Betty Rowlands
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6 October 1923
Betty Rowlands | |
|---|---|
| Born | Kathleen Elizabeth Howard 6 October 1923 |
| Died | 29 July 2020 (aged 96) Bristol, England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | Crime fiction |
| Relatives | Sir Ebenezer Howard (grandfather) |
Betty Rowlands (6 October 1923 – 29 July 2020) was a writer of cosy crime mystery novels set in the Cotswolds and Gloucestershire.
Born in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, to parents Arthur and Kathleen Beatrice Howard (née Brockelbank),[1] her grandfather was Sir Ebenezer Howard,[2] founder of the garden city movement and the first garden city, Letchworth, in 1903. Rowlands had two half brothers from her father's first marriage and the family moved to Bromley, Kent when she was young.
During the Second World War, working at the General Post Office Engineering Department, Betty met her first husband, Bert Jenner and married in 1942. They had three children. They divorced in 1957 and Rowlands married Len Rowlands in 1966, moving to Brimpsfield, Gloucestershire, in 1971.[2]
Writing career
Rowlands began writing seriously when she moved to the Cotswolds and joined local writing groups. At the same time she began teaching adults English as a second language. A number of her early short stories were read on the BBC in the late 1970s and in 1988 she won the Sunday Express / Veuve Clicquot Crime Short Story of the Year Award.[2]
Her first novel was A Little Gentle Sleuthing, published in 1990, when Rowlands was in her late 60s. Her last novel was published in 2014, at the age of 90. She was a member of the Crime Writers' Association.[3]
