Ngaio Marsh ‘Delighted’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31084, 13 June 1966, Page 2

Ngaio Marsh ‘Delighted’

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, June 12. Miss Ngaio Marsh, the crime writer and theatre producer, is delighted about her D.B.E. award announced in the Queen’s Birthday honours list.

At her flat in Chelsea, Miss Marsh, aged 67, said: “It is a great honour. I am delighted.” She described reaction to the announcement of the award as “like a first night in the theatre. “Messages have been pouring in all day. I cannot really believe it is happening to me. I feel as though it should be someone else,” she said. Miss Marsh was given the award for her services to the theatre in New Zealand and to writing. She is in Britain “on business” until about mid-October —"I would like to stay longer, but taxation problems arise after that period.” Shortly after her arrival in London, her autobiography, “Black Beech and Honey View,” was published in Britain. Sales so far have been “very good.” Born in 1899, Miss Marsh had her first crime story published in 1933 and since then has written about 24 successful novels.

She has been connected with the theatre since she was 19. Awarded an 0.8. E. in 1948, Miss Marsh was uncertain if she would attend an investiture at Buckingham Palace. “I think I will be given it in New Zealand,” she said. Before she returns to New Zealand she is taking a cruise in the Aegean—“l love Greece very much”—and also a trip through Britain’s waterways, “which might add to my knowledge.”