Annals

Early Years

Chapter 1 (1935-1950)
1935 was the year of my birth. I do not remember it. But Baldwin was the British
prime minister; Mussolini was in Abyssinia killing the natives who resisted his operatic
army. The first antibiotic was discovered. To me 1936 was similar but it saw the end of
life for Hamilton Fish , one of the first recorded serial killers, whose exploits fascinated
readers of the New York Times. Perhaps the first bogey man!

“He was born in Washington DC as Hamilton Fish, to Randall Fish (1795-1875) of

Kennebec, Maine and his wife, Ellen (1838-?), of Ireland. His father was 43 years older
than his mother. Albert Fish later stated that his family had an extensive history of mental
illness. He was the youngest of four, accompanying siblings Walter, Annie and Edwin.
Randall Fish died in 1875 in Washington D.C. Albert claimed much later that his mother,
unable to care for him, put him into an orphanage where he was ruthlessly whipped and
beaten. He said that he was the only child who looked forward to the beatings. By 1890,
Albert had arrived in New York City as a house painter. In 1898, he was married to Anna,
nine years his junior, with whom he had six children: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene,
John and Henry. He also married on February 6, 1930 at Waterloo, New York to "Mrs.
Estella Wilcox" and divorced after one week. Fish had been arrested in May 1930 for
"sending an obscene letter to an African American woman who answered an
advertisement for a maid." He had been sent to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in 1930 and
1931 for observation, following his arrests.

Fish, a house painter, claimed to have drifted across the United States, murdering at
least one person in each of the twenty-three states he had visited as well as various other
victims along the way, although this claim is not supported by any of the known
documents on his life. Doctors examining him for his later trial claimed that he was a
sadomasochist, indulging in self-mutilation, driving needles into his body, mostly around
his genitals. He said he tried sticking a needle in his scrotum but it was too painful, and
there were needles in his pelvis that were permanently embedded. He would stuff cotton
balls soaked with lighter fluid into his rectum and set fire to them. He is said to have
consumed not only the flesh of his victims but also their urine, blood, and excrement. He
attributed these tendencies to the abuse he suffered in childhood. He also claimed God
sent him on "missions" to kill. His murders often involved slow torture. He would tie
children up and whip them with a belt cut in half with nails sticking through to tenderize
the flesh for cooking. Fish called his weapons "implements of hell." The term boogeyman
was at the time in reference to him.”
 Some of the many people who oversaw my early years often appealed for better
behaviour by threatening me with the “bogeyman”. They left me to imagine what he was
like and what kind of threat he represented. Perhaps something like this happened during
Stephen King’s childhood!

1937. as a two year old there is nothing I can personally remember but it provides us
with evidence of man’s inhumanity to man. Piedrafita de Babia is a village in the
mountains of Leon, northern Spain. They remember November 5th not for fireworks but
for a fascist mass murder. For many years fear prevented local people from mourning for
the dead. Thirty five thousand people were killed and thrown into a mass grave by
Franco’s troops this year. Recently relatives have been able to gather here to look at last
for the bodies of relatives. It’s taken the best part of a century for Spain to come to grips
with the depravities of Franco’s regime. Its government is still resisting any concerted
attempt to pay homage to all the ordinary people killed by Franco.
The twentieth century saw a lot of human progress. We lived it without fully
appreciating that progress was a mixed blessing. Killing took place on an industrial scale
never before seen and often with scarcely imaginable beastliness.

Two seminal events dominated 1938. The English prime minister was Chamberlain
and he returned from a meeting in Munich with Chancellor Hitler promising “peace in
our time” whilst in the US Orson Welles broadcast version of H G Wells’ “War of the
Worlds” managed to create panic amongst his audience. These seem to herald two public
themes which run through my life; misguided politicians and powerful media influences.
The latter here seem to be relatively benign but as Mcluhan was later to emphasize: “The
media is the message”.

Despite what has happened in Spain, the Vatican recognizes Franco’s government.
Eventually I am to become an agnostic with a cynical attitude to religion. Self-serving
decisions like this justify such cynicisms.

