Fotografía de autor

Patricia Robins (1921–2016)

Autor de The Chatelaine

87 Obras 326 Miembros 6 Reseñas 1 Preferidas

Sobre El Autor

Patricia Robins was born on February 1, 1921. After being educated in Switzerland and Germany, she became a journalist. Her first job was as a junior editor with Women's Illustrated magazine. During World War II, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Because of her language skills, she was mostrar más given the job of tracking incoming enemy aircraft using the new British radar system in the filter room. She used bad weather breaks to write stories for women's magazines to earn money for gasoline so that she and her girlfriends could attend NAAFI dances. She became a romance novelist who wrote 160 novels during her lifetime including Mavreen, Tamarisk, Ortolans, Deception, The Faithful Heart, and You Never Know. She also wrote under the pen names Claire Lorrimer and Susan Patrick. She received an Outstanding Achievement Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association. She died from complications following a fall earlier in the year on December 4, 2016 at the age of 95. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Nota de desambiguación:

(eng) Patricia Denise Robins Clark writes as Patricia Robins and under the pseudonym of Claire Lorrimer.

Series

Obras de Patricia Robins

The Chatelaine (1981) 33 copias
Mavreen = Scarlett (1976) 27 copias
Chantal (1980) 24 copias
Tamarisk = Antoinette (1978) 22 copias
The Wilderling (1982) 16 copias
Truth to Tell (2007) 9 copias
Over My Dead Body (2003) 8 copias
Ortolans (1990) 7 copias
You Never Know (2007) 6 copias
Relentless Storm (1979) 6 copias
Frost in the Sun (1986) 6 copias
Obsession (2013) 5 copias
House of Tomorrow (1987) 5 copias
The Spinning Wheel (1991) 5 copias
A Voice in the Dark (1967) 5 copias
Topaz Island (1965) 4 copias
Return to Love (1968) 4 copias
Dead Reckoning (2009) 4 copias
Infatuation (2007) 4 copias
Last Year's Nightingale (1984) 4 copias
Dead Centre (2004) 3 copias
Seven Loves = Fulfilment (1962) 3 copias
Second Chance (1964) 3 copias
Troubled Waters (2004) 3 copias
The Silver Link (1993) 3 copias
Deception (2003) 2 copias
The Shadow Falls (1974) 2 copias
Three Loves = The Reunion (1949) 2 copias
Trust Me (2015) 2 copias
See No Evil (1945) 2 copias
Tree Fairies (1945) 2 copias
The Long Wait (1962) 2 copias
With All My Love (1963) 2 copias
The Fair Deal (1952) 2 copias
Awake, My Heart (1950) 2 copias
Sapphire in the Sand (1967) 2 copias
No Stone Unturned (1969) 2 copias
Where Duty Lies (1957) 2 copias
Sea Magic (1946) 2 copias
None But He (1973) 2 copias
Heaven in Our Hearts (1954) 2 copias
The Night Is Thine (1964) 2 copias
The Foolish Heart (1956) 1 copia
One Who Cares (1954) 1 copia
So This is Love (1953) 1 copia
The Heart of a Rose (1947) 1 copia
Live the Dream (2016) 1 copia
Georgia (2013) 1 copia
Emma (1994) 1 copia
The Runaways (1962) 1 copia
Love Must Wait (1958) 1 copia
Laugh on Friday (1969) 1 copia
Forbidden (1967) 1 copia
There Is But One (1965) 1 copia
Forsaken (1993) 1 copia
No More Loving (1965) 1 copia
Play Fair with Love (1972) 1 copia
Cinnabar House (1970) 1 copia
Love Me Tomorrow (1966) 1 copia
The Garden (1980) 1 copia
One Hundred Pound Reward (1966) 1 copia
The Uncertain Joy (1966) 1 copia
Any Time At All (1964) 1 copia
The Constant Heart (1964) 1 copia
To the Stars (1944) 1 copia
The Last Chance (1961) 1 copia

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Nombre legal
Robins Clark, Patricia Denise
Otros nombres
Lorrimer, Claire
Patrick, Susan
Fecha de nacimiento
1921-02-01
Fecha de fallecimiento
2016-12-04
Género
female
Nacionalidad
England (birth)
Lugar de nacimiento
Hove, Sussex, England, UK
Lugares de residencia
Hove, Sussex, England, UK
Kent, England, UK
Educación
Parents' National Educational Union, Burgess Hill, Sussex, England, UK
Ocupaciones
novelist
Relaciones
Groom, K. C. (grandmother)
Robins, Denise (mother)
Cornwell-Clyne, Adrian (uncle)
Klein, Herman (grandfather)
Biografía breve
Patricia Denise Robins was born on February 1, 1921 in Sussex, England, where she also spent her early school years. She was the daugther of Arthur Robins, a corn broker on the Baltic Exchange and of the popular romance author Denise Robins, who after their divorce, remarried with O'Neill Pearson. Patricia has two sisters, Anne and Eve. She comes from an artistic family, numbering musicians, writers and painters. Her maternal grandfather was Herman Klein, a musician and her maternal grandmother was the writer Kathleen Clarice Groom. Her maternal uncle was Adrian Cornwell-Clyne, who wrote books on photography and cinematography, another uncle was an artist, as is her daughter.

