June began writing stories when she was still at school. “It all began when I submitted a story for my English GCSE and my tutor asked if I had really made it up, so I had to write a sequel to that story to prove it was all my own work!  Then some of the girls in my form wanted some more, so I continued to write.

After leaving school, I became an apprentice with Boots the Chemist, training to be a dispensing chemist, and I wrote a book about all the different aspects of pharmacy in the 1950s.  Of course things were so different then — learning basic first aid, how to remove foreign bodies out of eyes, how to fit a truss, measure for elastic stockings, and, of course, how to actually make pills — not just count them!  All of these things went into the Boots magazine!”

“After my marriage, my young children were always asking for stories.  I never wrote anything down until the grandchildren came along and, of course, they too started asking for stories.  My youngest grandson used to sit at my knee and he always knew when he had heard a story before!  I began to think of alphabet stories that would help my grandchildren to remember as well as to learn, and, of course, they would know if they had heard them before!  I never thought about sharing them with other children, or that even older people might be interested in reading them too so, for all those reading these stories, don't ever give up on having ideas or writing them down”.