One of my most cherished memories from early childhood was being kissed by Prince Charming. I had no idea, of course, that this vision of manhood in his soft thigh-length boots and feathered hat who bent down and kissed my hand (which I would not allow to be washed for days) was a woman.
Whether I was disappointed when I found out that Prince Charming was the actress Evelyn Laye, doing a stint in pantomime at the Leeds Hippodrome, I don’t remember. But I can report still to be reeling from the discovery that D.K. Broster – writer of intoxicating novels of derring-do, which transported the twelve-year-old me from the confines of boarding school into the realms of pure romance – was also not a man!
It was trawling the internet on some quest or another (a friend calls this activity ‘falling down the rabbit hole’) that I happened on this unwelcome news. A woman! D. K. Broster? 
Impossible. My yelps of dismay attracted the attention of my husband. He was sympathetic but uncomprehending. And, on reflection, should I not be glad to be able to add another name to the canon of women writers? Another victory for the sisterhood?
But I don’t want D.K. Broster to be a woman. And what about Violet Needham and Harrison Ainsworth and all my other childhood favourites? Could they have been deceiving me too? Was John Buchan, perhaps, a Surrey housewife? Could P.C. Wren have been a lady, and the writer of Jean’s Golden Term a man?
Not only has the swashbuckling (as I had imagined) author of The Flight of the Heron turned out to be a woman, but also an alumna of my old college! More astonishing still was the discovery that while I was devouring her books behind the walls of Battle Abbey School, D.K. Broster was living down the road with a long-time female friend and companion.
Dorothy Kathleen Broster, born in Liverpool, 1877, died in Battle, Sussex, 1950.