Judith Johnson's Blog, page 10

A Fall on the South Downs

South Downs relay start at Slindon A couple of weeks ago I set off, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with a mini-bus full of Sarah's Runners for our second go at the South Downs Relay Marathon. I was doing the second leg again, but this time I took the immediate first hill nice and slow, having learnt from 2013, when I found my heart beating rather alarmingly about a third of the way up, that it was worth using it as a warm-up!

About four miles along, on a stony uneven patch, I stumbled and, bringing my left knee forward at speed, hit a tree root with full force. It was shockingly painful initially, and I rocked with it for a while, fighting back the tears, before getting to my feet and carrying on, half hobbling, half slow-jogging, the next two miles or so. There were plenty of sympathetic runners who stopped to ask if I was OK, whether I needed a first-aider, and to let me know they too had suffered a fall in the past and fully identified!

When I finally handed over to my team member I sat down and pulled up my capri leg to look at the bruise, and was surprised to see a deep cut below the knee-cap, which rather surprisingly had hardly bled at all. I was first-aided at the race end, and later in the day visited both Crowborough Memorial Hospital (clean, bright, friendly, calming, no queue, and a lovely big mug of tea) and A&E at Pembury (soul-less, unsmiling reception, depressing large-screen ads on a loop, nothing to read, grubby loos) where I waited three hours for a doctor to tell me that Crowborough had done a good job cleaning the wound, squirt some glue in it, and send me on my way at 10.30pm with a pack of anti-biotics.
 
I could have felt a bit sorry for myself at that point, but life sent me a reminder of my great good fortune in generally having very sound health: I spotted a friend in A&E who was there for a bad case of cellulitis. He is a stoic, who has had a large part of his tongue and gums removed because of mouth cancer, yet remains singularly lacking in self-pity. 

Someone once said that if you enjoy good health, you could say to yourself every day that you have genuinely won the lottery. I write 'good health' on my gratitude list most nights, but even so can take it for granted.  I had a few early brushes with the Grim Reaper but was fortunate to survive them (eg when I was two, my mother called out a young locum doctor in the middle of the night. I was screaming, and couldn't be calmed. Our regular family GP had told her on several occasions over previous weeks that I was just after attention by crying incessantly. The locum told Mum to get me to hospital immediately, where an emergency appendectomy took place. They told Mum that with a few hours' delay I would have died of a burst appendix).

It was scary having a wound, even if relatively minor. I avoided taking the anti-biotics (I'd rather save them for true need) and instead cared for myself with salted boiled water, calendula, herbal salves, and arnica. I felt at times quite fearful about hurting the knee again.

It's healing well, I'm thankful, and hopefully I'll soon be back running - but even surfaces from now on!

Julie Andrews, we adore you!

Well, it’s been quite a good year for this Julie Andrews fan! In February I went to the tribute cabaret show Julie Madly Deeply, and in May I travelled up to London to spend an Evening with Julie Andrews.

The Hammersmith Apollo, originally opened in 1932 as the Gaumont Palace cinema, is a wondrous Art Deco diamond.  Even if slightly less cosy than some other venues for a tȇte a tȇte with Julie and several thousand other fans, nothing could dampen the air of excitement! The evening began with a medley of clips from her films, and then she came onstage to a standing ovation. It must feel special to have all that love coming at you from an adoring audience. The first half continued with a stroll through her career, with Julie relating lots of anecdotes, and a few impromptu interruptions from over-excited fans.

At the interval I looked around as the lights came up, and was gratified to see the same silly smile I fully anticipated was on my face on everyone else’s too. Queuing for the loo, I asked a young woman, who had travelled down from Yorkshire, if she was enjoying the evening? “Oh yes,” she said emphatically, “It’s wonderful. I was at the O2 last time she came over, and I felt so bad for her when people walked out.”

The two young women behind me had flown over from Cork. They had been to see Angela Lansbury the previous evening in Blithe Spirit. They thought the travelling had been well worth it. In fact there were a lot of young women in the audience – it wasn’t just Julie’s faithful gay following and ladies of a certain age, as I’d probably expected. And they all seemed very familiar with her career, right from the start.   Art-Deco bar, Hammersmith Apollo There’s a lot to admire. Miss Andrews has been a consummate professional, a hard-working talent, for a very long time. I particularly like the story of her incredible tenacity and willingness to do the work necessary, with the show’s director, to transform her performance in the original New York production of My Fair Lady.  She told us how Maria Callas, on coming to see her backstage after the show one night, was amazed that she sang the part eight times a week. No miked-up soap stars in those days!

I hadn’t realised that Julie spent a year in the show at Drury Lane before the next cast change. My Dad played Eliza Doolittle’s father for five years (at Drury Lane and on tour) after taking over from Stanley Holloway, and I’m not sure if he ever met Julie, but I do know he would have been in awe of her courage in doing the current tour. He always said to me that he was happy to go out on stage and play a part in front of any audience, but that the idea of appearing as himself truly terrified him.