Munich Agreement
Chamberlain holds the paper containing the resolution to commit to peaceful methods
signed by both Hitler and himself on his return from Germany in September 1938. He
said:

“My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has
returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.”

The Munich Agreement was an agreement regarding the Sudetenland Crisis

between the major powers of Europe after a conference held in Munich, Germany in
1938 and signed on September 29. The Sudetenland was an area of Czechoslovakia
where ethnic Germans formed a majority of the population. The Sudetenland was of
immense strategic importance to Czechoslovakia, as most of its border defenses were
situated there, along with a huge armament facility, the Škoda Works. The purpose of the
conference was to discuss the future of Czechoslovakia, and it ended up surrendering
much of that state to Nazi Germany. It is considered by many as a major example of
appeasement. Because Czechoslovakia was not invited to the conference, the Munich
Agreement is commonly called the Munich Dictate by Czechs and Slovaks. The phrase
Munich betrayal is also frequently used, especially because of military alliances between
Czechoslovakia and France and between France and Britain that were not taken into
account.

Because Hitler soon violated the terms of the agreement, it has often been
cited in support of the principle that tyrants should never be appeased. Kristnallnacht
(also known as Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht and the Night of Broken Glass) was a
pogrom against Jews throughout Germany and parts of Austria on November 9–10, 1938.

Jewish homes and stores were ransacked in a thousand German cities, towns
and villages, as ordinary citizens and storm troopers destroyed buildings with
sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in smashed windows — the origin of the
name "Night of Broken Glass." Jews were beaten to death; 30,000 Jewish men were
taken to concentration camps and 1,668 synagogues were ransacked or set on fire.

The Times of London commented: "No foreign propagandist bent upon

blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of
blackguardly assaults on defenceless and innocent people, which disgraced that country
yesterday."[ Events in Czechoslovakia were heeded and in the UK, we created on
November 1st 1938, the Balloon Command which added an important element to the nation’s
defences. Its primary function was to act as a defence against low flying aircraft and in doing so,
add protection to heavily populated areas, factories, dockyards & ports. We were getting ready.

Balloon Command was under the control of Air Vice Marshall O. T. Boyd OBE MC AFC (also in
command of the Observer Corps.) and was based at R.A.F. Stanmore, North London. From here
it could integrate more efficiently into the reporting chain and operational structure of Fighter
Command, as was to be proven during the summer of 1940
 Balloon Winch Truck

As with Fighter Command, the country was divided into Group or Sector areas under
separate command and controlled from Stanmore. There were five Groups, each responsible for
a number of balloon squadrons within their area. At the start of the War approximately 800
balloons were in service, but by 1942 there were well over 2000 operational. As a small boy I
remember seeing them in the sky over Kent and Essex two counties I lived in during the early
forties.

As the Battle of Britain progressed, the effect of the balloon barrages around the coastal
defences of southern England became evident. Many confirmed reports were made relating to
Luftwaffe aircraft lost due to collisions with the cables but also, sadly, so did Spitfires and
Hurricanes. Often, balloons became distracting “play-targets” for Luftwaffe fighter pilots unloading
their guns on return to base or due to the frustration of not encouraging British Fighters up to fight

Barrage Balloon

Later during the War when the V1 & V2 flying bombs were
launched against Great Britain, the balloon barrages claimed nearly 300 of these deadly weapons
before being removed during 1944. Just after the War in Europe had ended, Balloon Command
was disbanded on June 15th 1945 with a smaller Balloon Wing remaining to undertake existing
operations and requirements

It should not be forgotten that this form of “Home Defence” and the men & women
who served within it, made an important contribution in defending Great Britain during
those dark days of World War Two

