The children’s author, Dame
Jacqueline Wilson, has said her elderly mother slept with a gun beneath her pillow.
Wilson, creator of the Tracy Beaker series, told an audience at the Hay festival in Wales that she was the daughter of a character more colourful than any she had written – and that she was terrified her mother might shoot her by accident, and persuaded her to get rid of it.
Speaking in a talk recorded for BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life, she recalled how she had made the discovery: “One time, when she was very elderly and I went to visit her, because I’m an only child so I had to keep an eye on her, she said, ‘I’ve got something wonderful I’m keeping under my pillow’.
View whole article