Lynne Reid Banks

Lynne Reid Banks (31 July 1929 – 4 April 2024) was a British author of books for children and adults, including The Indian in the Cupboard, which has sold more than 15 million copies and was adapted as a film released in 1995. Her first novel, The L-Shaped Room (1960), was also adapted for the cinema. Quotes I must stress, because a lot of people won't credit it, that it was revolutionary in those days for women to be seen onscreen in news programmes, and we "girl reporters" – there were just two of us – became minor celebrities. ... But we did pioneer new techniques of interviewing, including the vox-pop, where we buttonholed people in the street for their opinions (much to their alarm, at first – they thought we were trying to pick them up. Later we'd be mobbed by people avid to be on telly). Benny Hill once honoured me with a sketch in which I was sent up as eager-beaver "girl reporter Linseed Cranks". Being naive – another period indicator – I was given to wonderful boo-boos such as innocently asking the wife of the Swedish ambassador if her husband had big balls. ("Give, dear! Or throw!" my hilarious colleagues shouted at me for a week.) "TV news in the 50s was more thrilling than The Hour", The Guardian (14 August 2011) Reid Banks joined ITN in 1955, the year the UK's first commercial television channel ITV began broadcasting. The source article concerns The Hour, a drama series set in the BBC's television newsroom of 1955. External links Category:1929 births Category:2024 deaths Category:Women journalists from England Category:Women authors from England Category:Novelists from England Category:Children's authors Category:People from London Category:Women born in the 1920s