Tracy Beaker author Jacqueline Wilson says her ‘disapproving’ mother reacted ‘awkwardly’ when she came out
Dame Jacqueline Wilson poses for a picture at The V&A’s Museum of Childhood in 2014, (Dan Kitwood/Getty)
Best-selling children’s author Jacqueline Wilson has described her parents’ reactions when she revealed that she was in a relationship with a woman.
Jacqueline Wilson, the author of some of the UK’s best-loved children’s books, including The Story of Tracy Beaker, Girls in Love and The Illustrated Mum, came out publicly as gay in April this year.
The novelist had never spoken publicly about her sexuality, but insisted that she had “never really been in any kind of closet” and had been living “very happily” with her partner of 18 years, Trish.
Wilson, 74, was married to a man for 38 years before she met Trish, and she told the Yorkshire Post that while her parents did not approve when she came out, it was down to a determination to be disappointed in her choices rather than homophobia.
She said: “My mother certainly disapproved, but she was just being awkward because she had gay friends herself and was very fond of other gay people.
“My mother and I never really got on. She disapproved heartily of my husband and indeed all of my friends.”
Wilson said she was “determined” to make her marriage to printer Millar Wilson work “no matter what” because her own parents had separated.
She continued: “If it had been a modern relationship, my parents would have had a fling for about a month and realised they had nothing in common and gone their own separate ways.
“But they met in wartime, when couples got together quite quickly because they didn’t know what was going to happen the next month, the next year.
“My mother once said, very disparagingly, ‘Oh I wasn’t that keen on him but he was the best of a bad bunch.’
“It was doomed to failure from the start.”
Latest Jacqueline Wilson book features a same-sex love story.
Published this month, the most recent of the 111 books written by Jacqueline Wilson, Love Frankie, tells the story of tomboy Frankie who falls for Sally, the prettiest girl in her class.
Wilson said: “I’d written about teenagers falling in love with boys and I thought, why don’t I write about a same-sex ‘falling in love’ story?
“It was hard for me to think of many recent books which deal with two girls falling in love.
“Whether you’re gay or straight or not decided, falling in love is such an extraordinary thing, it blows you away. I thought any young person might be interested in the whole phenomenon.”