It was so nice to be in a big crowd of fans who were not afraid to show their enthusiasm. One of the things I particularly love about small children is their lack of cynicism - the way they just get up every day and bounce around until they drop. Recently I read that cynics are three times more likely to suffer from dementia. Well, all I can say is that the prospects are looking good for we happy band of fans beaming away at the Hammersmith Apollo a few Saturdays ago!

On my way back to Charing Cross, a male passenger on the tube, spotting a fan’s programme with a photo of Julie on the front,  remarked, “I’d rather shoot myself in the face.” I managed to resist pointing out to him that he was seriously at risk from dementia!

But after spending an evening with Julie not even this miserable curmudgeon could bring me down! My day began with waking to a blackbird’s song at 4am, progressed through the Great War Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, followed by a lunchtime concert at St Martin in the Fields, and then meeting up with an old actor friend from years back for coffee and a chinwag. My glass was full right to the brim!

Two other happy fans!

D-Day - 70 years on

Arromanches – part of the Operation Overlord Normandy beach-head, where in June 1944 floating Mulberry Harbours, towed across the Channel from England, were linked to the beach by Bailey Bridges so that troops and military equipment could be landed safely. Reading through accounts of D-Day and the campaign that followed can be a deeply moving experience. I feel enormously grateful to all those many thousands of men who lost their lives then. When I visited the D-Day sites a few years back – the cemeteries, museums, and beaches – I was particularly struck by the farmland behind the coast. I had a powerful sensation when I looked at those fields, almost as if one could still see the ghosts of thousands of men advancing over them.

When I found recently that a young graduate colleague of mine knew nothing about D-Day, I was quite shocked. That familiar old adage immediately springs to mind, what do they teach them in school these days? But then I guess you can’t convey everything in the short years at school, and things have moved on 40 years or so since I sat entranced in Mrs Wright’s history lessons at Tunbridge Wells Girls’ Grammar. Anyhow, I lent my young friend our DVD of Darryl F. Zanuck’s The Longest Day, which, with its superb international directors and cast, is in my view a  pretty good introduction to the subject.

Incidentally, Richard Todd, with whom my father worked on Walt Disney’s Robin Hood in later years, played Major John Howard in The Longest Day, but actually took part in D-Day himself. There’s a fascinating account of some of his experiences on the excellent Pegasus Archive website.

Of the War Dead of Southborough and High Brooms, Tunbridge Wells, which I researched for my book on Southborough War Memorial, there are two men who were killed in action on D-Day and in the fighting that followed:

Private Reginald Francis, of Southborough, died on Tuesday 6th June 1944, aged 20. He was with the 7th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, and he is buried in the Ranville War Cemetery, Calvados. Ranville was the first village to be liberated in France when the bridge over the Caen Canal was captured intact in the early hours of 6 June by troops of the 6th Airborne Division, who were landed nearby by parachute and glider. Many of the division’s casualties are buried in Ranville War Cemetery and the adjoining churchyard. The Pegasus Archive website includes a Roll of Honour for the 7th Battalion. Private Francis was one of 68 men who died on that day; 60 more were to die in the following weeks.

Private Ernest William Funnell, of High Brooms, fought with the South Staffordshire Regt, attached to the 13th (2nd/4th Bn, The South Lancashire Regt) Battalion, Parachute Regiment, Army Air Corps. He was killed during the assault of Hill 13 at Putot-en-Auge on Saturday 19 August, and was buried in the village cemetery along with 25 of his comrades. He was 24 years old.

Jerry Jones of High Brooms, a childhood friend, recalled that Ernie was one of a large family, and that before his war service, he worked for Frank (Dick) Dunn, at his piggery in Powdermill Lane. Ernie’s older brother Frederick is also commemorated on the Southborough War Memorial. Another High Brooms resident, Pete Simmons, recalls that Ernie’s younger brother was called up after the end of the war and killed in Korea.

Mr H Kershaw of Hove, East Sussex, after visiting the village of Putot-en-Auge and coming upon the War graves there, was inspired to research the history of the 5th Parachute Brigade’s action on D Day, which included the capture of the famous Pegasus Bridge:

At 16 minutes past midnight on the night of June 5 and 6, 1944, gliders landed near the bridge over the River Orne and the Caen Canal. The latter became famous as the Pegasus Bridge. Three minutes later the men of the 5th Parachute Brigade started to land. The gliders and the parachutists had to capture the bridges. Although lightly armed, they succeeded. It has been said that had these bridges not been captured and held, the Normandy landing may have been jeopardised.

After weeks of action near the coast, the Germans withdrew to the high ground overlooking the River Dives. This area included the village of Putot. The 5th Parachute Brigade was quickly in pursuit and arrived near Putot-en-Auge late on August 18. They launched a dawn attack and by 8.45am, against strong opposition, Putot was captured.

