Remembering author and alumna K M Peyton: A WHS perspective

Sadly we said goodbye to successful author and fascinating WHS alumna, Kathleen Peyton (known as K M Peyton) who died on 19 December, 2023, at the age of 94. Kathleen was a renowned British author of fiction for children and young adults. She began writing at the age of nine and was first published when she was fifteen. Peyton wrote more than fifty novels, including the much-loved 'Flambards' series about the Russell family before and after the First World War. For her work, she won both the 1969 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association and the 1970 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. In 1979 the trilogy was adapted by Yorkshire Television into a popular 13-part series.

Former WHS librarian Kelly Jones, who met her on several occasions, reflects on her life and her connection to Wimbledon High: 

   "I was so sad to hear that K M Peyton had died not long before Christmas. It was one of the privileges of my life to get to know her in recent years, and thrilling to find myself the recipient of many emails signed off ‘Love Kathy’. Kathleen was actually born in Birmingham on 4 August 1929, but her parents moved to Berrylands, Surbiton, where she attended Manor House Convent School until April 1938.  According to school records, she started at WHS on 9 May 1938, and her father William’s profession was given as Water Filtration Engineer. By the time she left the school in late July 1946, a year after brilliant results in her GCSEs of the time, she had had poems and artwork published in school magazines, and even had her first book ‘Sabre: The Horse from the Sea’ published.  I think she credited the Head of Art, Miss Grace Matthews, with expediting this. Art was ‘my dearest favourite subject with darling Matty and glamorous Miss Shaw’ - they were both exhibiting artists.  So no wonder that when her family moved away to Marple in Cheshire in 1946, Kathy went on to attend Manchester Art School, where she met her husband Mike Peyton.   

As WHS Librarian, and involved with Wimbledon BookFest in its early days, I hesitantly made first contact with Kathy by post in March 2008, asking whether she could be tempted back to Wimbledon in October to take part in a BookFest event. Although living far away on the Essex coast, and claiming to no longer do literary events, she almost jumped at the chance to come, and I invited Julia Eccleshare, the Guardian’s Children’s Book Editor, to come and interview her. The event took place in the School Library on the afternoon of 8 October, and the audience consisted of a handful of girls, some parents and assorted others, including members of the Pony Club! It was an incredible success, so much laughter, enjoyed by all, the telling of stories and stirring of memories triggered the writing of what was to be published as ‘When the Sirens Sounded’ in 2012.  This is an autobiographical story (with fiction thrown in for dramatic effect!), covering her schooldays at WHS , and life as a young teenager living locally during the Second World War.  Because I had first suggested the book and later helped to find a local publisher, a former parent, she started referring to it as my book, which ironically led to me taking on all the unsold copies, and giving them away at school reunions.  So Kathy made a visit to the school archive in December 2011, while researching for the book, and then returned for another BookFest event, coincidentally also on 8 October, four years later, but this time at Cannizaro House Hotel, to launch ‘When the Sirens Sounded’.  All I really remember about that occasion is that Kathy invited me to dinner afterwards at the Fox and Grapes, along with one of her daughters, one of her publishers, David Fickling, and several others, which was a marvellous evening.  My correspondence with Kathy continued. In March 2014 she sent me photos from the Palace of her MBE presentation by Prince William, as he was then.  In August 2019 I was invited to trek out to the wilds of Essex for lunch, a few days after Kathy’s 90th birthday. Here I found her in her element, coming along the country lane with her dogs to greet me off the train (two trains) from London.  We had a lovely ‘chinwag’, (her word) over a bottle of wine, and sat in the garden overlooking the pond, and that was the last time I saw her. She was a remarkable woman, but so down to earth and incredibly modest with it."

The rest is well documented in the many well-deserved tributes and obituaries to her which you can read below.   

Obituary in The Guardian 

January 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/02/km-peyton-obituary-kathleen-peyton

Obituary in the Horse and Hound

January 2024

https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/km-peyton-obituary-847117 

A tribute to K M Peyton

Chronology of Books

Biography