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Crowden, Sarah

Sarah Crowden is a British character actress who has worked extensively on film, television, and in the theatre. She is also a writer, and has reviewed books for the Lady, TLS, the Observer and Literary Review.

The numbers in square brackets refer to the issue of the quarterly in which the article appears.
The unbracketed numbers refer to the starting page of the article.
For entries in multiple issues of the quarterly, the occurrences are separated by semi-colons.

articles by, [7] 76; [12] 48; [19] 57; [28] 79; [32] 92; [35] 62; [44] 92; [47] 83; [52] 65; [66] 52

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20200601132024 Sarah Crowden on Penelope Chetwode, Two Middle-Aged Ladies in Andalusia

A Hot-Water Bottle and a Horse

Sarah Crowden on Penelope Chetwode, Two Middle-Aged Ladies in Andalusia

Long before the term was used to describe talent-free people in the public eye, John Betjeman was a celebrity: Poet Laureate, saviour of ancient buildings and National Treasure. But though his wife Penelope is affectionately portrayed in his letters, and in a biography by their granddaughter Imogen Lycett-Green, for me she always remained an enigma. Until, that is, I was cast to play her in a BBC Radio production and discovered the first of her two books, Two Middle-Aged Ladies in Andalusia (1963).
20070901125203 Sarah Crowden, E. Nesbit, Slightly Foxed Issue 7

Edwardian It Girl

Sarah Crowden on E. Nesbit, Five Children and It

‘The small material objects that surround one’s daily life have always influenced me deeply,’ wrote E. (Edith) Nesbit in her memoir Long Ago When I Was Young. In my mother’s old nursery were several such objects – a doll’s crib, a triangular book cupboard made by my great grandfather – but the smallest and most influential was a smiling Buddha-shaped figurine: Billikin, God of Things as They Ought to Be. Every Christmas we went to see Peter Pan at the Scala Theatre in London, a faithful restaging of the original Edwardian production, and the second major influence in this fanciful child’s life. For if things really were As They Ought to Be, fairies and adventure would surely follow. It was inevitable, then, that of all the children’s books I loved, E. Nesbit’s magic trilogy, Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Amulet, would take precedence over her more famous The Railway Children or The Story of the Treasure Seekers.
20080901143733

Tutu Wonderful

Sarah Crowden on Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes

Noel Streatfeild’s children’s classic Ballet Shoes, published in 1936, remains a favourite for anybody interested in theatre. Whenever one mentions a first-class book of this kind, if the adult addressed knows it, their face will light up, and they’ll look exactly as they must have done as a child. This is true of either sex. E. Nesbit’s name gets many nods and smiles, particularly from elderly gentlemen who remember the Psammead: ‘a little beast’, said one. Mention of Narnia produces endless discussions on the merits of the seven books. And every woman who discovered I was writing about Ballet Shoes responded in exactly the same way. A sharp intake of breath was followed by, ‘Oh! My favourite book!’
20101201093751

Spellbound

Sarah Crowden on the children’s books of Beverley Nichols

When I was 7, I was given The Tree that Sat Down and The Stream that Stood Still, published as companion volumes in an abridged edition and written by Beverley Nichols. Apart from a strange dedication on the flyleaf, there were no clues about the author, no dust-jacket with photograph and potted biography. As a result, for years I assumed that Beverley Nichols, like Evelyn Waugh, was a lady novelist, having seen their names beside those of Marie Corelli, Mary Webb, Clemence Dane and Lady Fortescue on the bookshelves of my grandmother and her contemporaries. This entirely plausible belief lasted until A levels, when Evelyn’s true identity was unmasked in a set text. Beverley too, I now knew, was also male and the author of archly titled books on houses and gardens. But that was all.
20111201154314

Something for the Weekend

Sarah Crowden on smut

Humour is a funny thing. Something which causes a seizure in one person will leave another inexplicably stony-faced. However, there is a small coterie for whom a certain type of humour resonates. Should you, in daylight, be passing Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, you will often find two 9-year-old boys outside, cunningly disguised as a grey haired, middle-aged woman in sensible shoes (the author of this piece) and a balding, bespectacled gentleman (her solicitor). These two often attract the attention of bemused tourists on the way to the British Museum, as they scream with laughter at the titles of the books in the left-hand window of said shop.
20120901132213

Drama in Dulcimer Street

Sarah Crowden on Norman Collins, London Belongs to Me

London Belongs to Me is Norman Collins’s best-known book, first published in 1945, regularly reprinted throughout the fifties and sixties, once in 1977 and most recently by Penguin in 2008. The hardback edition I own is a 1949 copy, and runs to over 700 pages of small type. In 1948 it was made into a film with a cast of iconic British character actors, among them Alastair Sim, Joyce Carey, Fay Compton and Richard Attenborough. There was also a six-part television series in 1977, again with a roster of the best of British, including a young Trevor Eve.
20161201154900

A Ghost in the Green Room

Sarah Crowden on J. B. Priestley, Jenny Villiers

The subtitle of J. B. Priestley’s Jenny Villiers – ‘A Story of the Theatre’ – was what caught my attention when I came across it in a dilapidated barn in West Sussex, where the cooing of pigeons accompanied my search round the freezing and guano-spattered interior. It turned out to be an enchanting read, depicting a vanished world of call boys, live orchestras and tea matinées, when acting was honed as a craft, actors were respected for their talent, and theatres large and small flourished in virtually every town in Britain. 
20150901162909

Behind the Net Curtains

Sarah Crowden on R. F. Delderfield’s Avenue Novels

The maxim ‘write what you know’ has been drummed into aspiring novelists on creative writing courses for years and it aptly sums up the varied career of R. F. Delderfield, whose writing life was divided into three distinct parts. He was encouraged early on by George Bernard Shaw and Graham Greene among others, and one of his several mentors advised him to ‘write what pleases you and you have a slim chance of pleasing others by accident’.
20141201132626

All in the Mind?

Sarah Crowden on smut

I have long wanted to offer an update on the latest additions to the Crowden Archive. Some subscribers may recall the first piece on the subject, ‘Something for the Weekend’ in Slightly Foxed No. 32. In it, I described a selection of the titles in my possession which have been collected over more than thirty years and which appeal to those possessed of a Lower Fourth Form sense of humour. My mother feels that I should now move on to more suitable pastimes, pokerwork, perhaps, or tatting, but books with questionable titles just keep on falling into my hands.

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