Joyce Nicholson (1919–2011)

This book was owned by my grandparents. They probably bought it some time in the sixties after their conversion to Christianity. They very quickly became involved in the life of their church, and started teaching Sunday School. I assume this was a valuable resource for two green teachers. These days ideas for games can be found on the Internet. But children don't really change. The culture of today might be different, but all kids love games and I'm sure these could be easily adapted for show more today's kids. show less

A straight-forward account of the many obvious reasons why there are no women at the top of bridge.


The thing that surprised me most about this book was how angry it made people. Not long after it came out I was in London playing bridge. I was staying with a girl who wore pants all the time, no makeup, generally completely ungirly. And yet she, like many in the UK were furious to have been called 'women' rather than 'ladies'. I was shocked.

Then again, it was found necessary to counter it. I show more found myself playing a world championship with Joyce not long after the book came out. An English chap came to the table and announced that he was writing a refutation of that dreadful Nicholson woman's book. Did we have any hands to contribute. Well, I rather expected Joyce to hit him with her handbag. Instead she reached into it, pulled out the card of her lawyer and gave it to him with some appropriate 'see you in court' message.

The book did come out, you can find it here:

[b:Why Women Win at Bridge|2802918|Why Women Win at Bridge|Daniel Roth|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/316FT0DTJZL._SL75_.jpg|2828800]

A more ludicrous response one couldn't imagine. Honestly, it's a collection of hands played well by women. I'm so relieved that in general I'm considered a boy in bridge. Anything to distance myself from this humiliating publication. show less

I feel really terrible about this book as I was the one who could have stopped it going to press. Joyce was a fabulous writer of fiction for children, but non-fiction was not her thing.

Maybe part of the problem was that it was her story. Maybe she shouldn't have been the one telling that.

Even worse than this effort was a biography of a Melbourne academic which she was commissioned to write for Melbourne University Press. When I read her first draft I was aghast at her complete lack of show more understanding of and empathy for her subject. Fifteen odd years later I'm still shaking my head about it. Luckily this one didn't see the light of day. show less

I was lucky to be brought up in a household where girls were considered more than equal. It never occurred to me that I couldn't do anything. But other girls tell me that this book was the thing that did it for them. It let them do what they wanted to do.

I was living with Joyce for a while in 1995 and took one such girl home to meet her one day. Joyce was pretty much as Julia was with Julie, if you happen to have seen the movie: entirely disapproving when told she had changed this girl's show more life.

It was pretty funny. show less