The Australian Women's Register

Elizabeth Backhouse speaks of her life and achievements as a writer of novels, children’s stories, plays, filmscripts, a ballet and a musical. She describes her family background; attempted rape; early writing; mother’s inability to show affection; secretarial studies; writing poetry; enlisting in WAAAF; writing Against Time and Place; ideas for books; having books published; The Iron Horse; Enone and Quentin; reviews; themes; In Our Hands; C.H. Pitman; living in England in 1940s; encouragement to write detective novels; working at Korda Films with Paul Vincent Carroll, Leslie Arliss; working for American film-maker Slessor; European travels; writing thrillers, methodology, characterisation; book covers; nursing ill father; living with her mother after his death; rejected novels; The Fourth Picture; The Thin Line; Mirage, and its adaption to film; working as a co-producer; Freemasonry; writing for radio; Kal; Rosie Fishman; Dickens’ Magic; A History of Masonry; Windmill in the Sky; writing and clarity; unpublished works; aborted film Cry of the Gulls; Sparrows in the Square; The Fishbowl; Tune on a Samisen; The Young Vagabonds; musical composition; sponsoring children; painting; relationships with men; Muriel Wenborne-Haynes; her clothing shops; writing income.