Moheard's Blog

Lizzie Enfield [www.telegraph.co.uk 25 Jan.2010] tells us that: Dedications have been around for as long as people have put pen to paper. And it appears to be a fascinating subject. She gives many examples of the discreet, the humorous, and the obscure. I loved Cornell Woolrich’s “Remington Portable No. NC69411” in The Bride Wore Black. And one of Jeffrey Archer’s dedications is to “the Fat Men” who turn out to be his two infant sons. Ah, bless!

I always read the dedications (and the acknowledgements, the publishing history and the source of cover illustrations shown in minute detail hidden at the bottom of the back cover. It’s amazing how some cover images can be broken down into two or three elements where even the smallest parts have a different source, and have to be credited.)

In ‘Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema” edited by Luke McKernan and my partner Stephen Herbert [BFI 1996], they decided on a poignant dedication: “To Gus, who came so close, but got lost along the way”. The book records all the people who made cinema happen before 1901. One of the talented pioneers was Louis Aimé Augustus Le Prince, who filmed a moving picture on Leeds Bridge around 1888, but was unable to project and view the result. Gus disappeared on a train from Lyon to Paris in 1890…….

Leo’s Heroes is dedicated to Orson, my only grandchild. It’s a legacy hopefully he will treasure. I pondered long and hard about adding the other men in my life – my son (in his thirties) and my partner, but finally it felt right to have just one child honoured!

My dad left me a letter welcoming me to the world which he wrote for me at my birth. I kept it all through my childhood folded carefully, and hidden at the bottom of my Snakes and Ladders box of dice and counters. My parents weren’t writers in the usual sense, but this letter shows a creative desire to express an important emotion. And far too late in her life, I realised that my mum could have been a writer despite her background – I enjoyed her letters (from Australia – my parents were Ten Pound Poms in the Sixties) which were well constructed, informative and a joy to read. She expressed herself in paint at the end of her life, and all I can think is that she might have enjoyed a productive creative life if she’d been born into a different family, at a different time and had the money to pursue a dream. (Then came the War ….)

My mum in a play at Elfrida School, Bellingham around the late 1920s. She’s the very still one in the middle of the back row.