Carola Oman

Carola Oman (1897–1978) was an English historical novelist, biographer and children's writer, best known for her retelling of the Robin Hood legend and a 1946 biography of Admiral Lord Nelson.

Carola Mary Anima Oman was born on 11 May 1897 in Oxford, the second of three children of the military historian Sir Charles Oman (1860–1946) of All Souls and his wife Mary (1866–1950), daughter of General Robert Maclagan of the Royal Engineers. She described a rather sumptuous and sociable childhood in a final book illustrated with photographs, An Oxford Childhood. As a child she wrote several plays that were performed by friends. Another early interest was photography. She was sent in 1906 to Miss Batty's, later Wychwood School in Oxford. She would have liked to have gone to boarding school, but her parents would not agree, and she continued at Miss Batty's until the spring of 1914.

The family moved in 1908 into Frewin Hall, now part of Brasenose College, Oxford. Her brother Charles (C. C. Oman) became a keeper of the Victoria and Albert Museum and wrote several books on silverware and other domestic metalwork. The set designer Julia Trevelyan Oman (1930–2003) was her niece. She was married on 26 April 1922 to Gerald Foy Ray Lenanton (1896–1952), son of a timber agent, with Hensley Henson officiating, as he had at her christening. The couple remained childless.

The novelist Georgette Heyer was a lifelong friend, who even took the time to compile a 16-page index for Oman's Britain against Napoleon, published in 1942 by Faber and Faber. Another writer friend in Oxford was Joanna Cannan, who dedicated her 1931 novel High Table to Oman.

Oman's war work as a probationary VAD nurse in Oxford, Dorset, London and France contributed to a book of verse, The Menin Road and Other Poems (1919). Verse of hers also appeared in the 1931 edition of The Bookman Treasury of Living Poets, edited by Arthur St. John Adcock. Some of her work in the 1920s and 1930s appeared initially under her married name. Lenanton was knighted in 1946 after serving as director of home timber production in World War II. They settled at Bride Hall, a Jacobean mansion in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire. In 1965, Oman produced Ayot Rectory – A Family Memoir, about the Sneade family, who had lived in the village from 1780 to 1858. Oman has been quoted as speaking warmly of George Bernard Shaw, a neighbour in the village.

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