The If Game

Catherine Storr (born Catherine Cole; 21 July 1913, London - 8 January 2001, London) was an English children's writer, best known for her novel Marianne Dreams and for a series of books about a wolf ineptly pursuing a young girl, beginning with Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf. She was born in Kensington, London, one of three children of a barrister, Arthur Frederick Andrew Cole (1883-1968), and his wife, Margaret Henrietta, born Gaselee (1882-1971). She attended St Paul's Girls' School, where she was taught music by Gustav Holst and became the school's organist. She went on to study English literature at Newnham College, Cambridge, and at first pursued a career as a novelist without success. Without giving up this ambition she studied medicine, qualifying as a doctor in 1944. From 1950 to 1963 she worked as a Senior Medical Officer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the Middlesex Hospital. Afterwards, while regularly producing new children's books, she also worked as an editorial assistant for Penguin Books, from 1966 to the early seventies. She had met the psychiatrist and author Anthony Storr (1920-2001) during her training and married him in 1942. She had three daughters by this marriage, Sophia, Polly and Emma. They divorced in 1970 and she subsequently married the economist Lord Balogh (1905-1985). She continued writing novels into her eighties. She took her own life at her London flat in January, 2001.