I am alive and its 1939, and I don’t know what is going on but what is does
eventually affect the course of my life. In March German troops move in to
Czechoslovakia. The Germans claim Bohemia and Moravia. In the same month Stalin
asks Chamberlain to join a coalition against Hitler. Chamberlain says “No.” In April
the Spanish Civil War ends as Madrid surrenders; General Franco takes charge and Spain
becomes Europe’s third Fascist dictatorship. In the same month, Great Britain and
France guaranteed to protect Greece and Romania with armed help if necessary should
the Germans attack them. Shortly afterwards the same guarantee was extended to
Poland.
April is a very busy month as the Italians invade Albania and Germany breaks its
earlier treaties of non-aggression made as recently as 1934 and 35. Roosevelt asks Hitler
and Mussolini to attend a conference to end the violence.
From May to September 1939 Japan and the Soviet Union fought a fierce, large-
scale undeclared war on the Mongolian plains which ended with a decisive Soviet victory
with two important results: Japan reoriented its strategic emphasis toward the south,
leading to war with the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands; and Russia freed
itself from the fear of fighting on two fronts, thus vitally affecting the course of the war
with Germany.
Germany and Italy sign "The Pact of Steel," a formal alliance. The operatic Italian
army was always something Hitler could do without. The alliance was always doomed.
Hind sight makes it easy to see that rogues are guaranteed to fall out.

Beau Geste (1939) was a film that had a great impact on me. The director/producer
William Wellman's superb, high adventure tale set in the desert - a classic melodramatic,
rousing film of the late 30s from Paramount Studios. The screenplay by Robert Carson
was based on the 1924 novel of the same name by English soldier/author Percival
Christopher Wren (1885-1941). The themes of the film, involving three Geste brothers
who disappear from England to avoid scandal and become members of the French
Foreign Legion, include brotherly loyalty, patriotic honor, self-sacrifice, and treachery.
They were uniquely appropriate to a fifties teenager.

This is the best-remembered film version of the novel. The story was to seem
real to me when eventually I became a teenager.

On September 1st 1939 at 04.45 the Germans invaded Poland. Blitzkreig rapidly
destroyed the Polish army though not without casualties. A large section escaped to
Hungary (90.000) and eventually became part of the force which would wreak revenge
on Hitler and his ghastly empire. Polish airmen fought with distinction in the Battle of
Britain. On September 3rd Britain and France declared war on Germany.
 At this time I believe I lived in Chelsfield in Kent. Chelsfield is a traditional Kent
village with a long history sufficient to have inspired someone to write a book: “The
Chelsfield Chronicles”; a title posh enough to make the place sound more important
than it really is. The title is apt enough but it promises more than it can deliver. I can
remember riding a little boy’s tricycle. I lived in a bungalow with an Anderson shelter in
the back garden. My parents did not get on and I can recall eventually living here with
another family. My father had made an arrangement with them whereby they were
allowed to live rent free on condition that they looked after me and my brother John. He
was a couple of years younger than me. He had a tougher life. More of that later.

There is a rather unpleasant story in my head about two rather intolerant people who
sent me to school with an abscess in my ear. It burst whilst I sat at a desk and the teacher
was amazed at the quantity of puss and the negligence of the adults who could send a
child to school in such a state.

In my head there is a court scene. The place is all wood polished panels and men in
academic gowns with solemn voices. One of these men in a large formal court room
asked me who I wanted to live with? Mother or Father. I do not remember my answer
but it does not seem relevant since at the time I was in a house with a strange family I did
not know with a wet Anderson shelter in the garden. They did not care for us and sent me
to primary school with an abscess in my ear. It burst. The teachers could not
comprehend it and that is why it sticks in my early memory. I remember the pain.

My memory of the war years is not clear and neither is it coherent. The events are
probably not in the right order either. However the abscess led to both of us being moved
from the Chelsfield family. It was the start of my progress through twenty different
primary schools. Looking back its something quite amazing; a change of school more
than once a term. Perhaps I should be listed in the Guinness Book of Records. During
that time I met some strange people.

In May 1940 the British and Allied Forces were desperately fighting to stop
the German advance through Europe. By the middle of the month Hitler’s Armies had
swept west from Germany through Holland, Belgium and France forcing the British &
French to retreat. Ten days later the German spearhead had reached the sea cutting off the
Allied Forces in the North from the main Army in France and cornering them into a small
area around Dunkirk.

