When I was around 9 or 10. I wrote stories in boarding school and I was never at a loss for a companion on the long school walks weekends. In the 1990s, many poems and short stories were published in anthologies. I was awarded prizes for poetry at an open ceremony. I contributed to Poetry Review and Discuss. Linked in. But I always wanted to rewrite some of the great children's classics and here is the first: Beauty and the Beast. It has a good plot and there have been many versions over time. My Bella is a little different. My family settled in Cambridge at the end of the war where I continued my education and, after 6th form, I read Philosophy at U.C.L London. After sundry jobs including the News of the World office and the Inland revenue, I married John Wyon Burrow who later became an eminent historian before he died of cancer in 2009.