Career
Spalding was persuaded by Christopher Hill to edit Whitelocke"s massive diary, covering the years 1605 to 1675, which was published by the British Academy. This involved her in journeys to France and Sweden, and long spells at Longleat, where the bulky Whitelocke archive survives. One reviewer described the first volume, which contained the diary and her commentary, as "a wondrous book".
Thereafter, she rejoiced in what she called her "deliciously unstructured life", finding her niche somehow in the theater in the 1930s.
In 1937 she was working at the Maddermarket theatre in Norwich and in 1939 she produced plays in London for the Religious Drama Society. During the war she founded the Oxford Pilgrim Players, a co-operative company of actors.
They claimed to play "any time anywhere", in Welsh miners" halls, schools, universities, once in a garage, in a hospital, in converted stables, in the crypt of Street Paul"s cathedral, and in East End air-raid shelters. They acted in the plays of Strindberg and George Bernard Shaw.
Their performances took them to the Comedy Theatre in London, and Street Martin in the Fields church.
Spalding directed a play in the Regent"s Park Open Air Theatre, and they played scenes from Shakespeare in Wakefield gaol. After the war, and with the advent of television, life was more difficult for a touring company, and Spalding moved into education, lecturing, arranging conferences and exhibitions, advising the National Union of Townswomen"s Guilds on arts, crafts and social studies. She wrote many British Broadcasting Corporation feature programmes, and her documentary play on the women"s movement, With This Sword (written under the name of Marion Jay), was performed with choir and orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall during the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Foreign 14 years she was general secretary of the Association of Headmistresses, finally retiring to devote herself to full-time writing, plus very active participation in the life of her family, her church and village.
She retained remarkable energy and youthfulness into her last years, directing plays in her seventies and eighties, relishing travel in faraway places, and gardening organically at home. While she astonished me with her success in locating some of Whitelocke"s obscure contemporaries, she also filled me with envy at her luxuriant bed of parsley at Welwyn.
She was a sparkling, lively model of the career opportunities that have come to women in the 20th century.