The brigade suffered many casualties who were temporarily buried in Putot churchyard. The War Graves Commission wanted to move these men to one of the large war cemeteries. The village opposed this, saying that these men died for us, so they should stay with us. A plaque displayed among the beautifully cared-for graves states: “The little town of Putot on Auge receives the parents, relatives, and friends of the soldiers lying in this cemetery with sympathy and gratitude.”

I’ve included an extract from Mr Kershaw’s detailed account of this first major battle to be fought during the German retreat in my book, and you can also find this linked to Ernest Funnell on my SWM Extra page.

Links/Sources:

The Longest Day – The Independent

Roll of Honour for the 7th Battalion in Pegasus Archive

Richard Todd's D-Day account in Pegasus Archive

Southborough War Memorial by Judith Johnson

Relativity Theory!

My Nanna, Ida Shaw I love archaeology and history, and I’ve always thought it would be fascinating to have a gathering of people who see each other regularly, for example members of  a club (like my own local running group Sarah’s Runners) and get them to bring along their family trees to see how many are related. Ultimately, of course, we must all be cousins. Professor Brian Sykes’ intriguing book The Seven Daughters of Eve claims we are all descended from just seven women, and Dr Alice Roberts, says in her BBC series The Incredible Human Journey that every one of us has both black and white ancestors. It’s also claimed that most of Europe is related to ‘Otzi’, the man from 5,000 years back whose remains were discovered in the South Tyrol.

Something that intrigued me recently when reading Canada by Richard Ford was a character’s notion that most of us don't know and don’t care much about who they are related to beyond their grandparents. This doesn't include of course the hordes of furiously excavating genealogy enthusiasts, world-wide!

Anyhow, I rose to the challenge and sat down to list my great grandparents. Two of them were Thomas Frederick and Martha Cureton. Thomas was coachman and then chauffeur at Rashwood Court, the 'big house' in Wychbold, nearr Droitwich. Thomas and Martha lived in the chauffeur's cottage with their daughter Ida, who was born at the end of the nineteenth century.

The labour was long and hard, and after a boy had been born, the midwife was puzzled at Martha's condition. "There's something wrong here," she is reported to have said, and sent immediately for the doctor. He was out riding on his hunter, apparently, and somewhat the worse for drink, but he reluctantly came as summoned. Pushing his hand up the birth canal, he  announced "There's another one up here!" and pulled out my grandmother, a tiny twin. He dismissively cast her onto the bed and said "You can get rid of that - it won't live," at which the midwife cried, "Oh doctor! Where there's life, there's hope!" and rescued the baby, wrapping her in cotton wool. The big, healthy looking boy sadly died at six months, but Nanna lived into her mid-nineties.
Wedding of Harold Shaw and Ida Cureton She married Grandpa Shaw in the 1920s, after he had returned from his service in the First World War. Through him, and two of my other great-grandparents, I am (it seems from my Uncle and cousin’s research) descended from the ‘White Queen’, Elizabeth Woodville, as follows:







My grandfather was Edgar Harold SHAW
his father, my great-grandfather, was William Attwood SHAW
his father, my great-great-grandfather, was Thomas Charles SHAW
his father, my great-great-great-grandfather, was Obadiah Gilbert SHAW
his father, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, was Gilbert Read SHAW
his father, my great x 5 grandfather, was Daniel (II) SHAW
his father, my great x 6 grandfather, was Daniel SHAW
his mother, my great x 7 grandmother, was Alice JELLIANS
her mother, my great x 8 grandmother, was Elizabeth WILMER
her father,  my great x 9 grandfather, was Thomas WILMER
his mother, my great x 10 grandmother, was Anne (Agnes) SUTTON
her father, my great x 11 grandfather, was Edward SUTTON 4th Lord Dudley
his mother, my great x 12 grandmother, was Cecily GREY
her father, my great x 13 grandfather, was Thomas GREY
her mother, my great x 14 grandmother, was Elizabeth WOODVILLE, ‘The White Queen’

And through Cecily Grey’s mother, from Edward Plantagenet,

his mother was Cecily GREY
her mother was Cecily BONNEVILLE
her mother was Catherine NEVILLE
her father was Richard NEVILLE
his mother was Joan de BEAUFORT
her father was John of Gaunt PLANTAGENET
his father was Edward PLANTAGENET, Edward III, King of England.

According to other family trees sent me by a cousin, I’m also descended from William the Conqueror. The actor  and musician Alexander Armstrong in his edition of BBC TV's Who Do You Think You Are was also pleased to find he had the same great (however-many-times) grandfather.

But I don’t think I need get too over-excited! Since my own ninety year old mother already has over 50 direct descendants, I reckon the Conqueror’s descendants must run into millions!

I Loves the 'Diff!

