Press

HONORARY DOCTORS OF LETTERS, 21st November 2002

The University of Huddersfield awarded Honorary Degrees to Aileen Armitage and Deric Longden on 21 November 2002.

Aileen grew up in the village of Lindley, on the outskirts of Huddersfield and is an established bestselling writer. The Brackenroyd Inheritance sold a staggering 154,000 copies in America in the first month of publication and subsequently topped the half-million mark. Her literary career has seen her produce some 34 novels set in a variety of times and places, from Restoration London to late Tsarist Russia. A proud Yorkshirewoman who has celebrated the history of her family, her fictionalised Huddersfield, Hawksmoor was published in 1981 and was the first of a series of novels which traces the story of two families, one rich and one poor, during the period of the Industrial Revolution. The family saga culminated in Hawkrise.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Tarrant, also paid tribute to Deric, the ‘comer-in’, who was born in far-distant Chesterfield. ‘Almost educated’ in Derbyshire, he was in danger of becoming Derbyshire’s answer to Mike Baldwin, running a small factory manufacturing women’s lingerie. Forays into writing and broadcasting in the 1970s led him to become a scriptwriter and self-styled comedian’s labourer for, among others, Les Dawson and The Two Ronnies. Deric had married Diana Hill in 1957 but, sadly, she died in 1985, having been paralysed for the last ten years of her life as a result of ME. From the experience of those years of ‘love and pain’, Deric wrote Diana’s Story, which was first read on Woman’s Hour by Deric himself and voted by Radio Four listeners as the most popular serial in 50 years of broadcasting. His Lost For Words won an International Emmy award and his I’m A Stranger Here Myself chronicled Deric’s first year in Huddersfield with his new wife, Aileen.

The family saga continues…

This husband and wife team were watched by their proud daughter collecting those unique awards – our very own Bibliophile owner, Annie Quigley. The family thought that the red hat suited Aileen best!

The Frink Award Winner, 1988

Aileen Armitage has broken out of her "grey disorienting world" to write best‑selling novels

 Interview by Belinda Edwards

For most of us it is hard to imagine what it is like living in a world of total darkness; even being in a black room at night is often more than we can cope with. Aileen Armitage, winner of last year's Frink Award (for working with visual disability), certainly knows this black world. But her overwhelming courage and optimism are such that no corner of her world is too dark.

Aileen's sight loss was gradual, though total for two years. However, now after a series of operations, she does have three per cent of her vision restored which means she is just about able to make out shapes but colours are still virtually impossible. She describes her world as "a grey, disorienting world, with occasional shadows", and, in a typically positive way, counts her blessings for having once been able to see so that now she is at least able to recall the beauty of the sun rising.

What strikes you immediately about Aileen is her zest for life and her lively sense of humour. She is one of those fortunate people who has a natural ability to laugh at herself and the mistakes she has made along the way; she gleefully remembers the time she fed pineapple chunks to the cat and chuckles about the day she angrily called out a council worker to complain about an open manhole in the street which turned out to be nothing more than the shadow of a tree. Nevertheless, Aileen's world is not without occasional moments of fear. She says her biggest phobia is probably staircases, having once fallen down her own stairs at home and through a glass panel at the bottom, ending up in need of 180 stitches in her head.

Over the years, Aileen's courage and tenacity have indeed been put to the test but because she has such fighting spirit she has pulled through ‑ not on ' ly that she has triumphed to become a well‑known novelist. Aileen graduated from Hull University and then spent a year doing a postgraduate teacher training course. She went on to teach English and French and married her university sweetheart, Peter Quigley. Together they had four children. Before too long her sight began to deteriorate and eventually she had to give up her work. To take her mind off her troubles she concentrated more and more on writing, which had long been one of her hobbies. Encouraged greatly by her night school teacher, she submitted short stories to various magazines and started work on her first novel. In a world of increasing darkness , Aileen says she felt "like St Paul on the road to Damascus", for suddenly in writing she found a light to believe in, a way out of the darkness.

