Last year I received proposals from 15 young ladies. I accepted them all.
The young ladies are students at two schools, Bullers Wood and Newstead Wood, in Bromley
where I and my family lived for many years. They have set up their own company, Aurum, under the
Young Enterprise programme. Amongst other things, they seem to have adopted Modesty, or perhaps it
is Willie Garvin up to his old tricks. That is how they came to send me their proposals, one of
which was to create a website for Modesty Blaise Ltd. This is the company which owns the rights to
my works, including Modesty Blaise and the romantic novels which I wrote under the name of Madeleine
Brent.
The company has never had its own website. However, fans of my work have, for many years
now, created and run excellent websites to which I have been pleased to make small contributions
from time to time. Long may they continue to do so.
My grandchildren like the idea of a company website. Little did they or I realise how much
homework the young ladies from Aurum would set me. Many editors have made less demands. In truth I
have enjoyed it and I thank them for all of their interest, hard work and research.
In designing the site, the young ladies and I have been very conscious of the mass of
information which is available on the existing websites. Some duplication is inevitable, but our
approach has been to keep this to the minimum and to try to come up with different things which we
hope will be of interest to you.
Peter O'Donnell
1st March 2007