A BBC announcement on 14th May: "The Admiralty have made an Order requesting all
owners of self-propelled pleasure craft between 30' and l00' in length to send all
particulars to the Admiralty within 14 days from today if they have not already been
offered or requisitioned".
 This sounded like a request but was in fact an order. Preparations were underway for
the greatest evacuation in British history…the retreat from Dunkirk. The government’s
name for this operation was 'Operation Dynamo’. Boats were collected all over
southern England. Some were taken without their owners’ consent. They were taken to
Dover and crewed by experienced seafaring men, naval officers and ratings.

“The Mrs. Miniver story of owners jumping into their Little Ships and rushing off to
Dunkirk is a myth. Very few owners took their own vessels, apart from fishermen and
one or two others. The whole Operation was very carefully co-ordinated and records exist
of most of the Little Ships and other larger vessels that went to Dunkirk “.

On and around the 4th of June, these ships rescued 338.000 British troops together with
100000 French men from the strafed beaches of Dunkirk. Of course I only heard about
on a bakelite radio many years later I met a retired postmaster with vivid memories of
Dunkirk.

Frank Smith recalled being in charge of a signals post in Belgium erecting a

communications mast with a squad of Indian troops when the order came to leave.
Together with his men he was rushed away leaving behind all the equipment they wee
working with to fall into German hands. He spoke of the panic and the chaos of a
disorderly retreat and of an aspect of the affair that’s not been reported elsewhere.
British troops went in for plenty of looting. Their behavior had an important influence
on what happened to them next. Clambering onto small boats under fire was no easy
task. Men who traveled light were more likely to escape and Frank witnessed a scene
where men who were loaded with loot drowned as they were unable to clamber aboard
the small boats.

Frank thought what he saw was a strange kind of poetic justice. The
British have since frequently celebrated this glorious defeat.

Not many days later Churchill delivered his “Finest Hour” speech: “The Battle of
France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin, upon this battle depends the
survival of the Christian civilization and upon it depends our own British life and the
long continuity of our institutions and our Empire” Winston Churchill 18th June.

I distinctly remember the gruff nature of Churchill’s voice. You could almost feel
the drink.

Some time around this period John and I moved to Sidcup where my father had
found another woman to live with. Even now I do not remember her Christian name.
Mrs. Entwistle lived in Hadlow Road and had a daughter called Heather. I went to a
Catholic primary school. There are several in Sidcup. I cannot bring to mind its identity
but I walked up the road and across several streets near the High Street. The school does
come back to me as being not particularly or too overtly catholic. I cannot recall prayers
or propaganda. But at this time I was not a receptive pupil.
 Heather was someone who though obviously lower middle class always thought of
herself as something special. Airs and graces came naturally to her. She comes back to
me as being rather like Just William’s sister in the novels of Richmal Crompton. I saw
every time I read a Just William story. The airs, the graces and the affectations were all
there.

Sidcup was close to the Kent countryside and much of the Battle of Britain must have
been above and around us. Biggin Hill was just down the road but I was too little to
remember much.

Many years later I met Bunny Austen when he was a distinguished gentleman of a
mature age. ”Not the Bunny Austen, Fred ]erry’s partner the last time we won the Davis
Cup in 1936.” “I am afraid I am not that Bunny Austen but I was a Battle of Britain
fighter pilot” Daft statistics that sit in my head informed me that the average life
expectancy of a Battle of Britain fighter pilot was forty eight hours. Bunny must have
either been an excellent fighter pilot or a lucky man.

I don’t recall anything about 1941 except Sidcup but on the world stage Roosevelt was
busy creating the: THE ATLANTIC CHARTER (1941) where the ideals written down
were the forerunners to those that initiated the United Nations. We are cynical about the
UN, but, it has already proved to be the most successful international organization in
human history.

The United States did not enter the war until after the attack on Pearl Harbour
which did not take place until December. But by the spring of 1941 Congress had
approved the Lend Lease program, and the aid Roosevelt had promised at Charlottesville
had begun to flow to Great Britain, where Churchill was now prime minister. In July
1941, Roosevelt and Churchill met for the first time in Argentia Bay off Newfoundland,
to issue a joint declaration on the purposes of the war against fascism. Wilson's Fourteen
Points delineated the first war; the Atlantic Charter provided similar justification for the
criteria for the second.

