 21st  2009
This site is under construction

 top of page

 Lucy Mangan on why she's still reading children's books said in the Guardian - ‘Private - Keep Out’ is The funniest children's book ever written. The narrator is growing up in a small town near Sheffield after the war, the youngest of six children, which familial position has bred within her a blend of determination, fatalism and misanthropy that should warm the heart of any child. It was the first book I wanted to share with anyone, and I used to read bits out to my mother until I laughed so hard I choked on my tongue. I have re-read it every few months since I was 10 and still have to have the emergency services on standby for the bit where her Mam and dance teacher Fancy Nancy have to hold her down to get her into her costume for the town concert. The elastic in her knickers is too tight: "'I can't breathe,' I said. And she said, 'What do you want to breathe for? If them knickers fall down again, you'd be better off not breathing anyway, so just keep quiet and let me finish them.'" If you're not laughing, there's really nothing more I can do for you.

 Here’s a Christmas poem!  Hope you all enjoy it. Gwen.

ROOM FOR ONE MORE                                          

‘If all of the world saw the Christmas sky filling
With angels whose wings were silver and shimmering,
Who sang with their voices chiming and ringing,
Until all life on earth heard every last word
Of Jesus new-born,
Think how happy they’d be,’ Chad said, with a smile,
‘But the happiest of all would be the fierce crocodile.’

‘Stop right there, Chad,’ Miss McPherson fizzed,
‘That Nativity stable is staying just as it is,
With sweet baby Jesus asleep in His crib;
Mary and Joseph; the shepherds knelt down,
Three Kings all a’twinkle, wearing their crowns.
With a cow and a donkey; lambs sweet as the child,
And nowhere, Chad, nowhere, a fierce crocodile.’

‘Well, that’s not fair!  Why not give him a trial?’
Chad cried, holding up his toy crocodile.
‘Because,’ Sharnia frowned, ‘a crocodile eats
Ears, toes and fingers like packets of sweets.’

Chad was cool. ‘I agree.  But Jesus,’ he said,
‘Came not just to love the sweet and the kind,
Or wise Kings a’twinkle with sparkling minds.
He came to love everyone, even those we don’t like,
The mean and the vile,
With their cruel sharp teeth and their sharp cruel smile.
That’s how I know He’ll love my crocodile.’

Miss McPherson said, ‘Chad, that is very true.
Jesus loves lambs but He loves crocodiles, too.
And as I look at the Stable floor,
I see quite clearly there is room for one more.’
And Miss McPherson smiled,
‘There’s plenty of room for a crocodile.’


      
                                                             ©GWEN GRANT
 

And on Saturday November 29th 2008, Lucy wrote:

THE GUARDIAN November 25th 2008