Ida Pollock

Ida Julia Pollock ( Crowe; 12 April 1908 – 3 December 2013) was a British writer of several short-stories and over 125 romance novels that were published under her married name, Ida Pollock, and under a number of different pseudonyms: Joan M. Allen; Susan Barrie, Pamela Kent, Averil Ives, Anita Charles, Barbara Rowan, Jane Beaufort, Rose Burghley, Mary Whistler and Marguerite Bell. She sold millions of copies over her 90-year career. She has been referred to as the "world's oldest novelist", who was still active at 105 and continued writing until her death. On the occasion of her 105th birthday, Pollock was appointed honorary vice-president of the Romantic Novelists' Association, having been one of its founding members.

Ida and her husband, Lt Colonel Hugh Alexander Pollock, DSO (1888–1971), a veteran of war and Winston Churchill's collaborator and editor, had a daughter, Rosemary Pollock, who was also a romance writer. Ida's autobiography, Starlight, published in 2009 at 100 years, tells the story of the start of her career, her marriage, and the relation of her husband with his ex-wife Enid Blyton. She was also an oil painter, who was selected for inclusion in a national exhibition in 2004, at the age of 96.

Biography First years Born Ida Julia Crowe on 12 April 1908 in Lewisham, Kent, England, she was the daughter of Fanny Osborn, whose father was an architect in Victorian London, and her husband Arthur Crowe, but Pollock claimed to be illegitimate. Still unmarried, her mother began an affair with a supposed Russian duke, but, after her parents' death, her mother married Arthur Crowe, an old widower with a distant connection to Lord Nelson. A year or so later her mother resumed her affair with her Russian lover and became pregnant, but her daughter obtained her husband's surname. Six months later, she discovered they had mislaid it. After they found it, she returned to London to meet one of its editors, the 39-year-old Hugh Alexander Pollock (1888–1971), a distinguished veteran of World War I. Hugh had been married since 1924 to his second wife, the popular children's writer Enid Blyton, and was divorced from his first wife, Marion Atkinson, with whom he had two sons, William Cecil Alexander (1914–16) and Edward Alistair (1915–69). George Newnes bought her manuscript and contracted with her to write two more novels.

World War II years and family During World War II, Ida worked at a hostel for girls in London during the Blitz; at this time Hugh, who had left publishing to join the Army, was Commandant of a school for Home Guard officers. Hugh had two daughters with Enid Blyton, Gillian Mary (later Baverstock; 1931–2007) and Imogen Mary (later Smallwood; born 1935), but his marriage had difficulties and his wife began a series of affairs. He offered Ida a post as civilian secretary at the Army Training Centre in the Surrey Hills. During a bungled firearms training session on a firing range, Hugh was hit by shrapnel and Ida contacted Enid, who declined to visit her husband because she was busy and hated hospitals. After her death, her medieval story: Sir Faintheart was published in 2015, and there are still at least two unpublished Regency romances pending publication, including The Runaway.