The notion of "one world," in which nations abandoned their traditional beliefs in and
reliance upon military alliances and spheres of influence, did not appeal to Stalin so the
Soviet Union did not sign up to the charter. Churchill was not all that keen either.
Roosevelt, who had been a member of the Wilson administration, truly believed in the
possibility of a world governed by democratic processes, with an international
organization serving as an arbiter of disputes and protector of the peace. Many of his
successors in the US presidency have proved not to be as keen as he was on this idea. The
powerful nations have frequently failed to see fair play and some religions have proved to
be actively hostile to any “one world” idealism that does not cede dominance to their
faith.
 Around this time we lived in Sunbury on Thames in a house by the Thames. The
house was on a kind of offshoot, a stream which was not very wide in front of our house.
There must have been an island blocking our view of the main river. We used to play in a
little band of boys and incidents I remember led us to create our own farcical mirror of
the honours system whereby we appointed ourselves OKS, OLP. These acronyms stood
for Order of the Kitchen Sink, and Order of the Lavatory Pan; obviously they appealed
to small boys like us. Perhaps these were the beginnings of eventually becoming a paid
up “Outsider”

My memories of Pearl Harbour are coloured by having seen the film “From Here to
Eternity”. I remember the characters as if they were the real protagonists in the war.
Private Prewitt, poor southern soldier.

James Jones based his first novel in 1951, From Here to Eternity, on his own military
experience as a World War II veteran, and created a scathing portrait of peacetime
military life in the U.S. army in the months before Pearl Harbor. The film production
company refused several film scripts including one by Jones himself--before accepting a
screenplay by Daniel Taradash that managed to retain the spirit of the novel and appease
the censors by getting rid of the novel's profanity and its frank portrayal of prostitution.

The character of Lorene was changed from a prostitute in a brothel to a "hostess" at a

social club although the film left little doubt in the mind of the viewer as to what that
hostessing was.

To get the Army's crucial approval and technical support, two additional changes
were made in the transition from book to movie: none of the brutal treatment inside the
Stockade would be shown, and the novel's sarcastic promotion of an unethical officer was
changed to a forced resignation. According to Zinnemann, it was writer
Taradash and producer Buddy Adler who were instrumental in securing his services as
director whilst Zinneman himself wanted Montgomery Clift as leading man rather than
either John Derek or Aldo Ray:

A contributor to an internet site has written that: “From Here to Eternity" contains the
best performance delivered by an actor of any gender on celluloid. Montgomery Clift is
assertive, funny, tough, sensitive and charismatic in the pivotal role of Robert E. Lee
Prewitt, the rebellious loner with the streak of nobility. It is easy to see why James Dean
idolized him after seeing his portrayal in the film. It is also a shame modern actors don't
mention his name more often when listing their influences. As often noted, he preceded
Brando by two years (he first appeared in Red River, released in 1948; Brando bowed in
The Men in 1950)and created the arch-type of the 1950's rebel. But due to his
intelligence, Clift also informed his characters with a sense of purpose. He didn't simply
rebel. For instance, in Eternity, he apologises after an angry outbreak at his girlfriend.
Instead of appearing weak, he impressed me all the more for doing so. It makes him
appear more mature than the typical rebel. In another instance, when he feels his friend
Maggio is being unfairly attacked, he "stares down" the attacker proving he looks out for
his friend, another attractive quality. When the non-coms dole out extra punishment to
him to force him to box, he refuses to file a complaint but likewise refuses to comply
with their demands. Such moments distinguish Clift from other, more typically macho
Hollywood leading men of the era and contributed greatly to Eternity's long initial run at
the box office and its status as a classic piece of Hollywood cinema. It is time someone
set the record straight and restored Montgomery Clift's name to its rightful place in the
pantheon of Hollywood's great leading men. For proof, look no further than “From Here
to Eternity.”

