Julia Donaldson Gruffalo author speaks of son’s suicide

November 16, 2009 by Baby Chums
Filed under: News

Britain’s favorite bedtime story, The Gruffalo, has a tragic family story around it of mental illness.

Author Julia Donaldson has revealed how she wanted her son Hamish to die before she and husband Malcolm did and how whilst Hamish inspired her to become a writer he was afflicted with schizoaffective disorder and later in life, alcoholism.

She said: “Sometimes I think (his suicide) was an almost unselfish thing.”

On Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs this morning Mrs Donaldson made the tragic admission telling host Kirsty Young she is almost glad her 25-year-old son, who committed suicide in 2003, died before she did.

“During Hamish’s lifetime, when he was drinking very heavily and leading this terrible lifestyle, I used to think “Oh no, when I die, and Hamish grows old”.

“He was a very good looking boy and just the thought of him growing old and being some old wino – of course I didn’t want him to die but I used to sometimes wish that he would die before us.”

Julia wishes she could have done something to help him cope with his mentally debilitating illness.

She said: “When Hamish died everyone was so sympathetic.

‘But I don’t believe people fully understood how hard it was during the 25 years of Hamish’s life.

“We’ve a film of Hamish as a little boy and friends couldn’t understand how we could watch it without dissolving into tears.

“But actually we would watch it and dissolve into tears during Hamish’s lifetime, during the very difficult years in his late teens and 20s.

“Then we were grieving for that little boy. I just wish he could have had a better life.”

Julia Donaldson, 61, who has three other sons said it was Hamish who inspired her to become a writer, adding: ‘Hamish was very imaginative.

“He had an imaginary friend who came out of the mirror – his reflection – and this inspired a series of books about a very naughty princess called Princess Mirror-Belle.”

Despite being published 10 years ago, The Gruffalo’s success is going from strength to strength.

Some of her other works include The Snail and the Whale, Room on the Broom and a Squash and a Squeeze.