Posted by Peter H on June 24, 2007 at 21:51:14 from 81.155.56.43 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: What would Susan's story be? posted by Owen Roberts on June 24, 2007 at 08:06:32:
There was also a nice obituary in MM, but I cannot remember when or who wrote it.
There was an Appreciation of Susie Villard (nee Altounyan) by Roger Wardale in the Summer 2003 MM, p. 4. Susie Altounyan was always 'Susie', and never 'Susan'. Tacqui A, in her autobiography 'In Aleppo Once' says of the Swallows: 'Titty and Roger were very true to life, Susan we thought a little too good'.
The real-life Susie became interested in ballet when she was 14. Shortly before WWII, Susie went to France to help her widowed aunt run a guest house in Brittany. She was captured by the Germans, escaped, was recaptured and spent years in an internment camp. As Alan has point out, she married a French man and made her home in France. They occasionally visited the Lake District, but this was the scene of a tragedy when Susie's daughter Lucine was killed in a rock-climbing accident. Susie died on 8th February 2003. She was surely gutsy enough to be a true Swallow!
If anyone still has the 1992 MM (Vol 1, No. 3), it has an article by me in which I analysed Susan Walker's character and her role in AR's stories. It was from the point of view of a 'Susan admirer', but I dare say the time is ripe for a fresh, more neutral analysis . . .