Bourne Hall Museum

Epsom & Ewell Ghost Writers

AND

KIDS POETRY COMPETITION

Saturday 14th September

On September 14th 2024 Bourne Hall Museum will be celebrating some of the many writers who have celebrated our local area. All have died, hence ghost writers.

Four re-enactors will be playing the writers details of which ones are on the reverse.

To run alongside the event, we are holding a poetry competition for local children to write poems on what they like about the local area or a local place.

These will be judged by the poet Ana Mclaughlin (shown above) in the following age groups: 5–8, 9–12, and 13–16. If there is the demand, we could add a further older age group. The top three in each group will win a signed copy of her new anthology Heroes and Villains, which will be presented by her at an event in October at Bourne Hall. Poems should be emailed to me at dbrooks@epsom-ewell.gov.uk or dropped off at the Bourne Hall reception desk by 14 September.

Mrs Beeton the Victorian author of the Book of Household Management, wrote one of the most famous cookery books ever published. The first instalment, published in 1861, was an immediate success, selling over 60,000 copies in its first year and nearly two million by 1868. She lived in Epsom for many years before her marriage.

Robert Fabian was a police officer, who rose to the rank of Detective Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police. After retirement from the force in 1949, he worked as crime writer. His work was dramatised in the 1954–6 BBC drama series Fabian of the Yard based on his book of the same name centred on New Scotland Yard. He lived locally and died in Epsom Hospital in 1978.

Samuel Pepys had the best-documented life of his time, not just because he was a key figure running the Royal Navy, but because the nine-year period covered by his diary gives a unique insight into his daily actions and innermost thoughts. During this period Pepys visited our area on six occasions: once in 1663, four times in 1665 and once in 1667. He spent time in Ewell and Nonsuch Palace. He makes it clear that he was already well acquainted with the area: a cousin lived at Ashtead and Samuel spent time there as a boy.

Charles Dickens, the greatest novelist of the Victorian period, created some of literature's best-known fictional character. His novels and short stories enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and are still widely read today. Dickens visited and wrote about the Derby, and it even appears in one of his books. He once said that you could fire a cannon ball down Epsom High Street 364 days of the year and it would hit no one, but take out half of England on the 365th – Derby Day.