June Tate Find!

This afternoon I attended a packed house at Hythe Library to listen to a writer who was born and raised in Southampton and uses the area as a setting in her popular saga novels.  June Tate is currently writng her thirteenth novel after being first published in her 60s - following a varied career that included hairdressing on board the Queen Mary (before the popularity of transatlantic flights), where she met and manicured many famous actors. 

She chooses Southampton because it's her "patch" and it hadn't been done already.  Her books pay homage to the historic seaport.  Her gran had a pub off Canal Walk during the war and June remembers the characters that frequented it, a rich seam for the later novelist.

She portrayed 1920s Southampton in 'Talk of the Town', and the wartime city in both 'For the Love of a Soldier' and the latest title, 'Family Affair'.  Readers attending today's talk spoke fondly of the memories June's books evoked, of certain shops, now long gone, places they went in their youth - location and great characters are what makes them love her books. 

21 October 2009 from Angela Hicken

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