Mary Burchell


Ida Cook was a British campaigner for Jewish refugees and a romance novelist as Mary Burchell.
Ida Cook and her sister Mary Louise Cook rescued Jews from the Nazis during the 1930s. The sisters helped 29 people escape, funded mainly by Ida's writing. In 1965, the Cook sisters were honoured as Righteous among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Israel.
Between 1936 and 1985, Ida Cook wrote 112 romance novels as Mary Burchell for Mills & Boon. She helped to found, and from 1966 to 1986 was the second president of, the Romantic Novelists' Association. In 1950 she wrote her autobiography, We Followed Our Stars, later re-edited and expanded as Safe Passage, which is currently in print.

Biography

Personal life

Ida Cook was born on 24 August 1904 in Sunderland, County Durham, England. With her elder sister Mary Louise Cook, she attended the Duchess' School in Alnwick and later took civil service jobs in London. Ida with her sister, Louise, developed a passionate interest in opera.
During the 1930s, as part of the work they undertook to help Jews to escape from the Nazi regime, the sisters visited Germany on multiple occasions, using their genuine fanaticism for opera as a cover for their frequent travel. When returning to England, they smuggled valuables, which allowed Jews fleeing Germany to satisfy the British financial security requirements for immigration. They worked with Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss and his wife, the soprano Viorica Ursuleac, who had initially told them of the persecution of the Jews. The sisters helped 29 people escape, funded mainly by Ida's writing. In 1965 the Cook sisters were honoured as Righteous among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Israel. In 2010 they were posthumously named a British Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government.

Writing career

In 1936 Ida published her first romance novels as Mary Burchell. During her career she wrote 112 romances for Mills & Boon, including the famous Warrender Saga, a series about the opera and concert hall world. She incorporated many famous operas into the Warrender series plots. She wrote in the Romantic Novelists' Association's newsletter:
In 1950 she published her autobiography, We Followed Our Stars. In 2008 it was re-issued, re-edited and expanded as Safe Passage.
She ghost-wrote Tito Gobbi's autobiography, My Life.
She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1956 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.

Legacy

In January 2017 Sunderland Council erected a blue plaque commemorating the sisters on the site of their childhood home at 37 Croft Avenue, Sunderland.
In 2017 producer Donald Rosenfeld discussed plans to make a film of the sisters' humanitarian work and his efforts to unseal CIA files on their activities. The film is to be based on a biography of the sisters by investigative journalist Isabel Vincent, which is scheduled to be published in 2020 by John Murray in the United Kingdom and Hachette Books in the United States.

As Mary Burchell

Single novels

  1. A Song Begins, 1965
  2. The Broken Wing, 1966
  3. When Love is Blind, 1967
  4. The Curtain Rises, 1969
  5. Child of Music, 1971
  6. Music of the Heart, 1972
  7. Unbidden Melody, 1973
  8. Song Cycle, 1974
  9. Remembered Serenade, 1975
  10. Elusive Harmony, 1976
  11. Nightingales, 1980
  12. Masquerade with Music, 1982 )
  13. On Wings of Song, 1985

    Omnibus collections

Non-fiction