Lucille Iremonger

Writes Two Entertaining Books

LUCILLE IREMONGER, who lived in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, and in Fiji and New Zealand, in the early ’forties, is having a considerable —and well-deserved—success as author, broadcaster and lecturer. Her new book, “Creole” (Hutchinsons) is already among the best-sellers.

Mrs. Iremonger was born, and spent her early years, in Jamaica; and “Creole” is a vividly-written study of what is called the “colour problem,” as it is seen in the West Indies. A young English man, with a background of good birth and culture, is lonely in Jamaica, and is

trapped into marriage with the 16-years old daughter of a family of mixed blood —French and coloured. Soon, he is in volved in social, economic and emotional troubles which threaten to wreck his life.

The author, while telling an enthralling Story, also presents to us the age-old problem of the mixed-blood. It is a story that has its counterpart on many islands Mf lv S °iS* I Ta'hamv" endS?' ““ 6 SKllluuy ’ glves 11 a nappy ending, Pacific Islanders are certain to be in terested in Mrs. Iremonger’s first book, “It’s a Bigger Life,” published in 1948.

It not only has literary craftsmanship and high entertainment value (it ran quickly into a second edition, and was awarded the Lady Brittain Trophy), but it also describes faithfully, and most amusingly, her experiences in Ocean Island, Tarawa, Funafuti and other islands of the Ellice Group. The book is written with rare humour and shrewd

comment; but Mrs. Iremonger had very little to be funny about.

Mr. Tom Iremonger—a cousin, by the way, of Anthony Eden—met this young writer in London. She had graduated MA at Oxford, and had already estab lished herself in Fleet Street as journa list and script-writer. Iremonger had joined the British Colonial Service and, just before World War II broke out, they were married, and he was sent out to Ocean Island as a Cadet Officer. Ocean Island (then G & E Colony headquarters) posted him to Funafuti as Administra tive Officer; and they had about a year there, together. Life in the “Lousy Islands”—that long chain of unproduc tive, mosquito-ridden atolls —is very hard on women; and it was especially tough on Lucille Iremonger because she became most seriously ill, and spent months in bed, before the thrice-welcome move to Fiji was decided upon.

Nonetheless, she describes faithfully, and very amusingly some of the more famous institutions of the Colony—the etiquettes of Ocean and Tarawa, the furious speed of the now defunct John Williams V, the graceful lines of the Nimanoa (a war victim), the extra marital habits of the Ellice folk, and the special kind of seasickness kept for passengers by the Kia Kia—still float ing, by the way, and still loathed by sea travellers.

In the Colony, in 1940, Mrs. Iremonger met the five civilians who, with 17 New Zealand soldiers, were so foully murdered by the Japs on Tarawa on October 15, 1942 —Captain I. R. Handley, the Rev. A.

L. Sadd, Messrs. R. G. Morgan (official), B. Cleary (hospital staff), and A. Mc- Arthur (trader). That massacre shocked her profoundly, and all the details of it are given in a series of appendices, of historical value. Here, for example, is the story of how that grand, 80-years-old mariner, Isaac Handley, defied and fought his yellow torturers right up to the mo ment they cut off his head; and of how the gentle LMS missionary, Mr. Sadd, tried to use his own body to shield his fellow-prisoners against the murderers’ bullets.

It is a delightful, readable book. The writer has taken no liberties with facts and —except for references to the Kia Kia —there is not a spiteful word in it.

One notes, by the way, that Tom Ire monger was a Conservative candidate in Birmingham in the last British elections.