READING THE TIMES EVERY day, to keep up with events in the human world, Great
Uncle Bulgaria was always the highbrow Womble. That there should be a
highbrow Womble is unsurprising when you consider their creator, Elisabeth
“Liza” Beresford. With a famous novelist father, she grew up around the
Edwardian literary greats.
Beresford was born on August 6, 1926 in Paris, where her family had moved to
avoid the Inland Revenue. Her father, John Davys Beresford, had published a
number of books, including The Hampdenshire Wonder, a novel whose main
character was based on his friend H. G. Wells.
Beresford, who was 53 by the time Liza was born, wrote mainly supernatural
stories but also reviewed books for the TLS.
Sitting in her home, a Georgian cottage on Alderney that appears to rest on
the twin foundations of books and Wombles memorabilia, Liza remembered her
father.
“He had polio as a child so was on crutches for the rest of his life but he
was over 6ft, good-looking and very good with the girls. He used to walk
miles every day and very quickly, swinging along on his crutches.” He made
his friend Walter de la Mare Liza’s godfather.
“He was a nice man, very kind to me. He wrote me a poem but no one’s ever been
able to read the writing. It’s framed and one day someone, probably from the
British Museum, will decipher it but at the moment it’s an unknown de la
Mare.” Her godmother, the children’s writer Eleanor Farjeon, came from the
same small circle of literary friends. Others included D. H. Lawrence, John
Galsworthy, Hugh Walpole and Rudyard Kipling.
Liza remembers Wells as a small man with a loud voice. “He was rather stern
and didn’t suffer fools gladly.” Her father wasn’t so keen on Somerset
Maugham. “He thought he was a vile man, they certainly didn’t see eye to
eye. But you have to remember it was a very small world and they had lots of
internal skirmishes over who had the best reviews.”
Despite having the most famous writers of the age around her Liza had little
chance to speak to any of them. “In those days, as a child, I was kept very
separate; children were seen and not heard. I was brought in to see my
parents for an hour at teatime, that was it.” Beresford went off with
another woman when Liza was still young, so her mother moved the family to
Brighton, where they took on lodgers to make ends meet.
Liza corresponded in secret with her father until his death in 1947, although
her mother burnt the letters when she found them years later.
During the war Liza worked as a wireless telegraphist in the Wrens. “I used to
love it; we worked underground, like the Wombles I suppose.” After the war
she had to work hard as a freelance journalist to support the family. This
included her husband Max Robertson, the sports commentator, who was out of
work, her mother, who was in a nursing home, and her two children.
Working as both a print and radio journalist she contributed to the Today
programme, Women’s Weekly, Punch, Lady, Calling Newfoundland, Women’s Hour
(“they were a terribly bossy lot”) and many others.
It was at times a haphazard career. She was once so completely disarmed by
Richard Burton’s blue eyes that she forgot her questions on the radio.
Another time she was doing a piece on the Tower of London for the BBC.
Needing a recording of the ravens, she crawled up to the birds on all fours
and decided to do her best impression of a raven cry. Then, when she turned
round, she discovered that tourists were taking photographs of her. However,
back at the BBC, they said it was the best raven recording they’d heard and
promptly put it into the sound library.
In 1964 Liza had her first book published, a children’s story called Awkward
Magic. “I think the Beresford name probably helped, which is why I’ve always
stuck to my maiden name. A lot of people in the literary world knew it.”
More books from the Magic series were published but the family was still
struggling for money until the Wombles came along. “The Wombles saved us,
really.”
Liza described how the idea came to her: “I had both my mother and my
parents-in-law staying in our home in Wandsworth one Christmas. My two
children were going mad by Boxing Day because I kept telling them not to
make a noise as Granny was asleep or Grandad was trying to read. So we drove
to Wimbledon Common and the three of us just let go. We tore up and down on
the grass shouting and screaming at the tops of our voices.
“My daughter Kate came up to me and said, ‘Ma, isn’t it great on Wombledon
Common’ and I thought, that’s, it that’s where the Wombles come from.” Each
of the Wombles was based on a different family member. Madame Cholet
Coburg-Womble was inspired by her royalty-obsessed mother.
The first book was published in 1968, with the first BBC animation in 1973.
“Monica Sims, who was the head of children’s programming at the BBC, said,
after looking at the original books: ‘Elisabeth, we don’t think that’s what
a Womble looks like.’ So they employed a marvellous puppeteer called Ivor
Wood.
For his first few attempts Monica would say to him: ‘No, Ivor, we don’t think
that’s what a Womble looks like’, and I would have to keep taking him for a
drink to keep his spirits up. One day she said: ‘Well done, Ivor, you’ve got
it right.” After the BBC series the Wombles found worldwide fame. Liza wrote
24 Womble books, along with other children’s books and a series of romantic
novels for adults.
Although writers often complain about having to publicise their books, she
enjoyed giving readings far and wide. Occasionally, the subject matter was
lost on the audience. “Once, in South Africa, I was asked to speak to one
hundred Zulus. As soon as I walked in and saw them I knew jolly well there
was no way I could explain the Wombles to them, so I started with: ‘Once
there lived an old man.’ That was Great Uncle Bulgaria, and I managed to
drag it out. At the end the Zulus gave their traditional applause which was
to chant and pretend to throw spears. My guide said it was time to retreat,
one step at a time.”
At the height of the Troubles she went to Belfast on the condition that she
read to Catholic and Protestant children together. Each night she was taken,
after dark, to a different safe house.
The books attracted some surprising fans. “When I went to get my MBE from the
Queen, she talked nonstop about them. She knew more about the Wombles than I
did. She said to me: ‘Personally I always had a lot of trouble with Bungo
because I can’t understand why he should be so bossy – what has he got to be
so bossy about?’ She went on and on and I just sat there saying ‘yes Ma’am,
no Ma’am’.”
Liza is modest about the global success of the Wombles. “It makes people laugh
and that’s the main thing,” she says.
However, she is clear on their legacy. “The Wombles invented recycling. Making
good use of bad rubbish, that’s what they taught us.”
The Wombles books are now sadly out of print
