Lynne Ellison recounts how she wrote Roman time travel novel The Green Bronze Mirror at age 14
By Christopher Posner
I wrote the book in the space of a month when I was 14, and not having to put in much effort at school. Parts of it were scribbled down in the back row in Geography lessons. The idea evolved slowly but once it took hold and I got started, the ideas came so thick and fast that I could hardly get them down quickly enough. Probably I could never write with that single-minded determination again. This was my second book, the first being an interminably rambling affair about a wild horse that stretched over ten or twelve notebooks. The animal had so many adventures it must have died 90 years old. I recognised the book was no good but it taught me the value of planning, brevity and sensible chapter division. I was a dreamy bookish adolescent then whose favourite reading was horse stories and the ancient world, preferably Greece or Rome. I loved Rosemary Sutcliffe’s novels. The Romans particularly fascinated me, and still do. If I could find a Green Bronze Mirror and go back there, I would. Oddly enough, I saw a bronze mirror exactly like the one I had imagined in February this year, in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Of course there was a huge fuss when the book was published, because I was so young. My mum and grandparents were delighted, and that was fine. The attention and the book launch in London were nice, but after a while it became embarrassing. I was at an age where I hoped boys might start noticing me, but naturally the book was a real killer. If they got wind that I was a published writer they couldn’t get away fast enough, plus I was shy, a bit dumpy and wore glasses. (This was well before John Lennon made specs trendy.) I haven’t written anything since. After that time, real life took over-A-levels, university, love, getting a job. My book has gathered dust on my shelves for forty years, but now I’m starting to think, why not start turning over a few ideas? There are one or two dusty ones hanging about in the back of my head. Lynne Newark (nee Ellison)
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