Sadly this was not enough since by this time she was not only experiencing extreme problems with her vision but also her marriage. This is not a subject on which Aileen likes to dwell, since she recalls it as a very black phase in her life, a time of "total physical and spiritual isolation". Her husband was simply not able to cope with her increasing disability and was "unable to give me any support". It was at this time that Aileen began work on her first bestselling novel, A Dark Moon Raging, a story loosely based on an actual murder. She took the tale of Constance Kent, a 16year‑old accused of murdering her half brother. She adopted this to the point of view of a human being wrongly accused and says: " It was a very gloomy book written at a gloomy time ‑ but it was the sheer isolation that captured my imagination and I hope that of my readers."

As soon as she was financially able Aileen gathered all her courage and walked out on her husband, closing the door on 27 years of marriage. By this time most of her children were old enough to look after themselves, except for the youngest, whom she took with her. She took off to a remote part of Yorkshire to be near her elderly parents and she began research on the first novel in her Chapters trilogy. The fact that she was without a partner actually made her more determined. She admits to having had lot of fighting spirit since childhood. “I always wanted, not necessarily to be the best, but at least to be alongside the best in whatever I did; but I have never been aggressive." Writing now became even more important since it was her only way to reach a wider audience. Chapters of Innocence was the first part of the trilogy and tells the story of Eva, a young girl living on a remote Yorkshire form. In the second of the series, Chapter of Echoes, Eva grows up and travels abroad to experience all sorts of adventures and in the final part, Chapter of Shadows (due out next spring), we read of Eva's children and their life in the 1980s. The series is dominated by a tone of optimism which penetrates all her work. "The aim in all my books is to entertain, and however sad the story is, there is always a note of hope."

But perhaps the happiest chapter of her life come when she met Deric Longden, fellow writer, after living on her own for four years. Deric has himself just completed a book entitled, Diana's Story, in which he recounts the last ten years of his first wife's life, who died recently of a mystery illness. The two met at Swanwick writers' conference when Deric heard Aileen's voice wafting down the corridor and decided he liked the sound of it so much he had to  meet her. Now they live together in their Yorkshire home, apprpriatly called Chapters and although Aileen is clearly a very independent woman, Deric does help her enormously, indeed to such an extent that Aileen says, "Who needs a guide dog when they've got a Deric?" He enjoys ferrying her to the library and remembering to put the sugar back where the sugar belongs and not where the salt belongs.

Aileen is not self conscious about her blindness. This is partly because she is able to get around on her own and partly because it is very difficult to actually tell she is blind just by looking at her since her eyes are very bright and lively. Because blindness happened to her gradually, her children were able to prepare themselves and treat her like any other Mum.

Winning the Frink Award has also been a big boost to Aileen's self confidence. She has had to make many speeches, give radio interviews and attend functions. She is very grateful for having had the opportunity to do this since she has been able to speak to a wide section of business people and has made a huge effort to stress the importance of treating blind people just like normal individuals and giving them the chance to show what they can do. Aileen feels strongly that "disabled people are often patronised by the general public who tend to feel embarrassed and don't know how to treat them. For example, somebody might say, 'Look at that beautiful sunset, and then realise that person is blind and apologise when really the blind person would much rather they just carried on normally and went on to describe the beautiful oranges and reds. The theme of this year's Women of the Year luncheon is HELP and the greatest help we can give is if we can let dlisabled people into our world by behaving quite naturally with them."

Aileen has always set out to be an achiever and is obviously an extremely capable and positive person. She claims that "the biggest trigger has been the complications of a bad marriage and blindness which together have meant I have had to fight to survive." However, the biggest incentive has been her children who kept her going through the darkness. They have now all moved on to pursue their careers and Aileen and Deric live alone in Yorkshire. They plan to get married next year and to do some travelling. That is when Aileen can fit it in, since she still has many ideas for future novels. But whatever she does she’ll do it well because she is one of those people who will always cope, no matter what.