For many years, I regularly travelled to South Wales with my husband to visit his family near Swansea. We all had wonderful holidays with my in-laws, and when my son came along he quickly grew to see Gramma and Dycu’s bungalow as a second home. We nearly always included a trip to Robertstown, Aberdare to see the elderly aunties, and then there were jaunts to Aberaeron for ice-cream, Llangranog, the Gower beaches and Manorbier for swims in the glassy green waves, Carreg Cennen for a climb up to the ruined castle stronghold, and Llanelli for walks along the seafront and a bag of boiled sweets from the market. We rarely ventured as far east as Cardiff itself, except for Porthcawl for a ‘blow’ and a Fulgoni’s ice-cream, although we had many happy days out at St Fagan’s, the superb folk museum just outside Cardiff.

We’ve really missed Mam since she passed away, and our regular trips to Wales. Over the recent Easter weekend we booked a few nights in Cardiff, and met up with some of Martin’s cousins, not seen for many years, for tea and cake, a catch-up chinwag and a trawl through family photos. We also enjoyed a tramp around different parts of the city.

Cardiff is uncommonly friendly! Almost everyone we came across was kind and courteous, generally giving an impression they’d been pleased to help.

Like every city, there’s a lot to explore, whether you’re interested in history, art, music, dancing, sport, or shopping. The parking’s awfully expensive in the centre, but the public transport is brilliant – buses galore and regular, at £3.40 for a Day-to-Go ticket which you can use all day on as many buses as you like. You can of course get to a lot of places under your own steam, if, like us, you’re fond of using Shank’s pony. We had a little wander round Llandaff; red-robed choristers singing beautifully at the Good Friday service in the Cathedral, whose doors had been left wide open for all-comers; a plaque outside a Chinese takeaway, once the sweetshop where Roald Dahl bought his boyhood treats; a stroll through Pontcanna Fields (full of ball-games, picnics, dog-walkers, paperback-readers); then popped over to Canton for a cup of coffee at the Chapter Arts Centre.

We had breakfast the next day at Crumbs, a great little vegetarian café in the Morgan Arcade, from where we could see a genial crowd of youngsters (and not-so-youngsters, no ageism on this blog!) queuing outside Spillers Records, which claims to be the oldest record shop in the world, for new music releases. I love life’s enthusiasts! We caught a bus to Roath Park – which to me looked reminiscent of New York’s Central Park – another Park constructed in the 19th century for the proletariat to take the fresh air and to recreate. It has within its boundaries a botanical gardens, a stupendous playground which was full of jubilant children, a boating lake and a café where friendly girls served a boisterous queue. The houses fringing the park, built around 1910 I believe, were obviously made of the best quality materials: 100 years on, the decorative arts and crafts tiles in their porches are in astonishingly good condition.

Of course there are inevitable casualties of neglect and the march of time, of things going out of fashion, of recession etc. On the City Road is the old Gaiety cinema, opened in 1912 and latterly the home of bingo, and ‘Bar, Bowling, Food, Music’, now for sale. But some places, like the Central Market, are still going strong. Cardiff has changed a lot since Martin worked for the Welsh Drama Company in the late 70s – it’s jumping, mun! If you’ve never visited the Welsh capital, I recommend it for a weekend away and an opportunity to exercise your joie-de-vivre!

World Book Night 2014

This will be my 4th World Book Night as a volunteer. There is nothing nicer than giving someone a book with no strings attached. It always proves, for me, the old saying “it is more blessed to give than to receive”.

This year, for the first time, I was giving away a book I hadn’t read before I selected it. The Boy With The Topknot by Sathnam Sanghera is a rewarding read ultimately, but it took me well over 100 pages before I really got into it, and although I’m a doggedly persistent reader (I was the only member of my book-club who finished Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook!), I was slightly concerned about giving this particular book to people who weren’t big readers, which is WBN’s main aim. So, since WBN has invited volunteers this year to give away books from their own bookshelves if they choose to, I decided to also offer people a second book, a choice of one of two that we have a stock of at home (we are author/publishers) that probably come under the heading ‘popular fiction’. One of these is a horror thriller and one a psychological thriller, and it was fascinating to see how people had a very definite idea about which of these they would rather take.

I also explained to recipients that they needn’t feel the pressure of ‘having’ to read what they’d been given, just maybe give the books a try, and if they couldn’t get on with them, pass them on to a friend or family member.

My patter usually starts with “I’m giving away books for World Book Night, would you like one?”. I have tried “Do you read many books?” but people can feel patronised by this. I just try and approach a variety of folks, and ultimately probably choose people who appeal to me in some way!

Most people say yes, but there are always a few refusals. This year’s included:

“Sorry, but I only read angling magazines.”

“Thanks, but unless it’s about steam engines, I wouldn’t read it.”

“I never read anything till I got a Kindle a couple of years ago. Now I’ve read hundreds of books, but mostly gangland stuff… my Mum’s a fourth cousin of the Kray brothers. But I don’t read actual books.”

