Winifred Watson (1907-2002) was brought up, and lived all her life, in Newcastle, and in 1935 married Leslie Pickering, the manager of a timber firm. She wrote Fell Top in 1935 and Odd Shoes a year later, ‘two rather strong dramas…but when they received a book that was fun – Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day [1938] – they would not accept it… I can remember to this day looking up at the publisher and saying, ‘You are wrong, Miss Pettigrew is a winner.’ But he just looked stubborn. I wrote another straight novel [Upyonder, 1938] and, when they did publish Miss Pettigrew, I was proved right.’ She published two more novels, but stopped writing not long after the birth of her son in 1941.