ELIZABETH BERRIDGE grew up in the 'safe London suburb' of Wandsworth Common. A year in Switzerland and a 'hateful' period at the Bank of England, described in Be Clean, Be Tidy (1949), was followed by work in a photographic news agency. She married Reginald Moore in 1940, published her first short story in 1941 and, in 1943, after the birth of the first of her two children, moved to a remote house in Wales, where Moore edited Modern Reading and other wartime anthologies and she wrote the stories reprinted in Tell It to a Stranger - published as Selected Stories in 1947; they returned to London in 1950. Elizabeth Berridge has published nine novels, Across the Common winning the Yorkshire Post Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1964. She reviewed fiction for the Daily Telegraph for twenty-five years. Her last novel, Touch and Go, has recently been adapted as a play by BBC Radio 4.