Bingham - Coronet Among the Weeds

CORONET AMONG
THE WEEDS

Non-fiction

Coronet Among the Grass

MI5 and Me: A Coronet Among the Spooks

Spies and Stars: MI5, Showbusiness and Me

Novels

Lucinda

The Business

In Sunshine or in Shadow

Stardust

Nanny

Change of Heart

Grand Affair

Love Song

The Kissing Garden

Country Wedding

The Blue Note

The Love Knot

Summertime

Distant Music

The Magic Hour

Fridays Girl

Out of the Blue

In Distant Fields

The White Marriage

Goodnight Sweetheart

The Enchanted

The Land of Summer

The Daisy Club

Love Quartet

Belgravia

Country Life

At Home

By Invitation

Nightingale Saga

To Hear a Nightingale

The Nightingale Sings

Debutantes Saga

Debutantes

The Season

The Bexham Trilogy

The Chestnut Tree

The Wind Off the Sea

The Moon at Midnight

Eden Saga

Daughters of Eden

The House of Flowers

Mums on the Run Series

Mums on the Run

A Dip Before Breakfast

WITH TERENCE BRADY

Victoria Series

Victoria

Victoria and Company

Honestly Series

No, Honestly

Yes, Honestly

Upstairs, Downstairs Series

Roses Story

Dear Reader,

If you have shelled out some of your hard earned on this slim volume from long ago then it might help to know a little about how it came into being and changed the life of its teenage author forever.

I was the daughter of two professional writers. At the tender age of six I was left with my grandmother while my mother went off to something called rehearsal. She had written a comedy which had gone from the Royal Court Theatre to the West End where it had a very successful run. My father on the other hand wrote crime novels. Added to which my aunt was a novelist. So writing and writers were everywhere in my childhood.

But as I discovered, wanting is one thing breathing life into your words quite another. My first attempt at the age of ten was a crime novel entitled Deaths Ticket. My parents were impressed with what they called the plot. I am sorry to tell you I learned to hate that word. Every time one of my family saw me scribbling they would ask whats your plot? or they would say I hope youve got a plot. A famous writer told my aunt you should be able to write a novel about someone going to post a letter. I know what he meant but having attempted it at the age of somewhere around eleven I have to tell you it is no picnic.

Actually writing about a picnic would be a ball compared to that blasted letter. By the age of twelve I was attempting to write romantic literature at which my aunt was very successful, but my pen kept faltering when it came to the hero and heroine kissing. Talk about where do the noses go I had no idea where anything went.

All in all, by the age of seventeen I had almost given up on the idea of ever being able to string words together and be able to write more than by Charlotte Bingham, which I did quite a lot only trouble being there was nothing preceding it. And still the word plot haunted me, until I started to go to the Opera and read the programme notes. Suddenly the clouds parted here at last were plots written out clearly and precisely. This gave me hope. I started a novel which was destined to be full of people being very heavy towards the heroine, but then life intervened not for her, for me and I became a debutante and went to endless balls dressed in evening dresses and wearing long white gloves. Many of the balls were delightful and very romantic.

But still the stone in my usually a satin evening shoe was this feeling that I hadnt completed a book, until one evening when I moaned to my parents that after so many parties and balls I hadnt yet met a superman.

Write about that, they said. Stop writing dreary, write comedy. Well, by that time I was causing mayhem at MI5 as a secretary (see MI5 and Me) and had only evenings to write. My social life had taken me to the downstairs bar at the London Ritz where I noted that a tomato juice was only two shillings, and the nuts and crisps were free! This was great as the lunch hour at MI5 was an hour and a half, so down I went to the lower floor with my pen and paper and scribbled my comedy, closely watched by Laurie and Edward the barmen who replenished the nuts at very regular intervals. Of course the Society balls and parties had to go by the wayside. Now there was a centre to my life I was writing a book to make people laugh. Inevitably I suffered a wobble (this, wrote me a note: Carry on kid, you might make a hundred pounds! That was incentive enough, for, as you will discover in the book the bank manager rather haunted our house.

Finally the book was finished.

It was April and I was on safe lock up duty at MI5. There was a light spring pink to the sky. As I sauntered down Bond Street towards Piccadilly I conceived of a revolutionary idea. I would go to the downstairs Ritz Bar even though it was not in my lunch hour. Laurie and Edward did their best to conceal their surprise.

What to drink? A tomato juice seemed a bit tame, so I ordered something I had never drunk before but which I thought was the kind of drink that a mature writer should down. I was looking at it with some trepidation when a voice at my shoulder said, Charlotte Bingham, what are you doing seated at the Ritz Bar with a whisky in front of you?

It was my fathers agent looking as good humoured and relaxed as he always did. Thereafter followed a great deal of banter centred on my having finished my first book, and to this day I wouldnt know why he insisted he would like to read it. I actually tried to dissuade him, but a few days later, it being Easter, he retired to his country house and read what was then entitled Search for Superman.

Of course I never dreamed that he would like it. I imagined he might give me a pat on the head and tell me to go on trying. Instead he rang me at MI5 and said I can sell this anywhere. Ill be in touch.

And he was. Another telephone call the following day and he told me he had just had an offer from Heinemann for 350. It didnt seem possible. I stared round the room after I put the receiver down. It seemed to have changed, it was full of colour and light. I had always dreamed of becoming a writer, and now at long, long last, at the what-seemed-to-me-an-already-ancient age of eighteen, was a WRITER. From now on it would be Something Something Something by Charlotte Bingham. I say Something Something Something because Heinemann didnt like the title and I was, rightly, told to change it. And so Coronet Among the Weeds came into being.

I thought that was that, and as far as I was concerned that was quite enough to last me for the next eighteen years. But, probably because of my age, Coronet Among the Weeds became of immediate interest to the press. When Heinemann flew with it to the legendary Frankfurt Book Fair they gave out chapters on the plane, so that by the time they arrived at the airport all sorts of other publishers were interested, and it sold to ten other foreign publishers (I am still very big in Albania). It was bought by a Sunday newspaper for serialisation. By now my parents were less than happy. They had always thought I might sell it, but not that I would also become improbably famous and improbably famous I had become. There were vast posters all over the country advertising the serialisation pictures of their daughter everywhere, and photographers from all over the world besieged the house. Fed up with all the attention I was getting, they banished me to France. In those dim and distant days no one could refuse parental edicts until they were twenty-one.