The other major casting decisions also have their own interesting stories and myths; it
appears that only Burt Lancaster was a clear and unanimous choice for the role of
Sergeant Warden. In fact, Frank Sinatra--who would go on to win an Oscar for his
performance as Maggio--had to fight and plead for the role, after first choice Eli Wallach
backed out. Sinatra's marriage to Ava Gardner was in trouble, his career was in a slump,
and throat problems made him fear his singing days were over. A favorite myth has it that
Sinatra got the part because of his mob connections; a wild rumor that supposedly
inspired the famous horse head scene in the movie The Godfather!

In reply to that story, Zinnemann states in his autobiography, one would assume
tongue-in-cheek, that "At no time were horses' heads involved in the casting decision.”
The author of The Godfather was using poetic license." Whatever the real story, Sinatra
managed to win the role of Maggio for a paltry salary of $8000, and then turned in
arguably the best acting performance of his career, one that was uniformly praised and
awarded an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor of 1953.

The famous surf scene has influenced voyeurs ever since, Ziunneman writes in his
autobiography:

"That scene, regarded as sensational and extremely provocative a mere 25 years ago,
seems harmless and friendly by today's standards. Although it was shot very much as
written, the movie censors, who knew the script by heart, nevertheless insisted on
deleting four seconds of it. In later years I found that even more had been snipped out by
theater projectionists, as a souvenir no doubt. For many years the tourist buses used to
stop routinely at this point on the Hawaiian shore to let people admire 'the spot where
Burt and Deborah made love in the waves.' It is a curious contribution we have made to
popular culture."

When asked in the late 1980s what it was like shooting the infamous scene, Lancaster
simply answered, "It was cold, and I was wet."!
 Remarking years later on Clift's obsession with his role, Zinnemann said: "For many
months after the end of filming, Monty continued to be possessed by his own creation--
Private Prewitt. He was quite unable to get out of that character. By his intensity he
forced the other actors to come up to his standard of performance."

Marlene Dietrich when questioned about its success as it was opening with little or
no publicity: “ No premiere, no limousines, nothing. It was midnight there but the
Capitol Theater was bulging, people were still standing around the block and there was
an extra performance starting at one in the morning! She was asked,
'How is that possible?
There has been no publicity.'
'They smell it,' she said."

Marlene Dietrich is an early presence in my memories for her rendering to the

soldier’s song “Lili Marlene” although it was actually La La Anderson who sang it first.
It is strange that I remember scenes from my life when I was around four and five but not
much when I was six and seven before I get any continuity I am up to eight or nine. Why
should this be so? My father was changing houses and child care personnel very
frequently.

Around this time though John and I met someone who would now be a target for
social services and possibly the NSPCC. I cannot recall her real name but to us she was
Nurse Barney Balls. She was sadistic. At this time John was wetting the bed probably
because of emotional stress. Barney Balls remedy was….make him sit on a jeremiah
outside in the cold whatever the weather. I can only imagine the pain he suffered.

It was during this period that we were introduced to the cinema. We went to the
Odeon in Finchley. It was this London community that hosted the dreaded Barney Balls.
One day we went to see a film called: “Commandos Strike at Dawn” in this cinema. It
has been described as another of the "common folk against Nazi invasion and
occupation" films. It dealt with resistance against the Nazi forces in Norway.
Comments about the film include a note that in reality the exploits of the Norwegian
resistance were braver and more comprehensive than those outlined in this piece.

When we went into the film the cinema was nearly full and the only seats available
were widely set apart. As I was the older brother I was responsible for John but I did not
immediately appreciate this. I was shown to a seat and John went off to another. Later
when the film was over I could not find because I had not noted where he went. The
cinema was large. It was dark. I could not see him anywhere.

Barney Balls had to come out. Only when the film was finally over did a real
search begin. John was eventually found in a central position slumped asleep between
the seats in a position that could not be seen from the aisles ends. He was only
discovered when people checked row by row. I received a good ticking off. The film
was released in 1942 when I was seven. It’s my only solid memory from that year.
 In 1943 we found ourselves on Canvey Island where we lived for a considerable time
and I remember a number of things. The island was a strange place.

