Clare H. Abrahall

Clare Hoskyns-Abrahall, née Drury (31 January 1900 – 29 November 1990) was a British writer as C.H. Abrahall, Clare H. Abrahall or occasionally as C.M. Drury. She wrote biographies and historical fiction for children and young adults, school stories, stage plays which she sometimes helped produce, and more. She is known for her book Prelude about the pianist Eileen Joyce which was turned into a film, Wherever She Goes.

Biography Clare Constance Maria Drury was born on 31 January 1900 in London to Gertrude Elizabeth (née Holt) and Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Frederick Drury, a civil engineer who was in the RAF during World War I. They were living in Wheathampstead by the time Clare (sometimes Clara) Drury was eleven and this was still the family home in 1925. She was educated at St Helen's School, Abingdon and then at the Royal College of Music. Towards the end of the First World War she served as a driver in the parachute section of the Women's Royal Air Force. During World War II she was a commandant in the British Red Cross. They had three Children: Priscilla (b. 1926), Robin Chandos (b. 1928) and Follett Peter Mark (b. 1934). They divorced in 1944. The same year her ex-husband remarried Lois Jennet Ogle. In 1950 T. C. Hoskyns-Abrahall was made a knight. She described her politics as "Conservative". Her other son Robin died in 1995. After the film version, Wherever She Goes, stage and radio adaptations followed. Prelude, OUP 1947 ~ "An imaginative account of the early life of Eileen Joyce." Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, Harrap 1949 ~ Boadicea is portrayed as someone who died for the "cause of freedom". Finale, Adelina de Lara in collaboration with Clare H. Abrahall, Burke 1955 The young Marie Curie, Parrish 1961 (also in Spanish) The young Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Parrish 1962 The young Louis Braille, Parrish 1964 The young John Bunyan, Parrish 1968

In the 1950s a newspaper reported on a forthcoming book by Hoskyns-Abrahall, Kate Fox and the Princesses, the story of the nanny to Princesses Olga, Elisabeth and Marina. Pitchblende, with Justine Glover, staged at the Hovenden Theatre Club ~ The story of Marie Curie Florence Nightingale Butler in a Box, Steele's Play Bureau, c1963 ~ "Set in a Scottish castle, with thunder and lightning outside and murder within." Amateur Dramatics, Collins nutshell, 1963 ~ Advice on producing plays.