In the 1950s they lived with Pardoe's elderly parents in Hampshire. During this illness she began to lose her hearing and from her mid-40s was profoundly deaf. They were forced to sell in 1947, however, when Pardoe almost died from a bout of double pneumonia. Pardoe and her husband set up a country house hotel called Crossacres which became extremely successful their only child Philip was born there in 1939. She wrote under her maiden name but only used her first initial, possibly because she had been teased at school about her rhyming name, and possibly because her publisher thought it might help the books appeal to both sexes. She married John Swift in 1934 and settled in Somerset where she began The Far Island. Margot Pardoe's childhood provided her with many of the settings for her books: she was born in London, educated in Hertfordshire and Paris, and had holidays in the continent and remote locations in Britain.
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