The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

October 2, 2016

October 2, 1941

Diana Hendry (October 2, 1941) is apresence on the  British literary scene. According to a site on Scottish poetry:

Diana Hendry grew up by the sea and has worked as a journalist, English teacher and tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol. Her poetry has won a number of awards including first prize in the 1996 Housman Society Competition. She was Writer in Residence at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary 1997-1998 and she was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Edinburgh 2008-2010. She lives in Edinburgh.


She has published six collections of poetry:
Making Blue (1995), Borderers (2001) both published by Peterloo; Twelve Lilts: Psalms & Responses (2003) and, with Tom Pow, Sparks! (2005) both published by Mariscat; Late Love & Other Whodunnits (Peterloo/Mariscat, 2008) and The Seed-box Lantern: New & Selected Poems (Mariscat, 2013). In 2013 she wrote the libretto for a choral work, The Pied Piper, music by John G. Mortimer, which was performed in Switzerland. In 2015 she was one of the poets invited to write on the themes of older age by the Baring Foundation, and her poems on the subject can be found in the resulting anthology, Second Wind (Saltire Society, 2015).


Hendry’s short stories have been widely published and broadcast. She has also published more than forty books for children including
Harvey Angell which won a Whitbread Award in 1991 and The Seeing (2012) which was shortlisted both for a Costa Award and a Scottish Children’s Book Award. Two of her picture books have been dramatised by Blunderbus Theatre Company. She has also published a collection of poems for children, No Homework Tomorrow (Glowworm Books, 2003).

Diana was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson fellowship in 2007. She is co-editor (with Gerry Cambridge) of New Writing Scotland 33.


The above, called her "Full Biography," leaves out her life. Her husband Hamish Whyte, is also a writer. They live in Edinburgh, have children and grands. She wrote this:


Cat in the Apple Tree


When, for the umpteenth time he's outflitted
within paw's reach of the taunting bird, heart
goes out to him – his folly, persistence,\
trapeze artiste's brilliance. 'Wings? Flight?'
you can hear him thinking, 'Who could believe it?'

Cat, all us outreach workers crouched
in the blossoming foliage of our head-sets
are up there with you. Obsessed. Deluded.
Still hoping. Did God say something just then?
Was that a poem flew by? Tomorrow we'll catch it.


Hamish Whyte included this poem in the book he edited, The Scottish Cat , (1987).

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