Janet Coggin (3 April 1936 – 23 September 2010) was a British

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...

and

memoirist A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) ...

Early life

Coggin was born in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

in 1936 to Maurice Coggin and his wife Eleanora (née Illeris). Her mother was a member of the SOE during WWII. Her aunt, Joan Coggin, was a detective and children's novelist in the 1940s. Coggin grew up in

Totnes Totnes ( or ) is a market town and civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England, within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is about west of Paignton, about west-southwest of Torquay and ab ...

. Her parents divorced, and in 1949 her mother remarried, to Maj Franklin Lushington. In 1964 Col (as he was by then) Lushington was killed in a car accident; Eleanora Lushington died later the same year at their home in Spain. Brought up by her pacifist father, Coggin attended the progressive

Dartington Hall School Dartington Hall in Dartington, near Totnes, Devon, England, is an historic house and country estate of dating from medieval times. The group of late 14th century buildings are Grade I listed; described in Pevsner's Buildings of England as ...

Dieter Gerhardt

In the late 1950s, Coggin met a South African naval officer,

Dieter Gerhardt Dieter Felix Gerhardt (born 1 November 1935) is a former Commodore (rank), commodore in the South African Navy and commander of the strategic Simon's Town naval dockyard. He was arrested by the FBI in New York City in 1983 following information ...

, at a wedding in Devon.Johnston, Jenny, "Married to a KGB Spy", ''Daily Mirror'', 17 April 1999, p 32. In 1957 they were married. They had three children. In 1966, after eight years of marriage, Gerhardt took her aside and informed her that he was a KGB spy and, indeed, had been one since before they had met. She immediately ended the marriage, and returned to Europe on the next available passage, with her three children. She then lived in Ireland for some years, terrified of being murdered by the KGB. She rented a flat in the Crosthwaite Park area in

Dún Laoghaire Dún Laoghaire ( , ) is a suburban coastal town in County Dublin in Ireland. It is the administrative centre of the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. The town was built up alongside a small existing settlement following 1816 legislation th ...

, working in a variety of jobs to make ends meet. She subsequently taught English in Greece and, returning to Ireland, worked in the Camphill Community, a training college for children with learning difficulties in Naas. In 1983 Gerhardt and his second wife were arrested, and subsequently imprisoned for treason.

Literary career

Her literary output consisted of four novels and two memoirs, most notably a lightly-fictionalised account of her marriage to a KGB spy, ''The Spy's Wife''.

List of works

Novels

*''The Leaving'' (1988: Robert Hale). *''The Bread Man'' (1989: Robert Hale). *''McElhinney'' (1989: Robert Hale). *''Northside'' (1990: Robert Hale).

Memoirs

*''The Spy's Wife'' (1998: Constable). *''High Tide and the Heron Dived: A Totnes Childhood'' (2012: Folly Island Press).

Personal life

Her second husband was Costas Balis, who died in 2004. She died in

West Linton West Linton () is a village and civil parish in southern Scotland, on the A702. It is in the county of Peeblesshire (also known as Tweeddale) and the Scottish Borders council area. Many of its residents are commuters, owing to the village's pr ...

, in Scotland, in 2010, aged 74.Scotland, Civil Deaths and Burials, 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coggin, Janet 1936 births 2010 deaths 20th-century British novelists British women memoirists English women novelists People from Totnes People educated at Dartington Hall School Writers from Cambridge Writers from Devon 20th-century British women writers