Lucilla Andrews facts for kids

Lucilla Matthew Andrews Crichton (born 20 November 1919 in Suez, Egypt – d. 3 October 2006 in Edinburgh, Scotland) was a British writer of 33 romance novels from 1954 to 1996. As Lucilla Andrews she specialised in hospital romances, and under the pen names Diana Gordon and Joanna Marcus wrote mystery romances.

She was a founding member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, which honoured her shortly before her death with a lifetime achievement award.

Biography

Born Lucilla Matthew Andrews on 20 November 1919 in Suez, Egypt, the third of four children of William Henry Andrews and Lucilla Quero-Bejar. They met in Gibraltar, and married in 1913. Her mother was daughter of a Spanish doctor and descended from the Spanish nobility. Her British father worked for the Eastern Telegraph Company (later Cable and Wireless) on African and Mediterranean stations until 1932. At the age of three, she was sent to join her older sister at boarding school in Sussex.

She joined the British Red Cross in 1940 as a VAD, and later trained as a nurse at St Thomas' Hospital, London, during World War II. In 1947, she retired and married Dr James Crichton. In 1949, soon after their daughter Veronica was born, he was committed to hospital and she returned to full-time nursing by night, while writing by day. In 1952, she sold her first romance novel, published in 1954, the same year that her husband died. She specialised in doctor-nurse and hospital romances, using her personal experience as inspiration.

In 1969, she decided to move to Edinburgh. Her daughter read History at Newnham College, Cambridge, and became a journalist and Labour Party communications adviser, before her death from cancer in 2002.

She was a founder member of the Romantic Novelists' Association in 1960 and an inaugural recipient of their Lifetime Outstanding Achievement Award, in the Scottish Parliament shortly before her death.

Andrews died on 3 October 2006 in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

Plagiarism

In late 2006, Lucilla Andrews' autobiography No Time for Romance became the focus of a posthumous controversy. It has been alleged that the novelist Ian McEwan plagiarised from this work's description of Andrews' WWII nursing experiences while writing his novel, Atonement. McEwan has protested his innocence. The acknowledgements on the back page of Atonement had included Andrews' book as an inspiration and source. Andrews herself appeared to be untroubled by the connection between the books or the controversy.