“No thanks. I like the Robert Jordan books. There’s 26 of them … I’m on Number 8 at the moment.”

And, from a man sitting on a bench in a park: “Sorry, I’m homeless, I wouldn’t have anywhere to put extra books … I’m reading the true life story of Meatloaf at the moment.”

I’ve come to accept that there are some people who just don’t like reading. Some perhaps have a history of dyslexia, others prefer to be doing or making rather than reading. But for those for whom books are still an undiscovered country, I hope World Book Night makes a difference.


World Book Night:
www.worldbooknight.org


Sathnam Sanghera's website
www.sathnam.com

The Casualties of War

Listening to some of the Great War interviews on BBC's i-Player earlier this week, I was struck by Henry Williamson's recalling of the Christmas truce in the trenches, and particularly noted how astounded he was when he was told by the Germans he spoke to that God was on their side, and that they were only fighting for the freedom of their people. Williamson had never before contemplated the idea that right was not exclusively the prerogative of the British.

We seem to almost invariably like to think, in times of conflict, that this is so. I always wondered, when I was younger, if there were any instances of German civilians being machine-gunned by Allied airplanes, as I had come across a number of instances of such attacks in England. I recall attending a meeting of the Society of Friends some years back when an elderly Quaker, now passed away, stood to 'minister' on the subject of war. He remembered a day when he and another young man, both conscientious objectors working as medical orderlies, were called to the village of Westfield in Sussex. A queue of women and children, waiting at a stop for the next bus to Hastings, had been gunned down by a lone German pilot flying by, and their job was to collect the bodies and escort them to the hospital morgue. His friend was so badly affected by this experience that he suffered a nervous breakdown, was admitted to mental hospital, and sadly never fully recovered.

Since hearing this, I have discovered some similar accounts of attacks made by Allied planes on German civilians.

There is a large body of literature, both fiction and non-fiction, about the experiences of being bombed in the Second World War. I've just read Fireweed, the children's book by Jill Paton Walsh about runaway teenagers in the London Blitz, a good companion piece for younger readers to Michelle Magorian's Goodnight Mister Tom.

Many of us will have family stories handed down from the time. My mother lived with her parents in the Midlands, and remembered the terror of hearing 'doodle-bugs' droning, and dreading the moment when the noise stopped, signalling their imminent fall from the sky.
I can recommend a wonderful anthology of testimonies gathered together by Colin and Eileen Townsend and published in 1989 by Grafton Books: War Wives. Colin Townsend was a lecturer at Cologne University for two years in the 1960s. They spent time then, and in the twenty years after, with numerous German and British helpers, collecting the experiences, letters and diary extracts of wives and mothers on both sides during the Second World War. They are in most cases deeply touching, and remind us that in all tribes and nations there are individual acts of good and evil, of mercy and of cruelty, and that all suffer.  Sadly that suffering goes on today, in Afghanistan, in Syria and elsewhere.

What is so special about War Wives is the interleaving of testimonies, now British, now German. Here are a few extracts which may encourage you to invest in a copy for your bookshelf.

10 February 1944 - Morning
The early warning siren sounds, followed shortly after by the full alert. The block we are in stands right next to a boys' grammar school, which they have been using for a reserve hospital and is now full of casualties. There aren't many people at home in our block, but the few that are left are just making their way to the cellars when the bombs start whistling down and exploding. Rubble starts trickling down from above and the smell of burning gets into our noses. Our next door neighbours have been trapped in their house and are shouting for help. Our own house is ablaze around us, and we have to get out quickly. With us is an expectant mother with three children, whose husband died of leukaemia not so long ago. So here we stand looking at the ruins of our home. Soon we shall have to write on the walls that are still standing, 'Still alive. Gone to..."  Sigrid Wendt, Brunswick, Lower Saxony

After the blitz on Manchester there were so many bodies they had to be put in a cinema. No one would go into that cinema after that and it was eventually demolished. I remember a friend of mine going to church one Sunday and when she got home her whole family had been wiped out. Salford Royal Hospital was bombed, with the loss of some doctors and about 25 nurses. Mrs E Emberton, Salford, Lancashire

Mannheim, 23 October 1944
There were 180,000 incendiary bombs dropped on the town, so you can imagine that the fires were burning for days on end. Anna, I'm afraid you won't see many of your old neighbours again. In the H1 district a bomb dropped down an air-shaft into an air-raid shelter and exploded. There were over 300 people down there and the only ones to get out alive were those at the entrance. The blast simply blew them outside.  They've brought out over 100 bodies already and they're still digging. Hermine Jundt, Mannheim, Baden-Wurttemberg
Edwin Cooper I visited the grave, in Berlin's Charlottenburg 1939-1945 War Cemetery, of Edwin George Cooper, who is remembered on the Southborough War Memorial. Before the war, Edwin worked at the Royal Kent Laundry in High Brooms. He died on 24 August 1943, aged 20.  He was serving as a Sergeant, Flight Engineer, with 35 Squadron, in a Halifax bomber. He lost his life in a massive raid on Berlin involving 727 aircraft - 335 Lancasters, 251 Halifaxes, 124 Stirlings and 17 Mosquitos. The raid was only a partial success. The Pathfinders were unable to identify the centre of Berlin and much of the attack fell outside the city. Despite that, civilian casualties were very heavy. 

