Author Dick King-Smith’s great-granddaughter on completing his final unfinished book | Books | Entertainment

The sternest critic Dick King-Smith ever faced was his wife Myrle. Every evening, after hours spent at his typewriter, the multi-million-selling children’s author would emerge from his study with new pages from his latest animal-themed story.

Handing his manuscript to his wife, he’d gingerly settle himself into his armchair and await her verdict over their ritual pre-dinner drinks. If the work was good, Myrle offered her suggestions, King-Smith’s great-granddaughter Josie Rogers tells me.

And if wasn’t? “If she thought it was rubbish, she wouldn’t say anything – she would just go and make dinner.” Ouch!

Whether King-Smith’s Ambrose Follows His Nose met with stony silence over a fateful tipple we’ll never know – its nine unfinished chapters were only discovered by his middle daughter Liz in 2017, six years after his death at the age of 88.

But Josie, 28, who has completed and published the story with the blessing of her family, says its abandonment doesn’t necessarily indicate her great-grandfather’s dissatisfaction.

“I wonder if he had a new idea and started writing that or maybe he wasn’t sure where to take the plot next,” she ponders.

“He used some of the characters in other books so perhaps he decided to use them in a different context.”

Released as part of Dick King-Smith’s centenary celebrations, Ambrose Follows His Nose is about a rabbit with an incredible sense of smell who must help his endangered relatives.

Josie has dated her great-grandfather’s half to the early to mid-1980s, which overlaps with the publication of his most famous novel The Sheep-Pig, adapted into the hit Hollywood film Babe.

The dog-eared typewritten manuscript overlaid with its author’s scribbles had sat in a dusty attic box for years until Liz found it.

“It stuck out because she had never seen it before and everyone in the family is familiar with Dick’s books even though there’s a lot of them,” says Josie, an editor of children’s educational materials.

“It was very clearly half a book. It just stopped in the middle, which wasn’t surprising because Dick would bash his words out then go back and edit it later.”

King-Smith, whose other hits include The Queen’s Nose, The Hodgeheg and The Fox Busters, didn’t plan his novels in great detail.

“He would start an idea and then go for it,” says Josie.

“He was prolific and quick and wrote most of his books in a matter of weeks or months.”

After much discussion, King-Smith’s relatives decided Ambrose Follows His Nose was worthy of finishing. In spring 2020, they asked Josie if she would consider doing it.

The English graduate, furloughed from work with the arrival of the pandemic, had written from a young age. And Dick encouraged her efforts. “He always read things I’d written and let me read out a poem at his 70th birthday,” she smiles.

She never had a moment’s hesitation about finishing what her relative had started.

“Looking back I was a bit naive about it,” she admits.

“If I did it over again then maybe I would feel the pressure a little more. I just thought, I’ll give it a go and if it’s not any good, I’ll never show anyone.”

The first thing she did was re-read Dick’s stories to understand his voice and identify traits and animal tropes.

“Some were obvious – overcoming adversity or strong, stubborn characters who hold the line but eventually get their way,” she says.

“Less obvious was an animal subverting its particular expectations.”

The hardest aspect was her lack of animal knowledge compared with Dick, a farmer for years. “I was googling rabbit facts constantly to make sure I was getting them right because he knew all of this stuff off the top of his head,” she says.

Josie made “retrospective edits” to finish the plot and include new characters.

“It meant I had to quite heavily edit some of Dick’s existing writing but, knowing this was his only unpublished manuscript, I retained as much of his original writing as possible,” she explains.

“I squirrelled away anything I edited out and tried to reincorporate it.”

By the end of that summer, Josie had added six chapters to the existing nine. Then came the nail-biting moment of sharing the final story with her family.

“They said they couldn’t tell where Dick’s bit ended and where mine began so that was the validation I needed to send it out into the world,” she beams.

She hopes her great-grandfather would have liked it too.

“It’s not necessarily what he would have written but I think I’ve made a pretty good approximation of it as a woman writing in the 21st century,” she says.

King-Smith, who had served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, was 56 and a primary school teacher when he published his first book, The Fox Busters, in 1978.

He would go on to write around 130 books, but it was The Sheep-Pig, published in 1983, and adapted as Babe in 1995 for which he remains best known.

“He was just how you would imagine him to be from his writing,” remembers Josie.

“He was playful and quite silly, and he really loved children, which was great for us and lucky as there were so many of us.”

“Dick was never a super patriarchal or authoritarian figure,” Josie says. “It was more of a fun atmosphere.”

Her great-grandfather was a serial nicknamer.

“I have hazel-coloured eyes, which he described as the colour of the bottom of the duck pond – as in duck poo,” Josie giggles.

“And I’m pretty sure I gave him the idea for one of his later, successful books, Lady Lollipop, and its sequel, Clever Lollipop.

“I went through a phase of being really into princesses and I said to him, ‘Grandad, I think you should write a book about a princess who wants a pig but she can’t because princesses don’t have pigs’.

“A few years later, Lady Lollipop [about a clever pig who wins over a spoiled princess] came out. I think the idea must have percolated inside his head.”

Josie says there is “definitely” a family sense of humour at work.

“It really allowed me to get into that headspace without too much trouble,” she says.

She was born in London and moved to Argyle on Scotland’s west coast when she was nine. King-Smith once journeyed all the way from Bristol to her primary school to give a reading of his stories. I tell her she must have been the most popular pupil.

“I was a kid when The Queen’s Nose was on telly, so everyone was very impressed,” she says.

Like her great-grandfather, Josie prizes her interactions with young fans. Now living in Glasgow, she has an upcoming reading event planned at the city’s Mitchell Library, where she spent many hours during her university years.

“It’s such a shame that libraries aren’t funded properly anymore and I really wish they would be as they’ve been a huge part of my life. It’s massively important for kids to have access to a range of books.”

Her great-grandfather’s stories are still highly relevant today. Indeed, The Hodgeheg, Dick’s tale of a hero hedgehog who must devise away to cross the road, is part of the current school curriculum.

King-Smith’s popularity surged to new heights following the release of Babe. Many children went vegetarian after falling in love with the cute talking pig who avoids becoming pork chops because of his sheep-herding skills.

King-Smith, who did eat meat, adored James Cromwell’s depiction of farmer Hoggett.

“He said he was exactly how he’d pictured him,” Josie says. A special 40th anniversary version of The Sheep-Pig, with a new introduction by children’s author Michael Morpurgo, has just been released.

“It’s so lovely Michael has written it as he knew Dick when he was alive,” says Josie.

“I re-read the book recently. It’s tightly written, small and perfectly formed. And you can’t get away from how charming the character of Babe is – his whole modus operandi is being really kind, sweet and compassionate. It’s a good message for children’s books to have.”

• Ambrose Follows His Nose by Dick King-Smith and Josie Rogers (Puffin, £7.99) is out now. A 40th anniversary edition of The Sheep-Pig (Puffin, £7.99), with a new introduction by Sir Michael Morpurgo, is also out now. Both available via expressbookshop.com or 020 3176 3832 with free UK P&P on orders over £20.