PATRICIA TURNER knows plenty about the world of writing. Born and bred in Bolton and living in Harwood, this 67-year-old retired Spanish teacher is the daughter of the late Leslie Caldwell, a former BEN sports editor, and is married to journalist Peter Turner. She has long been fascinated by schoolgirl fiction and has published several books and magazine articles on the subject. Angela Brazil was probably the most famous writer of schoolgirl fiction in the 20th century. She lived in Bolton for a time but gave the impression that she didn't write any books during that period. Here, Patricia looks at that time and asks readers for help in solving the Brazil-Bolton connection. ENTHUSIASTIC readers of girls' school stories know that Angela Brazil wrote nearly 50 of them.

They had titles like "The Jolliest Girl in the School" and "A Patriotic Schoolgirl."

But how many know she lived here in Bolton for more than 20 years?

Angela's mother came from Rio in Brazil and married an Englishman -- named Brazil! They eventually moved to Manchester and lived there until 1887, when Angela was 17 years old.

Then, her father's work as a mill manager forced them to move to Bolton.

Angela loved the house and garden they bought at High View on Belmont Road, opposite what is now Wilkinson Road.

But she hadn't a good word to say for the town.

In her autobiography "My Own Schooldays", she deals with Bolton in a couple of sentences, dismissing it as dirty, ugly and smoky.

She also infers that her books of that period were written entirely at the family's holiday cottage in Wales. This seems such unlikely behaviour for an energetic and compulsive writer in the first flush of success that I sense a mystery.

I couldn't find a solution to that mystery in Gillian Freeman's biography of Angela Brazil, "The Schoolgirl Ethic". It told me little about her Bolton years and even less about her father Clarence's It did reveal, however that one of Angela's brothers, Walter a doctor, bought the house "Burnside" on Blackburn Road, opposite Watersmeeting, and practised there from 1893 to 191, with Angela as his housekeeper.

"Burnside", a big end-terrace with a handsome staircase, built as a mill manager's house, is still a surgery. Walter Brazil sold it to Dr Fawkes, who was succeeded by Dr Rowland.

Next in 1948 came Dr Jack, who told me that Dr Rowland had said that he knew patients of Walter Brazil who had confirmed that Angela wrote her early books in an upstairs room at Burnside, now a waiting room. So, why didn't she admit this?

I think that the Brazil family, usually intensely united and self-sufficient, went through a sticky patch in Bolton and that this may have turned Angela against the town -- to the extent that she didn't even want her stories linked with it.

One major upset occurred when Clarence Jnr, a lawyer, married someone who -- in the Brazils' Victorian view -- was his social inferior, and then decamped to Barrow-in-Furness. Mrs Brazil, Angela and her sister Amy began to spend a lot of time in Wales and in travelling abroad. The men were presumably left to the care of the servants.

The Belmont Road home was sold in 1894, leading to a further puzzle. Clarence Snr didn't die until 1899, but the Bolton Directory for 1898 shows only a Mrs Brazil living at 14 Bangor Street. Where, then, was Angela's father?

I skimmed the Eagley Mills' papers in Bolton Central Library archives because the mill was almost on the Brazils' High View doorstep. There was no mention of Clarence, and it would be a lifetime's work to go through all the town's cotton mill records.

So, do any BEN readers remember old folk talking about the Brazils as friends, neighbours, fellow churchgoers?When the family lived in Preston, Wallasey and Rusholme, members regularly attended an Anglican church and almost certainly did the same in Bolton.

Can anyone help find a solution to this particular Angela Brazil story?

If YOU can help throw light on this myster, e-mail: ANGELA BRAZIL STORIES, Angela Kelly, Features Department, Bolton Evening News, Churchgate, Bolton BL1 1DE. email: akelly@lancashire.newsquest.co.uk