This was the first of a number of successes Aiken had with the corporation, which was quick to recognise that her ability to tell a quirky and witty short story made her the ideal author of any number of Jackanory slots.

Inspired by his success, his stepdaughter wrote her own story, which was immediately accepted by the BBC. Martin Armstrong was an adult novelist, but he had made one foray into children's books, with a series for the rapidly expanding Children's Hour. She was encouraged to write by both her father and her stepfather, but it was the latter who provided the particular starting point.

She had, after all, been brought up surrounded by conversations about the technique of crafting a short story, and what were the key ingredients of a good ghost story - both genres in which she came to excel. She moved on to become features editor for Argosy magazine, before joining J Walter Thompson, briefly, as a copywriter.īut, as the daughter of a writer - her father was the American poet Conrad Aiken - and the stepdaughter of another, the English novelist Martin Armstrong, she had also always been a writer, and the decision to give up going out to an office, in favour of becoming a fulltime writer, was something both she and her sister Jane Aiken Hodge took for granted.

After Wychwood school, Oxford, she worked, initially, as a librarian for the UN Information Centre in London. Aiken was born in Rye, Sussex, and lived not far from there all her life.

Night Fall by Joan Aiken