Shortly after her father Barry Langford passed away, Caroline Langford visited a psychic who told her, “Your father is here, and he keeps telling me how good-looking he was.”
Until that moment, Langford had been somewhat skeptical of fortune tellers and the like — but this sounded exactly like something her father would say. “And then she asked me, ‘Are you a writer? Because your father is saying, ‘Write my story. I don’t care how I come out, just write it.’”
Langford, an actress who had made a name for herself in a series of Israeli comedy features, had never written anything before. But when she returned home that day, she sat down and began to write.
Nearly 13 years later, she has completed and published her debut novel, “Walking on Eggshells,” a work of fiction inspired by her parents’ story.
The story begins in 1950s London, where Shirley Irene, an innocent 16-year-old desperate to escape the strict confines of her parents, falls in love with Joe — a handsome man with a successful career in the entertainment industry. They marry and have two children, but Irene soon finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship, struggling to find the strength to leave.
“I could only write it after he died and it was therapeutic for me,” said Langford. “I believe my father would have loved it and it wouldn’t have mattered how he came off, because he just loved the attention. He was very charismatic, and a narcissist. He was able to get away with so much because of his good looks and charm.”
Barry Langford was a British television and music director who directed numerous programs for the BBC during the 1960s and 1970s. He also worked as a manager for David Bowie and Tom Jones. After marrying Shirley Irene, the couple — along with their two children, Caroline and Jeremy — moved to Australia, then back to the U.K., before finally settling in Israel in 1972. There, Langford began working in Israeli television and the local music industry. He and Shirley eventually divorced and she moved back to the U.K.
“I knew my father very well, so it was easy for me to emulate him,” said Langford. “Being an actress helped, because I know how to take on a character. With my mother, it was harder, because I wasn’t writing about the woman she is today, but the woman she was back then, with all those rules. Today, women wouldn’t put up with that. They’d go to the police. They wouldn’t stand for it. But back in the olden days, you had to do what you were told. Love, honor and obey. That was much harder for me.”
In 1980, Caroline met acclaimed Israeli director Assi Dayan on the set of his film “A King for a Day,” in which she had been cast. Dayan was the son of Israeli general and former defense minister Moshe Dayan. The couple married and had one son together, Lior, today a scriptwriter and journalist.
The marriage didn’t last long, and after her divorce from Dayan, Langford moved to New York, where she worked in theater and took acting lessons at the Lee Strasberg Studio. There, she met her second husband, Michael, who was also an actor. After six years together and the birth of their daughter, the couple divorced.
A few years later, she met her current husband, Gil, a diamond insurance agent. The couple resides in Los Angeles.
“Every night I read the book to Gil, so he got it like an audiobook and he would give me his thoughts and input on it. I also talked a lot with my mom,” said Langford. “It was very important for me to be historically accurate. I double- and triple-checked everything —down to the type of washing machines they used back then. When my mother read the parts of the book set in the 1930s, she told me, ‘I’m reliving my childhood.’”
Although Langford insists the book is a work of fiction, it heavily draws on her parents’ lives and personalities. That experience led her to start work on a second novel, this time telling the story of their daughter. It’s a book based on Langford’s own life in Israel.
Writing, she admitted, didn’t come easily to her. She was filled with self-doubt; after all, both her ex-husband and son are well-known writers. That doubt led her to set the book aside for years, until the pandemic.
“I’m such a germaphobe that I refused to leave the house,” she said. “And one day, I found the manuscript I had put away. I looked over what I’d written and thought, ‘You know what? It’s not too bad.‘ That’s when I really got to work on it.”
Working on the book, she said, helped her understand her parents better. She spent hours on the phone with her mother, filling in the blanks and listening to stories about London in the 1930s and ’40s.
Working on the book, she said, helped her understand her parents better. She spent hours on the phone with her mother, filling in the blanks and listening to stories about London in the 1930s and ’40s.
“I didn’t have my father around, so I used my imagination to picture him as a little boy,” said Langford. “It was easier to write the adult parts than the childhood ones.”
After completing her manuscript, she set out to find an agent, a task that wasn’t easy. But she was determined not to self-publish. Eventually, she found a small publishing house and is proud to say they didn’t change a single word in her manuscript.
Choosing the book’s title, “Walking on Eggshells,” was the easiest part. She had known from the start what it would be.
“It summarizes my childhood. My mother and I were always walking on eggshells, never knowing when his temper would erupt. It could be over anything. There were certain things you learned — like never contradict him,” she said. “It was very difficult living with him. My cousins adored him, but as a father, it was very difficult.”
While she acknowledges her father’s faults, Langford admits she inherited certain traits from him. “There’s a lot of him in me. I’m not violent, but there’s an element of narcissism I can relate to. I also got my sense of humor from him.”
One thing she’s made a point to do differently is maintain open communication with her children. “I always tell them, if you have any issues, please talk to me now. —Don’t wait until it’s too late.”
The book, from Rogue Phoenix Press, is available on Amazon and in bookstores.