The last words, again from War Wives, go to Dorothy Griffiths, of Guiseley, West Yorkshire:

We used to watch our bombers going out, hundreds at a time, at regular intervals... watching them made the tears come to my eyes. It was very emotional, a mixture of fear and sorrow - and hate for whoever had made this happen. As our planes left the land behind and headed out over the sea, I would say to Griff, 'They've gone over the edge of England and many won't ever come back. They are just going out there to die.' And then we thought of all the innocent people over there who were going to be destroyed by us. When was it going to end? It was all so hopeless - and for what? You felt the futility of it all and the sorrow for all the human beings involved in this hellish war, and wished with all your heart it was over. 

An Uneasy Night at Kilmeston Manor

Some years back I travelled to Hampshire for an alumni event, and was invited to stay at Kilmeston Manor, near Alresford. After supper in the kitchen, I was shown to my room for the night. This was in a wing that had been added to the house in the 18th century, and was on occasion slept in by the Prince Regent, the future George IV, when he hunted locally. An adjoining door led to another bedroom, where the Catholic widow Mrs Maria Fitzherbert, the Prince’s secret wife, was also accommodated.

The room’s windows had closed wooden shutters, and the furniture was quite sombre. For some reason, I felt a little uncomfortable and decided that I would keep the light on for the night, and that I would 'cross my legs' rather than negotiate the dark passageway leading to the nearest bathroom in the middle of the night. I had a fitful night’s sleep!

The next morning after breakfast Mike, my host, showed me round the house. He pointed out the painting of HMS Shannon, whose Captain Philip Broke RN, an ancestor of his, had captured the USS Chesapeake. We looked at the entrance, in the pantry, to what he had been told was a tunnel used in former centuries, and he showed me a cocktails cabinet inset beside a fireplace. In order to construct this 'must-have' item in the 1920s, a carpenter had removed an old wooden panel, and, as he opened it up, those present saw inside, standing upright the fully-preserved body of a Cavalier soldier. To the surprise of everyone present, or horror perhaps, as the air reached the body, the flesh immediately turned to dust and fell away, leaving just the skeleton inside the armour. Since the manor had been pro-Royalist at the time of the English Civil War, local historians reckoned that the soldier may have been wounded in battle, and perhaps hidden behind the panelling by the manor’s owners, who after sealing it up had subsequently needed to flee the house as Sir William Waller’s forces advanced, leaving the unfortunate soldier to die in his hiding-hole. This was most likely to have been on the date of the Battle of Cheriton 29 March 1644*, 370 years ago today.

At the end of the tour, I said, "So, Mike, a house this old must have a few ghost stories?"

"Well," he replied, "There was one funny thing that happened. A friend of ours came down for the weekend. She popped her things in her room and came downstairs for drinks. Afterwards she went back upstairs to freshen up, and when she came down for supper, she said "Mike, I didn’t know you had any staff."

"We haven’t," I said, "Why?"

"Well, someone laid out my things ready for dinner and turned down my bed, so I assumed it must be the maid."

Mike recalled that his mother had in earlier times occupied that room. Her maid had been with the family, still working and very much part of the household, until she died at the age of seventy. She had asked to be buried in the local churchyard, but her nephew had had the body cremated and took the ashes away.

"Wow," I said, "What room was that, Mike?"

"Oh ... actually, it was the one you slept in last night!"

*Incidentally, another famous battle, not part of the English Civil War but the Wars of the Roses, and recorded as one of its bloodiest, took place, in heavy snow, on this date in 1461, at Towton in Yorkshire, when the Lancastrians suffered a resounding defeat at the hands of the Yorkist forces, with extensive casualties on both sides.

Holland's Royal City

Hague skyline including the 'Lemon Press' & 'The Tits'! Since Holland is so near and so connected with Britain historically, but an almost undiscovered country for me, I was very pleased to fly to Schiphol a few weeks back for a quick guided tour around the Royal city – The Hague.

