Hilda Reid, Born 1898
NOVELIST BETWEEN THE WARS
Hilda Stewart Reid’s father Sir Arthur Reid was the Chief Justice of Lahore, now in Pakistan. She spent her young childhood in India, returning to England for school and University at Somerville College Oxford. There she was a a member of a close-knit group of friends, several of whom went on to have distinguished literary careers. The group included Winifred Holtby, Margaret Kennedy, Vera Brittain, and Sylvia Thompson. Hilda Reid remained particularly close, personally and professionally, to both Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain.
Hilda Reid became a professional author, publishing three novels in the 1930s. During the war she volunteered as an Air Raid Warden in Chelsea. She lived for several decades at 46 Tedworth Square, London, with her sister Leslie and her widowed mother Imogen. Hilda and Leslie came into their twenties just after the First World War and neither married - perhaps partly because of the great number of men killed in that war.
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Connected life stories: Hilda Reid’s brother Philip Reid, her sister-in-law Louisa Reid, her nephew Alexander Reid, and her grandfather Cecil Beadon.
Source: Provided to Lives Retold by Alex Reid, author of this life story and nephew of Hilda Reid, in 2019.