The land was reclaimed a century or two earlier by the Dutch. Dykes criss crossed the
island. In many places the bridges were only planks. Men were few and the place was
populated largely by women. We were sent to a peculiar primary school which occupied
a large house and was run by a couple of spinsters. They used to punish us with twig
canes which broke when they hit us. Funny rather than painful. We found a large trunk
full of cigarettes which we stole and smoked. Later when we had left the island my
father received a phone call about the cigarettes. John and I denied all knowledge of the
incident:
“Not us gov”

But our social relationships were more interesting. We belonged to Ben Cook’s gang.
He was an older lad whose house was at the bottom of our garden; to reach it you had to
use a path which ran down the side of our plot and round our toilet block which was
about twelve yards beyond our back door. Beside the back door there was a large
covered water tank. Ben’s house was some twenty yards to the right of our toilet block.
To come and go Ben had always to follow the path close to our house and round the back
of our toilets.

One of the gang’s main activities was scrumping. The gang was up to forty kids strong
and when it raided an orchard it could strip it bare. Locusts could not do a better job.
The Canvey Island policeman always found it difficult to catch anyone partly because of
his age but also because we were good at lifting plank bridges leaving the bobby stranded
on the wrong side of the dyke. We used then to just run on laughing at the policeman’s
predicament. All the time the war went on above us.

There was one particular evening that sticks in my memory when we ventured into a
large well protected orchard by cutting a hole in its fence. We were left then with only
two exits from the orchard that we could use, one of them was the hole we had made
whilst the other was through the coal shed in the corner and out through a hatch at
shoulder height. We were not expecting to have to use this knowledge. So when we
did, it proved quite an experience!

I was high in a tree when the unexpected happened. The policeman appeared at one
side of the orchard and the woman who owned it at the other. It looked as though we
were trapped and so we were except for those two exits. Some of us escaped back
through the hole we had made. I got out through the coal hole hatch. If you had been in
the lane outside you’d have seen children popping through the hatch like cannon shells.
We ran for it whilst the policeman came out of the orchard on his bike after us. He was
catching us but we came to one of those plank bridges. We ran across it and pulled it
away leaving our policeman stranded and frustrated. We thought it was a laugh.

Later when we met up with other gang members we discussed the event only to
discover that one or two members had been caught. They gave false names and nothing
further happened to us. We were apprehensive. But I suppose as it was war time, the
authorities had better things to do than worry about scrumpers like us. Ben Cook had
planned the raid which ended as a fiasco. His prestige suffered. We fell out with him
and taunted him with a rhyme which must have appealed to nasty little boys like John and
I. “Benny Cook done a poop
behind the kitchen door
The cat come and licked it up
And asked him for some more.”
Naturally Ben Cook took umbrage at this and regularly beat us up. We got fed up and
ambushed him as he passed from his house under the toilets at the bottom of our garden; I
dropped a brick on his head. Raging with anger he ran into our garden where John
heaved a house brick at him. Eventually his mother came to our house complaining that
we had bullied him. Mrs. Entwhistle could not believe it:
“Ben’s nearly fourteen and these two are only little boys!”
Looking back at the incident I realize that we could have killed him. Fortunately we left
him with only injured pride and a sore head!

Our dog on Canvey Island was a cairn terrier called “Rip”. I remember him
because he was so fierce. I have visions of him seeing off a whole fleet of Alsatians;
mind you, most of them were puppies. Perhaps they were wise because on another
occasion I saw Rip kill a cat and take a chunk off the end of an Alsatian’s tail. Yes one
was foolhardy enough to fight with this little terror.

Canvey Island also introduced me to sex although I did not understand what was
happening at the time. Some girls who were members of Ben’s gang invited us into their
shelter where they expected us to perform. We were unable to satisfy them.