February must be one of the least favourable times to show off most locations, but local guide Remco Dorr did a great job in communicating his affection for his home town. On the subject of guides: a qualified guide is really worth his or her hire in my opinion – you benefit from all kinds of interesting nuggets of knowledge as you sail past sights that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. I find audio-guides overwhelming, just too much information (the only exception, I’ve found so far, being the one at the Palace of Versailles, where it perfectly times your walk through the rooms). I’d much rather hear anecdotal stories from a walking talking guide.
Model of the Cheese Market, Alkmaar The Hague has a miniature city on a scale of 1:25, Madurodam, an entertaining visit for families with young children. It originated after the Second World War, when a local woman who was looking for a way to fundraise for children suffering from TB, thought of emulating the model villages popular in England as a visitor attraction. She found a sponsor, the Maduro family, whose son George, a Jewish law student from Curaçao and fighter with the Dutch resistance, had died at Dachau concentration camp in 1945. 
Local stork boards Stena Line ferry! Since those days, Madurodam has been updated and now has lots of interactive water features that were keeping small children very happy the day we visited! Our guide pointed out that the town square of Alkmaar, where cheese has been weighed and traded for centuries, was also used for weighing suspected witches, who were then dunked in the adjacent canal. If they floated, they were deemed guilty and subsequently drowned.  Model of the Peace Palace The Hague’s Peace Palace, opened on August 28, 1913, benefited from a donation of 1½ million dollars made by the great philanthropist Andrew Carnegie towards its construction. Its aim was to provide a symbolic home for the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a court created to end war, and today, the International Court of Justice. Even the building is a symbol of international co-operation: the architect Chardonnier was French, the bricks and gardens were donated by the Dutch, the gates by Belgium, the marble by Italy, the silk for furnishings by Japan, and the wall around it by Germany. 
Scheveningen, a fishing village originally, whose name derives from the Anglo-Saxon for “looking out over” (the water) is the seaside face of The Hague. The fisherwives were famed for their muscular arms (extra money earned lifting the middle-class visitors in and out of their bathing-wagons) and loud voices. Widows and orphans were daily thrown fish which hadn’t sold. The fishing boats were built flat and wide to hold their cargo (reminiscent of old Thames barges I’ve seen moored at Maldon, Essex) but were dangerously unstable for rough seas, and extremely heavy to pull up onto the beach.
Guide at the Panorama explains perspective The artist Mesdag and his workshop created a marvellous panorama painting of the village and long beach of Scheveningen in the 19th century, which has been renovated and can still be viewed locally. Around 1818, the village started to become fashionable as a bathing resort, particularly favoured by Russians and Germans.

If you were planning a stroll along the promenade at Scheveningen (we spotted ships on the horizon, ready to enter the container port of Rotterdam, our guide Remco pointed out that they wait out at sea until the prices for their cargoes are most favourable), you might like to follow your walk with a visit to the Kurhaus for an elegant afternoon tea under its spectacular domed ceiling. The hotel was built on the former site of the first wooden bathing house, and hosted some famous concert artists in its glory days including Bing Crosby, Vladimir Horowitz, Duke Ellington, Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, Marlene Dietrich and the Rolling Stones.
Remco Dorr at the Gemeente Museum And then there’s the art. The Mauritshuis is due to re-open on 27 June after renovation, but its ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ is still away on tour (Martin and I judiciously avoided the massive queue for it in New York in December!). Meanwhile the collection has been given a foster home by the Gemeente Museum of Modern Art. We toured the old masters with an excellent guide, who wisely selected just a few paintings to stop by and illuminate us on their place in art history. Among these were Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Robert Cheseman, who was Henry VIII’s Head Falconer (these and four other Holbeins are the only ones in the Netherlands, and were brought over by William and Mary from England, another example of art which might be a candidate for return to its original home!); Henrik Avercamp’s beautiful ‘On The Ice’, Johannes Vermeer’s ‘View of Delft’, which features a fantastically painted light breeze on the water, and Peter Paul Rubens’ ‘Old Woman and a Boy with Candles’. Deserving particular mention, two marvellous Rembrandts – ‘The Anatomy Lesson of Nicholaes Tulp’, one of the artist’s first big commissions when he was in his 20s, and a late ‘Self-Portrait’. Rembrandt died in 1669.He was poor, completely out of fashion, and by then had lost his wife and only surviving son.
We went on to the Gemeente Museum itself, and again were expertly guided through a succession of paintings from the Impressionists Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet etc. through to the Expressionists, Egon Schiele and Kandinsky. We also viewed some mid and late 20th century works by Piet Mondrian, Francis Bacon and Bruce Naumann. The final rooms featured artists such as Germany’s Anselm Kiefer and the Cobra artists. The Museum itself, a striking yellow-brick geometric structure, is the work of the influential Dutch architect, HP Berlage, who designed it to make maximum use of natural light.

Lastly, we visited the Escher Museum, particularly exciting for me as I’ve been a huge fan of Escher for many years. It was fantastic to see so many of his original works in one place, and the experience was heightened by the setting in a beautiful old Royal Palace. Its enthusiastic director has taken steps to make the most of this – as you go through the museum you are also informed about the former residential use of each room, and a series of stunning chandeliers which were commissioned from Rotterdam artist Hans Van Bentem. The third floor is dedicated to the optical illusion aspects of Escher’s works and there are some fun interactive exhibits for younger visitors.
Chandelier at MC Escher in Het Paleis We rounded off our trip with a visit to the Van Kleef Distillery, where we had a very amusing talk given by Fleur about the origins of the genever (gin basically) industry and its relationship with local culture, plus some tasty drinks and eats – those assembled rather more bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked and voluble by the time we left!

