Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
No wonder Diana Wynne Jones portrays Howl more-or-less falling for Sophie at first sight. After all, she had some personal experience with the topic, as she reports in her official autobiography:
One of them said, "Diana, you know John Burrow, do you?"
I sort of looked. Not properly. All I got was a long beige streak of a man standing with them in front of the old Arthur Ransome cupboard. And instantly I knew I was going to marry this man. It was the same calm and absolute certainty I had had when I was eight. And it rather irked me, because I hadn't even looked at him properly and I didn't now whether I liked him, let alone loved him.
Luckily both proved to be the case. (Source.)
One reason why Jones has made such a huge mark on contemporary British fantasy fiction is not just that she wrote a ton of great books; it's also because she has made such a point of getting out into the community to meet people. She reflects on her experiences visiting schools in this spectacularly snarky and severe essay, "A Day Visiting Schools." The fact that she kept going back to schools given these kinds of experiences is surefire proof that she was really committed to education. (Source.)
Diana Wynne Jones died tragically of lung cancer in 2011. We find this fond obituary of her in the U.K. newspaper The Guardian particularly fitting—we also grew up with Diana Wynne Jones, and we're heartbroken that she is gone. (Source.)