Susan Barrie

Ida Crowe was born on 12 April 1908 in Lewisham, Kent, England, the daughter of a single mother and a unknown father, who was rumoured to be a Russian duke, who her mother met at a ball in Greenwich. Ida narrowly escaped being smothered with a pillow by the nurse who attended her birth. From the age of ten, she knew she wanted to write. She began to write while still at school encouraged by her mother, with whom she lived in Hastings.

Writing fiction since her very early teens, and setting her first publication ‘Palanquins and coloured lanterns’ in 1920's Shanghai, she had several stories in major magazines and short novels in print. At 20, she visited George Newnes's office in London, to sell her first full-length manuscript where she eventually met one of its editors, 39 year old Hugh Alexander Pollock (1888–1971), a distinguished veteran of World War I. Hugh had been married since 1924 to his second wife, the popular children's writer Enid Blyton, with whom he had two daughters Gillian Mary (1931–2007) and Imogen Mary (born 1935). Hugh was divorced from his first wife, Marion Atkinson, with whom he had two sons; William Cecil Alexander (1914–1916) and Edward Alistair (1915–1969).

At the start of World War II, during the Blitz, Ida worked at a hostel for girls in London. Hugh, who had left publishing to join the army, was Commandant of a school for Home Guard officers, and his second marriage was in difficulties. Ida and Hugh met by chance, and feeling that Ida should be out of London, Hugh offered her a post as civilian secretary at the training centre. She accepted, and as the months went by their relationship intensified. During a bungled firearms training session Hugh was hit by shrapnel on a firing range, but when Ida contacted Enid, she declined to visit her husband, stating she was busy and hated hospitals.

In May 1942, when Ida was visiting her mother in Hastings, a bomb destroyed the house. Ida escaped unhurt, but her mother was in hospital for two weeks. Hugh, who was sent overseas, paid for Ida to stay at Claridges, and decided to divorce his wife, who in 1941 had met Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters and had begun a relationship with him. To get a quick divorce, Hugh cited his own adultery in the divorce petition. On 26 October 1943, Ida married Hugh at London's Guildhall register office, six days after Enid's marriage with Darrell Waters. In 1944, they had a daughter Rosemary Pollock, also a romance writer. Enid changed the name of their daughters, and Hugh did not see them again, although Enid had promised access during the divorce.

After World War II, George Newnes, Hugh's old firm, decided not to work with him anymore. They also represented Enid Blyton and were not willing to let her go. After this the couple experienced financial problems and, in 1950, Hugh had to declare bankruptcy while he struggled with alcoholism. A determined Ida plunged back into her literary work, and deciding to write popular contemporary romances, she sold her first novel to Mills & Boon in 1952. Being in print with several major international publishers at the same time, she decided to use multiple pseudonyms. At that time, the pseudonyms were registered by the publishers and not by the writers. In the 1950s she wrote as Susan Barrie, Pamela Kent, Rose Burghley, and Mary Whistler to Mills & Boon, as Averil Ives and Barbara Rowan to Ward Lock, as Anita Charles to Wright & Brown, as Jane Beaufort to Collins. With the production of ten or twelve titles every year, it was not long before she became hugely popular.

Eventually Ida became disenchanted with contemporary romances and decided to write her first historical romance, "The Gentle Masquerade", published in 1964 under her married name, Ida Pollock. After its success the Mills and Boon's "Masquerade" series of historical romances was launched. Ida wrote four more novels for this series as one of the four founding writers. Under her last pseudonym, Marguerite Bell, she also wrote historical romances. In the 1970s she slowed down, but continued to write. Besides romances she also published, as Barbara Rowan, a suspense novel and two Children/Young Adult books. Ida has more than a hundred novels under her married name and under her numerous pseudonyms, most of her novels have been reprinted by Mill & Boon (or Harlequin in the United States). Ida was a founding member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, and in 2010 she helped in its 50th anniversary.

During her marriage Ida travelled widely and lived in many parts of England. It was their daughter's bad asthma that brought the Pollocks to Cornwall. They also lived in Ireland, France, Italy, Malta and Switzerland, where they obtained a lasting cure for Rosemary's debilitating asthma. Hugh died at 8 November 1971 in Malta, where he is buried in the British military cemetery. After her husband's death, Ida returned with her daughter to England and they lived for several years in Wiltshire, before moving to Lanreath in 1986.

Ida was also a recognised oil painter, and was selected for inclusion in a national exhibition in 2004. She also made model houses, usually scale miniatures of Georgian or Tudor buildings. Ida's autobiography, Starlight, published November 15, 2009, tells the story of the start of her career, her marriage, and her husband’s relationship with his ex-wife Enid Blyton.

She died in 2013 at the age of 105.