Harris, Ruth Elwin

Ruth Elwin Harris began storytelling during the Second World War when she and her brother went to stay with their grandfather in his isolated Somerset house. "We led a very solitary existence," she says. "Not that we minded. We read a lot and made up stories to entertain each other." It is that house, christened Hillcrest, that plays an important part in her Quantock Hills series. "My grandfather bought it in the 1930s from three elderly sisters - all of whom had been painters. Their murals still remained on the stable walls. I used to think about those sisters and wonder about life in the vil...