HONORARY DOCTORS OF LETTERS, 21st November 2002

 

 

The University of Huddersfield awarded Honorary Degrees to Aileen Armitage and Deric Longden on 21 November 2002.

 

Aileen grew up in the village of Lindley, on the outskirts of Huddersfield and is an established bestselling writer. The Brackenroyd Inheritance sold a staggering 154,000 copies in America in the first month of publication and subsequently topped the half-million mark. Her literary career has seen her produce some 34 novels set in a variety of times and places, from Restoration London to late Tsarist Russia. A proud Yorkshirewoman who has celebrated the history of her family, her fictionalised Huddersfield, Hawksmoor was published in 1981 and was the first of a series of novels which traces the story of two families, one rich and one poor, during the period of the Industrial Revolution. The family saga culminated in Hawkrise.

 

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Tarrant, also paid tribute to Deric, the ‘comer-in’, who was born in far-distant Chesterfield. ‘Almost educated’ in Derbyshire, he was in danger of becoming Derbyshire’s answer to Mike Baldwin, running a small factory manufacturing women’s lingerie. Forays into writing and broadcasting in the 1970s led him to become a scriptwriter and self-styled comedian’s labourer for, among others, Les Dawson and The Two Ronnies. Deric had married Diana Hill in 1957 but, sadly, she died in 1985, having been paralysed for the last ten years of her life as a result of ME. From the experience of those years of ‘love and pain’, Deric wrote Diana’s Story, which was first read on Woman’s Hour by Deric himself and voted by Radio Four listeners as the most popular serial in 50 years of broadcasting. His Lost For Words won an International Emmy award and his I’m A Stranger Here Myself chronicled Deric’s first year in Huddersfield with his new wife, Aileen.

The family saga continues…

 

This husband and wife team were watched by their proud daughter collecting those unique awards – our very own Bibliophile owner, Annie Quigley. The family thought that the red hat suited Aileen best!