Norah Burke
Norah Burke (2 August 1907 – 1 March 1976) was a British novelist , non- fiction and travel writer famous for her descriptions of life in India during the early 20th century. She also wrote romances under the pseudonyms Andre Lamour and Paul LeStrange. Early life. Norah Aileen Burke was born in Bedford, and moved to India when she was a baby. Her mother Aileen Marion Wrench Burke was born in India. Her father, Redmond St. George Burke, was a forest officer in India at her early childhood. As a girl in India, she wrote and edited her own little  magazine, "The Monthly Dorrit". She returned to England in 1919 to attend a school in Devonshire. Career. Fiction. Burke lived near Sudbury, in Suffolk, as a young woman. Her first novel, "Dark Road" (1933), drew on her own background for the book's settings, Suffolk and India. "Merry England" (1934) was set in historical Suffolk, and "The Scarlet Vampire" (1936) focuses on a possible future European dictator. Her next few novels, romances, appeared during the war and post-war years. In the "New York Times", Nancie Matthews admired Burke's "engaging sense of humor" and "genuine warmth of human sympathy , and declared The Splendour Falls" (1953) to be "lightly handled, witty yet thoughtful". Burke published romances under the pseudonyms "Andre Lamour" and "Paul LeStrange", with such titles as "Harem Captive" (1946) and "Tarnished Angel" (1948). Her short stories were published widely from the 1930s into the 1960s, especially in "The Australian Women's Weekly", and some are still anthologized and taught in schools. She also wrote a 1958 episode of the Canadian television series "On Camera." Travel writing and translations. Burke was also a travel writer. She collaborated with her father on a book about camp life in the Indian  jungles, "Jungle Days" (1935). She returned to the theme in her memoir "Jungle Child" (1956), and in travel books "Tiger Country" (1965) and "Eleven Leopards" (1965). She also wrote about wildlife in "King Todd" (1963, a "biography" of a badger), "Fire in the Forest" and "The Midnight Forest" (1966). Personal life. Burke married Henry Humphrey R. Methwold Walrond (1904–1987), a lawyer, in 1931. They had two sons, Timothy (born 1936) and Humphrey (born 1938). She lived for many years at Thorne Court, in Cockfield, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. She died in 1976, aged 68 years, in Suffolk. Norah Burke