Patricia began writing at the age of ten, encouraged by her mother, who was the first president of the Romantic Novelists' Association (1960-1966). At 12, she published her first children's novella, The Adventures of the Three Baby Bunnies, ilustrated by Grizel Maxwell (aged 14). Patricia worked on the editorial team of a woman's magazine, her post gave her a unique insight into the world of publishing, but it was during the Second World War that her writing career as children's author became established. She produced a serial for Woman's Illustrated, and although her first love was always children's novellas, she could not find a publisher for her work and turned to romance fiction like her mother. She wrote romantic short stories and light romantic novels as Patricia Robins, publishing her works with Hutchinson, Hurst & Blackett and other publishing houses. In the later 1960s, she decided to use a pseudonym Claire Lorrimer, to write longer novels and family sagas. Her historical novels under this penname are characterised by meticulous detail and feeling for the period, often highlighting the situation of women. She believes that once started, a story writes itself. In 2007, she wrote her autobiography: You Never Know.

During WW2 Robins worked in the filter room of RAF Fighter Command with a top-secret radar system that provided crucial information about German bombing raids.  She regretted that the Official Secrets Act prevented her from telling her father the extent of her war work.

Although Patricia has travelled extensively around the world, she has made her home in a four hundred year-old, oak beamed cottage in rural Kent. She enjoys such outdoor activities as gardening, tennis, ski-ing and golf. Her other interests include reading, travel, meeting people and entertaining, but her life is centred mainly around her three children, eight grandchildren, her work and her lovely home and garden.
Aviso de desambiguación
Patricia Denise Robins Clark writes as Patricia Robins and under the pseudonym of Claire Lorrimer.

Miembros

Reseñas

An old book of my Mum's, this is probably a little old-fashioned now in its style, but is still charming all the same.

Ortolans concerns the fate of the Calverley family and their home over many centuries. The characters are believable and written sympathetically.
 
Denunciada
floriferous | Apr 30, 2014 |
Oh dear. Never in the running for literary gold, Claire Lorrimer's writing has slipped even further down the scale, from Philippa Gregory in The Chatelaine, to Baroness Orczy in The Wilderling, before finally regressing to Enid Blyton in The Dynasty. Like badly written fan fiction, every other sentence ends in an exclamation mark, and pronouns have qualifiers - 'He, Guy, thought ... said ...' Also, the chirpy terms of endearment are straight out of a spoof radio show, with 'darlings' and 'old chaps' abound.

Nor could the story or the characters themselves excuse the dreadful technical style, this time. The Dynasty is a tying up of the Rochford family's loose ends, set during the late thirties and into the Second World War, with the spotlight on Willow's niece, Zandra (daughter of the crippled Dodie, who is unceremoniously killed off mid-trilogy). I had high hopes for Zandra, based on her youthful exuberance and confidence in the second novel, but she too disappoints by marrying a pantomime villain. Are we meant to feel sorry for Anthony Wisson, or boo him off stage? The man is an arrogant little peasant who envies the haves of this world, and marries a Rochford to propel himself the rest of the way up the social ladder. Obviously neither his immigrant parents nor the bullies at public school told him that money alone can't buy class or respect. He's so 'evil' that it's laughable - his one facial expression is a narrowing of the eyes and a tightening of the lips (showing distaste/anger/repressed memories, etc.) A few shades of grey might have made Zandra's long, drawn-out sentence of marriage either more interesting, or less obvious, instead of merely echoing Willow's first disastrous union with Rowell Rochford.

The pacing is similarly atrocious - Anthony's sadistic treatment of Zandra sort of peters out during the war, everyone accepts steady but dull Guy Bristow into the fold, and Rochford Manor is once again turned into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. The safe house in France, and the shocking deception at home, come rather too late to counter the first 500 pages of repetitive dialogue and clumsy infodumps, I'm afraid.

