Lucilla Andrews
Personal Information
Description
Lucilla Matthew Andrews was born on 20 November 1919 in Suez, Egypt, the third of four children of William Henry Andrews and Lucilla Quero-Bejar. They met in Gibraltar, and married in 1913. Her mother was daughter of a Spanish doctor and descended from the Spanish nobility. Her British father workerd by the Eastern Telegraph Company (later Cable and Wireless) on African and Mediterranean stations until 1932. At the age of three, she was sent to join her older sister at boarding school in Sussex. She joined the British Red Cross in 1940 and later trained as a nurse at St Thomas' Hospital, London, during World War II. In 1947, she retired and married Dr James Crichton, and she discovered, that he was addicted to drugs. In 1949, soon after their daugther Veronica was born, he was committed to hospital and she returned to nursing and writing. In 1952, she sold her firt romance novel, published in 1954, the same year that her husband died. She specialised in Doctor-Nurse romances, using her personal experience as inspiration. In 1969, she decided moved to Edinburgh. Her daugther read History at Newnham College, Cambridge, and became a journalist and Labour Party communications adviser, before her death from cancer in 2002. She died on 3 October 2006 in Edinburgh.
Books
The Lights of London
It is February 1945, and war-weary Londoners, having survived the Blitz, flying bombs and hardships of every kind, are now under assault from a new and even more deadly weapon: Hitler's V2 rockets. Returning on sick leave to his old hospital, St Martha's, after four years of active service, Captain Charles Bradley finds himself working alongside old colleagues once more when a nearby street market is hit and casualties are heavy. For the staff and patients of Alex Ward, weary but still cheerful after five long years of war, this is just the latest emergency in a series of tragedies that has left none of them untouched.
Front Line 1940
It is September 1940. Over southern England the undecided Battle of Britain rages on, and on the French coast the German Army prepares to invade England while Londoners bask in the late summer sun that before it sets will see the capital blasted into the front line of the Second World War. Visiting a wounded family friend in St Martha's Hospital, American war correspondent Josh Adams meets the young staff nurse in charge, Ann Marlowe, who will end his professional detachment from the war. Caught together in the first daytime bombing raid on London, Josh and Ann form an unbreakable bond. In the terrifying weeks that are to come, as the fury of the blitz is unleashed on the capital, Ann is constantly in danger as more of Martha's own are killed and more of the hospital is destroyed, but nothing will persuade her to leave. Josh, convinced England is about to be beaten, is amazed by the indomitable spirit of Londoners who, facing a nightly barrage of German bombs, refuse to be defeated. As 1940 draws to a close, Josh and Ann are closer than ever, sure that whatever the future holds for them and England, their love for each other will survive. Front Line 1940 is a moving love story set against a marvellously accurate and evocative picture of London in the blitz. Lucilla Andrews draws once more on her experience of wartime nursing to reveal in thrilling detail the life-and-death dramas of a great hospital in a city under continuous air attack.
A Weekend in the Garden
June 1951 in The Garden - a small cottage hospital in rural Kent when antibiotics were still regarded as new wonder drugs, the patients wireless-headphones as luxuries, and the first television set had not yet arrived. And where the hard-pressed staff had to deal with the heatwave, staff shortages, pile-ups on the new bypass, post-war austerity, their own and their patients’ personal problems, and the first effects of the three-year-old National Health Service. This story of one hot, hectic weekend in the hospital puts staff, patients, visitors - and love - under a microscope. Two men love the same woman and all three know in full what love means and costs; and that other love between staff and patients that was as tangible as the long hours and short pay. Whatever happens, the life of the hospital goes on and being a normal hospital, tears, laughter, grumbles, tragedy, joy and shining courage are part of its normal life. In the new novel from Lucilla Andrews, the second of the trilogy begun with One Night in London, we follow the lives of the four young people who worked together in ‘Wally’s’ Ward in the much-bombed St Martha’s Hospital on that traumatic night.
The Crystal Gull
Serena Mathers keeps meeting Joe Verica in the middle of disasters - first an airplane crash, then a fire, then an avalanche. But is the biggest disaster his proposal of marriage?
The New Sister Theatre
Not even her appointment as Sister General Theatre could free Margaret Lindsay from her unhappiness when Joe de Winter broke off their engagement, and it was rumoured that the reason was Joe's friendship with an attractive hospital pathologist. But then, when her friends became evsive at the mention of Joe's name, and when Joe himself was obviously unhappy, Margaret suddenly learned the reason for his decision - and knew she must be the one to make a reconciliation...