I certainly hope to visit The Hague again. We heard a lot about the sharp division between the ‘posh’ side of town and the other side of the tracks, and being generally more interested in dustbinmen than duchesses, I’d love to explore some its working-class history and culture, especially its Jewish heritage.

The Unreturning Army

Huntly Gordon, the author of this superb memoir of a field gunner in Flanders during the First World War, wrote that he offered it for ‘those who wanted to know, without reading volumes of history, what it was really like to be there on the spot’, and one of his wartime friends the artist Keith Henderson, wrote to him on its publication, ‘Dear Huntly – well done! But those nightmares, you have revived them, and what I have tried these many years to forget is as vivid and lurid as ever…”

This really is a wonderful book. Gordon’s humanity, his good-nature and general lack of self-pity come shining through, all these years on. I would love to have met this man, who in later life, among other things, initiated food trains during the Blitz for the thousands sheltering in the London Underground.

When I researched the war dead commemorated on the Southborough War Memorial, I had to keep focused on their individual circumstances, as there were over 250 of them, but with every book I read on the First World War, I gain more knowledge. The Unreturning Army doesn't disappoint – it informed my understanding, conveying to me something of the reality of what many of the Southborough and High Brooms men must have gone through.

When I visited Ypres a few years back I went for an early morning run through the Menin Gate Memorial arch and along the Menin Road. Gordon describes the scene in July 1917: “Most of the traffic supplying the line in front of Ypres must pass through here, and the Boche takes heavy toll of it – day and night. The bridge, whether originally arched or not, is now a solid mass of stonework, supplemented, indeed cemented, by the remains of smashed vehicles and the fragmented bodies of horses and men.”

His vivid descriptions of winter conditions for the gunners includes the following account of transporting and setting up the battery from December 1917: "... when darkness fell it began to freeze hard. We did our best to keep warm by huddling together in our doorless carriages, but were stiff and cold when at 2 am we reached the deserted station of Boisleux-au-Mont and were told to off-load ... unloading the horses was a maddeningly slow process, in flurries of snow and a searing wind ... all the ropes were like bars of iron from the intense frost ... somehow or other the job was done at last, and the chill rising sun found us marching through featureless snowy wastes towards our destination ... here the camp site allotted to us was on the exposed top of a ridge, where there was nothing but a few tents to give shelter from the wind. The water troughs had three inches of ice on them, but a pick-axe overcame that difficulty ... the poor horses droop patiently at their ropes, their blankets just keeping them alive ..."
 
He writes later of being re-united with his war-horse, Fly, after the start of the big German push on 21 March 1918: "Suddenly a horse whinnied. I turned, and there was my beloved mount, Fly, asking for her sugar. She had been pressed into service as lead-horse of a gun-team in another battery. They told me they had found her running loose; and pretty worn out she looked, reduced to a shadow through lack of food and water. But after some forceful discussion with the office in charge, I got her back; and she carried me stout-heartedly for the remaining days of my service."
 
The men who fought this terrible war often wrote of their ambivalent feelings about the enemy - Gordon writes "What a Mad-Hatter's War this is! Like everyone else I see Germany as an evil enemy, who ruthlessly broke her guarantee to Belgium, and loosed war on her unready neighbours to secure the domination of Europe. Against that we are rightly fighting - for our freedom. But all that is background. The sorry fact remains that I do not hate the Germans personally." And in a period of respite from the fighting, he reflects "For out there, it is not just the Valley of the Shadow, but the very home of Death itself, where neither trees, nor plants, nor birds, nor even soldiers can hope to keep alive for very long."  Later on in the book, he "raises my tin-hat" to a German machine-gunner, who forebore to fire on the stretcher-bearers carrying a seriously wounded Gordon away from the spot where he had been hit by an explosive shell fall-out, and without whom "this book could never have been written."
 
What were soldiers reading in the trenches? Gordon found the Psalms "a very present help in trouble", and also had a copy of Dickens' Pickwick Papers with him. Bruce Bairnsfather's cartoons were, of course, always worth a chuckle from all ranks.

We all have family stories of our grandfathers, great-uncles, etc coming home from the war and having very little to say about their experiences - for what kind of frame of reference could they give them? As Gordon writes of his leave"... there came a seemingly endless succession of friends and relations, who all inanely asked, "How are you getting on out there?" to which I invariably replied, 'Fine, thanks, just fine.' What else could one say? How could they begin to understand? We were now simply in different worlds."
 
All these years later, this book, writing as it does not only of the humanity and purposefulness of men working together, their stoicism and fortitude, but also the times when their feelings ran out of control, pictures for us many of the things of which they could not speak.
 
I cannot recommend it too highly.