Olive Dehn

Dehn was born at Belfield Road, Didsbury,[1] near Manchester, England, on 29 September 1914.[2] She was the only daughter and middle child of the cotton merchant Frederick Edward Dehn,[1] a first-generation businessman,[3] and his wife, Helen Dehn, née Susman,[1][4] a German-Jew.[3] Dehn's elder brother was the film critic and screenwriter Paul Dehn.[1][2] At the age of four, she said she liked corners when instructed to stand in one and told stories to her younger brother.[3] Dehn was taught at a girls' school in Seaford, East Sussex,[1] from which she had an unhappy experience.[3] Because education was believed to be useless to girls, she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle in Germany to be taught cooking.[2]

By age 18, Dehn authored a satirical poem, Goebelchen (English: A Half Aryan Ballad),[2][5] describing Nazism as seen by a Dachshund.[3] This was the catalyst of her arrest by the Gestapo and subsequent deportation from Germany under armed guard one year later,[1][5] after the poem was intercepted at the German border en route to Punch in London.[2] Back in England, Dehn wrote stories for the BBC Radio programme Children's Hour,[1] where she used her high-pitched voice to portray boy characters.[3] In 1935, she signed a deal to publish her works with Basil Blackwell in a series based first featured in the Joy Street annuals,[6] and wrote the children's stories,[2] Tales of Sir Benjamin Bulbous, Bart and The Basement Bogle.[4][7] Two more books, The Nixie From Rotterdam and Tales of the Taunus Mountains, followed in 1937.[4][7]

After the Second World War, she moved into the 5.5 acres (2.2 ha) Lear Cottage,[2] near Coleman's Hatch in the Ashdown Forest, East Sussex. Dehn and her family became self-sufficient, raising geese, hens, pigs and sheep and grew fruit and vegetables.[1][3] In 1946, she authored Come In,[6][7] which was followed by Folk Tales two years later.[4] Dehn followed with the writing of Higgly-Piggly Farm in 1957 and The Pike Dream in 1958.[4][7] She won £50 from a radio drama competition with There I Must Be about her experiences of the First World War, and used the winnings to purchase a Red Dexter cow. Dehn's Maran cockerel was awarded first prize at the 1958 National Poultry Show, and was a columnist for Pig Producer magazine.[2] She also wrote for The Observer and Country Life Punch.[4] In the 1960s, she wrote The Caretakers, The Caretakers and the Poacher, The Caretakers and the Gipsy, The Caretakers to the Rescue, The Caretakers of Wilmhurst and Spectacles for the Mole.[4][7]

Dehn was a member of the Committee of 100 not long after it was founded in 1960.[1] She was involved in non-violent direct action against nuclear power,[2][3] and was arrested and deported from Moscow by the KGB in 1974,[1] for protesting against the abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union.[3] Dehn and her husband campaigned successfully to have the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky released in 1976.[2] Her final children's story, Good-bye Day, was published in 1980.[1][4][7] She continued to write poetry,[1] and took the Central Electricity Generating Board to court for "conspiring with the government to make plutonium for the making of nuclear weapons" in 1988.[2] Dehn lost the case.[3][5] In 2006, she published the compilation Out of My Mind: poems 1929–1995, which were primarily composed of rural themes.[3] That same year, Dehn talked about her life and career on an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Woman's Hour.[5][8]

She described herself as a "granarchist" and did not have rules at home.[9] Dehn was married to the actor and libertian anarchist David Markham from 5 June 1937 until his death in 1983.[1] They had four daughters: Sonia, Petra, Kika and Jehane.[4] Through the marriages of her daughters Kika and Jehane, Dehn was the mother-in-law of the actors Roger Lloyd-Pack and Corin Redgrave.[2][5] She died on 21 March 2007, in Wych Cross, East Sussex.[1][3]

The Olive Dehn Papers are stored at the Seven Stories in Newcastle. Her papers were deposited at the museum by her daughters.[6]

• Looking at radical children's literature, no. 1: Olive Dehn's 'Come In'