Chapter 16, Summer 2021
Volunteer Spotlight: Miriam Murcutt Miriam Murcutt, Interviewer for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. Interview conducted by Cyns Nelson, MROHP Program Coordinator In lieu of asking Miriam to draft replies to questions, I prompted her to reflect on specified topics and then recorded an oral interview. This article gives you snippets of our conversation, pulled from the interview transcript. The entire recording lasted nearly an hour and includes wonderful detail about Miriam’s years in the UK, her travels with spouse Richard Starks, and books they have co-authored: Lost in Tibet, Along the River that Flows Uphill, A Room with a Pew, Greenland for $1.99, and their new novel In a Town Called Paradox.
To listen to Miriam's full interview, click the radio!
Miriam Murcutt; Photo courtesy Miriam Murcutt Upbringing I was raised in southern English cities, in Chichester, in a place called Horsham. I was brought up in pubs, because my father was a licensed victualer. ...That means he was licensed to sell booze, basically (laughing). My twin sisters—I'm not one of the twins, they were twins—and I were brought up by my mother, my father, and my grandmother, who lived with us all of our lives. Transition to U.S. and Boulder
Miriam has been volunteering with the oral history program since 2014. She joined MROHP shortly before I took over as coordinator, and she has conducted thirteen interviews for the oral history archive. Miriam’s British accent and sharp wit make her popular with the oral history cohort; I was keen to learn about her background and arrival in Boulder, along with other topics.
We [Richard and Miriam] had traveled to the U.S. a lot, and we looked for a base that we could run the business from. [They had published a directory, Invest in the UK, which had a sizable distribution in America.]… Richard had read about Boulder and what a good community it was. ...It was really business, then, that brought us to Boulder, but also a love of the mountains, and the setting, and Boulder's reputation as a good place to live. 13