I would definitely recommend The Chatelaine, and Lucy in The Wilderling is a worthy heroine like her mother, but don't bother with Zandra's story.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
AdonisGuilfoyle | Nov 19, 2011 |
Reading the first novel in Claire Lorrimer's 'Rochford' trilogy was a guilty pleasure. The story and characters are best described as Victorian-era soap opera fodder, where unlikely and melodramatic events happen to the same few people. Fifteen year old American heiress Willow Tetford stays with the Rochford family in their ancestral home, and falls in love with eldest son Rowell. Against her millionaire industrialist father’s better judgement, she marries him at sixteen and moves permanently to England to live with him and his family, becoming the 'chatelaine' of Rochford Manor. Rowell, of course, has only married her for her inheritance, because the Rochfords have been living in genteel poverty for generations, but she only finds that fact out after much time and suffering. The Rochfords are matriarch Grandmére, the mother of Rowell’s late father Oliver, Grandmére’s sister Aunty Milly the spinster, invalid daughter Dodie, and five sons, Rowell, Francis, Pelham, Rupert and Toby. Two young girls died tragically from diphtheria, which Grandmére attributed to a weak mental strain from the mother, Alice, who also died giving birth to Dodie.

Here’s where the fun starts – beautiful, intelligent but utterly naïve Willow dotes on husband Rowell, who loves only himself. Brothers-in-law Pelham and Toby also love Willow, one of them for her body, the other for her mind. (In fact, everyone loves Willow, even Rupert, who is gay – naturellement – and Grandmére, who grudgingly respects the only family member with balls enough to stand up to the old woman.) Willow moons after her useless and selfish spouse, but when she learns about his secret other life, the penny drops and she realises that she probably married the wrong brother. After ‘losing’ her first baby daughter, Willow suddenly becomes hypersexed, turned on by any man who touches her, and allows one of the brothers to ‘rape’ her (‘No! Don’t! Stop! No – don’t stop!’). As in most family sagas, this illicit act results in a baby. The conception of Willow’s second daughter is even more elaborate. Such revelations are not even ‘spoiling’ the plot, because Lorrimer signposts every twist and turn with less than subtle foreshadowing – people die at convenient times, after helpfully disclosing pertinent family secrets, and paths cross with uncanny accuracy.

For all the great clunking clichés of historical family sagas contained within – the first novel stretches twenty years from the late Victorian era into the Edwardian and out the other end – The Chatelaine is still vastly entertaining, and I am tempted to read the next two instalments. Definitely give Lorrimer a go – the characters are two-dimensional yet strangely likeable, apart from the pantomime villains, and the history is dutifully and accurately researched. Any fans of Downton Abbey are sure to love this excitable, enjoyable claptrap!
… (más)
 
Denunciada
AdonisGuilfoyle | otra reseña | Nov 12, 2011 |
Claire Lorrimer's writing is two parts Baroness Orczy, one part Philippa Gregory - but in the best, most entertaining fashion! The second instalment of the Rochford trilogy covers the First World War, and Lorrimer's attention to historical detail captures a sense of the era, from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 to Armistice Day in 1918, without wallowing too much in the tragedy of war or the social upheaval at home. This is romance territory, after all! Still, the author's patriotism and appreciation of times gone by make even the most melodramatic plot twists seem credible, and that's what keeps me reading.

Sophia Lucienne Rochford, daughter of the saintly Willow from The Chatelaine, is The Wilderling – ‘a cultivated flower that has managed to survive in the wild’. Willow’s firstborn was banished to France by her evil grandmother, where ‘Sophie’ was raised in a convent and ‘educated’, shall we say, in a Parisian brothel. After hearing of her true heritage, Lucy returned to Rochford Manor to claim her birthright – on the very day that Willow finally walked out on her cruel and cheating husband, Lucy’s father, and returned to America. Motivated by financial gain and independence, Lucy moves in with the newly widowed Willow and extended Rochford kin, forging a tentative bond with her half-brother and sister Oliver and Alice. Although the young girl pretends to be cold and uncaring, she is really a ‘tart with a heart’, scared to love anyone after a childhood of neglect and hardship. I actually preferred Lucy when she was calmly rebuffing her tall, dark and handsome husband with her own mercenary logic, but the inevitable transformation from moneygrubbing adventuress to wife and mother, via bright young thing and nurse, is strangely compelling.

Although this is Lucy’s story, the rest of the Rochford clan put in guest appearances – Willow and Toby, Rupert and his gay German lover, Sylvie and Pelham in France, plus assorted offspring. The children are actually the most original characters, and I fear I will have to read the third and final novel in the series, The Dynasty, to follow Dodie’s precocious daughter Zandra through another World War!
… (más)
 
Denunciada
AdonisGuilfoyle | Nov 12, 2011 |

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Estadísticas

Obras
87
Miembros
326
Popularidad
#72,687
Valoración
3.0
Reseñas
6
ISBNs
444
Idiomas
5
Favorito
1

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