Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > Petre, Diana

Petre, Diana

The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley, [49] 14

Browse articles

20240719100044 Muriel was at a crossroads | The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley Extract

Muriel was at a crossroads | The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley Extract

Muriel was at a crossroads. Something would have to be done, but what? Roger had urged her to ‘let things slide a little longer’. Since then things had indeed slid. She was ill throughout all her pregnancies, worried almost beyond endurance, deeply ashamed, sick and perpetually tired. The longed-for escape from her past that Roger had brought about had simply landed her in a prison of domesticity that every fibre of her being cried out was wrong for her. Instinct told her that she wasn’t meant for this. Before she found Roger she had been fortified in the belief that one day ‘something’ would happen to save her. And something had happened. But instead of walking out into a paradise of freedom she’d walked straight into a trap. She might just as well have gone into a prison cell and closed the door behind her.
20220930171146 Diana Petre | The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley | Slightly Foxed Edition No. 33 | Seasonal Reading

The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley | Diana Petre

Diana and her twin sisters grew up in Barnes, South London, in the care of an elderly housekeeper, having been abandoned in 1912 by their mother, the enigmatic Mrs Muriel Perry, whose real name and true identity were a mystery. After an absence of ten years, Muriel reappeared and took charge of her children, with disastrous results. For the girls, one of the highlights of their isolated lives were visits from a kindly man they knew as ‘Uncle Bodger’. In fact, as Muriel finally revealed in characteristically brutal fashion, he was their father, Roger Ackerley. Unbeknownst to the girls, he lived down the road in Richmond with a retired actress and his three further children.
20200807173552 The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley

‘“It was Uncle who was your father,” she said.’ So begins SF Edition No. 33: The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley, Diana Petre’s utterly unselfpitying and often very funny account of what must be one of the oddest childhoods on record. Diana and her twin sisters were abandoned in 1912 by their mother, the enigmatic Mrs Muriel Perry, whose real name and true identity were a mystery. After an absence of ten years, Muriel reappeared and took charge of her children, with disastrous results. For the girls, one of the highlights of their isolated lives were visits from a kindly man they knew as ‘Uncle Bodger’. In fact, as Muriel finally revealed, he was their father, Roger Ackerley.
20160301111451 Diana Petre, The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley

Evasions and Deceits

Peter Parker, Preface to Diana Petre, The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley

Among the small horde of papers Diana Petre left me as her literary executor when she died in 2001 was a folder labelled: ‘Excuses. Lies. Evasions. Deceits.’ I thought at first that it might contain further notes about her mother, whose unhappy story is so brilliantly told in The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley and whose attempts to hold on to her many secrets involved all these ploys. In fact, it merely contained material Diana had collected for an anthology she once thought of compiling about the ways in which people get out of awkward or unwanted social engagements . . .

Buy related issues of Slightly Foxed