YOU will not read about her in H.G. Wells' terrifying novel of the time when Victorian Britain beat back Martian invaders with the unexpected assistance from Mother Nature .

But a Manchester writer played a role almost as big as Richard Burton in ensuring that future generations would remember the War Of The Worlds.

Her name was Doreen Wayne and she was the stepmother of legendary producer, Jeff Wayne, the man who first came up with the inspirational idea of taking H.G. Wells' work of 1898 and retelling it through the medium of 1970's rock music.

When Jeff and his father, Jerry, first spoke about the idea of reworking War of The Worlds, it was to Doreen they turned to adapt the volume into a form which continues to captivate record buyers more than 30 years after it was first recorded.

Poignantly, Doreen Wayne's home city is one of only 14 cities where Jeff Wayne's new stage version of War Of The Worlds will be performed.

Speaking ahead of tomorrow night's performance, Jeff, 62, says: "She was a writer who came to London and started a publishing company.

Reputation

"Her first love was writing about her home life and she gained something of a reputation with a story which made national headlines, and became known as The Love Strike. She wrote about a protest led by the wives of Hull fishermen about the dangerous conditions in which they worked. What happened was that they decided that they would no longer sleep with their husbands.

"She later married my father and when we started work on War Of The Worlds, she worked with us to see how we might best adapt the book for the album.

She was just so adept at looking at the parts of the book which I had underlined and helping me to decide how it could be portrayed on record and through pictures.

"Sadly, she died in 1982, just four years after the War of The Worlds first came out. Her maiden name was Juggler and she had a lot of family in the Manchester area, although a lot of them also died due to breast cancer.

"She was aware how much it was selling in the first few years, but I doubt she could ever have projected that now, 30 years later, we are still talking about it."

Jeff says the Manchester Evening News Arena performance of War Of The Worlds will have a particular resonance as a result of his late stepmother's involvement in the original hit recording.

"It's going to be a lot of fun," Jeff adds.

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