Memories are literary gold dust for award-winning novelist Berlie Doherty

Mar 25 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

An unexpected legacy from her father gave award-winning novelist Berlie Doherty the chance to celebrate his life. Peter Elson reports

IT IS practically impossible to hear the story of Berlie Doherty’s grandfather without thinking what a great book it would make.

How lucky, then, that Berlie who, as a child, wrote stories for the Daily Post & Echo’s children’s pages, is an award-winning children’s novelist.

Her grandfather, Arthur Hollingsworth, was butler at “the Big House”, one of south Liverpool’s great mansions occupied by the merchant princes and their families, who made fortunes from shipping.

When Berlie’s father, Walter, was in his late 80s, he started to talk about his idyllic boyhood, out in what was then countryside, and her grandparents’ life in service.

“I didn’t know about this connection, but was absolutely intrigued. After some inquiries, we were thrilled to discover that the house still existed as a college,” says Berlie, who was born in Knotty Ash, in 1943.

They embarked on a family trip down memory lane to find his 1902 birthplace and boyhood home – the lodge cottage at Barkhill, a mansion on the border of Mossley Hill and Aigburth.

Although the cottage had gone, they found “the Big House” still looked as her father remembered, a handsome, white stucco Italianate house, now the central block of IM Marsh College, Liverpool John Moores University.

“We found the caretaker and he was happy to let us in. While much had changed internally, my father could still find the butler’s pantry.

“In its hey-day, the interior was similar to the neighbouring Sudley House, the museum based in the Holt family’s former home. My father and his twin sister, Dorothy, used to play with the Sudley servants’ children there.

“He had very, very happy memories of those days. The phrase that stuck in my mind was his remark about how he and his brother climbed up to ‘sit like insects in trees’ watching the gentry come and go in their carriages.

“My grandfather wasn’t termed as a butler, but a gentleman’s gentleman. Later he became a railway clerk. The caretaker recognised my father and they had a good gossip about old times.

“My father expressed great pleasure that the house was being used by young people. The visit was very powerful emotionally for him, as if saying goodbye before he died aged 93.”

After his death, Berlie had the awful task of going through his belongings in the inevitable clearing-out process that most bereaved children must eventually face after losing their parents.

“One cupboard was filled with stories my father had written. He’d covered the same tales again and again about his childhood, but in different voices.

“Then I thought, wouldn’t it be great to recreate Dad’s childhood in some way using the same setting, for young people of today to understand and enjoy?”

The result was The Sailing Ship Tree, first coming out in 1998 and now republished for the third time.

“It originally appeared just after my Dad’s death and the family were eager to see it. I had a feeling that he was looking over my shoulder, which made it harder to write,” she says.

“My father also wrote stories for the Post & Echo, which had regular slots for readers’ fiction in those days.

“Meantime, I’d written for Uncle Arthur’s children’s pages on the Echo, until forced into early retirement, aged 14.

“He was thrilled when I was first published in 1982. However, I was unaware until after he died how many publishers’ rejection slips he’d received (and kept) about his own work.