In an Edinburgh Drawing Room
Britain, midwinter 1980-81. Before the New Year arrives, the lives of four young people will be transformed when they are brought into contact after a tragic train crash. Mary Hogg, is the senior staff nurse in an Intensive Therapy Unit of a small English hospital; Jason MacDonald is a surgical registrar in St Martha's hospital; Francesca Turning is returning to her Edinburgh teaching hospital; and reporter Dave Oliver is traveling north for a Hogmanay story - and becomes front page news himself. As the four lives collide, a searing hospital romance evolves...
The Africa Run
It's summer 1955 and three people who were wartime friends are appalled to find they are fellow travellers on a small, old British passenger liner on the ten-week round-Africa run. Elinor Mackenzie, widowed during the war, is now determined to make a new life for herself. Dr Paddy Brown is sailing around Africa to convalesce from the polio that has ruined both his intended marriage and his soaring medical career. George Ashden, ex-GP, is travelling to Rhodesia. Recently widowed, he is still haunted by his unhappy marriage—and the memory of Elinor in 1945. It is only in the Suez Canal that Paddy finally discovers the secret which Elinor has known since Genoa. And in the burning heat of the Red Sea his action forces the three old friends into the inescapable proximity of passengers in the same class. Swinging between dark, bombed wartime London and the brilliantly sunlit decks of the liner, The Africa Run is a memorable and evocative love story.
My Friend the Professor
Young Frances Dorland was in the Preliminary Training School at St. Martha's Hospital when she sheltered from a country thunder-storm with a stranger — a gentle, kindly man who reminded her of her favourite uncle and whom she labelled 'the Professor'. That chance meeting resulted in an undemanding friendship that proved a constant source of help to Frances and her nursing friends in their harassed, hectic lives as 'first-years'. Whatever their problem, the cry would go up, "Francis, ask your Professor!" She was to remember that when she learnt the truth about him ...
In storm and in Calm
Before taking up her eagerly anticipated promotion to Sister Victoria Ward, St Martha's Hospital, London, Staff Nurse Charlotte Anthony spends four weeks in a little hospital on the isolated, far-northern Isle of Thessa. Charlotte quickly learns that instead of the quiet cottage hospital she expected, Thessa General, though tiny, is ultra-modern and staffed and equipped to deal with the variety of medical and surgical emergencies that come in from Thessa, her sister islands, the world's fishing fleets and the oil rigs. The patients come in by trawler, tanker, merchantman, lifeboat, helicopter, ambulance ; at all hours, in all seasons, in storm and in calm. Charlotte encounters new professional problems, new friends - seismologist Rod Hardin.
The Secret Armour
Marguerite Howard is a young nurse completing her training at one of the great London teaching hospitals. David Corford is one of her patients: the pair fall in love, or so they believe, when suddenly David is discharged from hospital. Marguerite sadly continues to pursue her vocation, when all at once a crisis develops. To whom does she turn ? To David? No, to a young houseman named George Hartigan. And who will be the man to help her solve her emotional difficulties? Will it be George, or David, or someone else?
The Light In The Ward
Fourth year nurse, Catherine Newenden, had nothing in common with her flighty cousin. Francine, but when Francine offered her the chance to borrow her smart mews flat, Catherine jumped at the opportunity - telling herself that her eagerness had nothing to do with Francine's charming and attentive older brother, Charles. She hadn't reckoned on the new head of the heart department moving in next door. And Andrew Lairg was most surprised to find that his attractive, feather-brained new neighbour was a junior nurse at St Martha's! Affronted by his arrogance, Catherine was determined that her true dedication and efficiency would never come to light. Until the night that only she could save his life .. . Once again, Lucilla Andrews blends authentic hospital detail with heart-warming romance.
Hospital Circles
When Jo Dungarven, third year nurse at St Benedicts, tried to act as match-maker for her aunt and Senior Surgical Officer, Red Leland, her aunt seemed interested―but then Jo found that she herself was becoming involved. And while hospital gossip linked her name with ‘Old Red’, Jo had to hide her feelings for the patient Bill Francis―Bill, who when close to death had murmured words of love, but on recovery had forgotten her existence.
After a Famous Victory
A dramatic and moving story of the effect of the victory at El Alamein in 1942 - and the military and human aftermath on a Services Hospital in Southern England one year later.