Remembering and Celebrating Henrietta Branford by Sandra Horn
I was ‘tidying’ the bookshelves the other day (ie moving things aimlessly around trying to find a non-existent space) when I came to my treasured set of children’s books by Henrietta Branford. I picked up her first one, Royal Blunder. It’s signed with love to The Horn Quintet – that’s Niall, me and the three offspring – and dated 1990. That gave me a jolt. Almost 30 years – can it be, really? Oh yes. I first met Henrietta at a creative writing class. We went to it for two successive years but it was getting to be very ‘samey’ and we had decided to give it up, but were reluctant to give up seeing each other and a few more like-minded members of the group. At the last meeting of the class we agreed to go on meeting informally ‘from time to time’. This turned out to be weekly, in my house (at first, we circulated later on). We were nervous and excited about where this enterprise would take us, but set down the rules straight away. Anyone with work was to bring copies fo...