You remember that water tank I mentioned earlier. John and I turned it into a tank
and pretended to be taking part in the war. As a result I caught scarlet fever and was
removed for a time to Rochford Isolation Hospital. All that comes back to me about that
is a vision of fields and a feeling of being away from it all. It’s a kind of television flash
back.
Later when I returned to the island there is one memory which comes back clearly.
One day I was out walking along the sea wall when I noticed activity in the estuary. A
stray German plane was strafing a freighter and flying very low. It flew low machine
gunning the ship and heading for the island. As it passed a few hundred feet above the
vessel which had a Bofors gun. Gunfire followed the plane which was hit and blew up
in front of me.

Against low-flying aircraft, the now-legendary 40mm Bofors gun was

not only imported in quantities from Sweden but was also built under
licence in Britain. With an effective ceiling of 5,000 feet the Bofors
could track an enemy plane and pump out rounds at a rate of 120 per
minute. One such round saw to that German plane.
 But you would need more than a Bofors gun to deal with the next
visitors from Germany, the flying bomb called a doodlebug to be
followed by the V1 and the V2 which you could not see. These
weapons were developed by Werner von Braun who eventually went to
the US to help them go out into space.

The Second Battle of Monte Cassino January 17 - February 18, 1944 is something
I remember mainly for the dulcet tones of Wynford Vaughan Thomas. I heard his radio
commentaries regularly much as we hear sports commentaries today.

“Wynford Vaughan Thomas reporting from the slopes of Monte Cassino” that was
his strap line. I can hear it still.

By September 1944, the Second World War had almost reached a conclusion. The Allied
armies had rapidly pushed the disorganized Germans almost completely out of France
and Belgium, and it was here that the front line stood, several miles short of the Dutch
border.

This rapid advance had caused the Allies crippling supply problems and, despite
their best efforts, all the armies did not have the resources to keep advancing at their
present pace. Given the view that the Germans were almost on the point of collapse, it
was agreed that a single army should be given priority of the supplies to enact a plan that
would deal the final blow and win the war before the end of 1944. This honour fell to
Field Marshal Montgomery and his 2nd British Army.

Montgomery proposed a highly ambitious plan to fly three Divisions of glider

and parachute troops (35,000 men) and land them in various parts of Holland to capture
no less than five key bridges. British tanks would simultaneously break through the front
line and link up with the Airborne Divisions one by one to properly securing these
bridges. Once they were all taken, there would then be no further river obstacles between
the British and Germany, and a quick conclusion to the war would surely follow. The
plan, the largest airborne assault in the history of warfare, was codenamed Operation
Market Garden. D-Day was set for Sunday, 17th September.

Two of the Airborne Divisions selected to capture the bridges were American.
The 101st were to take two bridges around Eindhoven, while the 82nd would take a
further two at Nijmegen. It was estimated that they would be relieved by British ground
troops after only a matter of hours, and one or two days respectively. The final bridge at
Arnhem, the ultimate goal of Market Garden, was entrusted to General Roy Urquhart and
his 1st British Airborne Division with the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade
under command. Urquhart and his 10,000 men were to be dropped 60 miles into enemy
territory, and it would be 3 days before British tanks reinforced them.

We all know it went wrong and the Germans won the ensuing battle. It all came
into my life through another voice, Stewart Macpherson. BBC voices then had great
distinction, Alvar Liddell, and Valentine Dyall come into mind in this instance. The
voices I still hear. The commentaries from Vaughan Thomas and Macpherson return to
me like sports broadcasts but of course they were more serious than that. They seemed to
be reporting victories for the goodies so to speak. The baddies lost and this was not
always so in history. Macpherson was a distinguished war correspondent who left a
lasting impression even though after the war he became the question master on a radio
quiz programme ”Ignorance is Bliss”

But my father wanted to remove us from the scene. We were sent

to a Catholic boarding school somewhere in Hertfordshire. I cannot
remember where although I know we only lasted one term! But it
proved to be quite a term!

When we arrived we were asked what variety of religion we adhered

to. The nun said “Religion .Catholic, C of E, any other”
“English without anything: C of E then” So we were
officially C of E and English too. That meant we were in St George’s
house. You’ve guessed it; the other houses were St Andrew, St David
and St Patrick. It was wartime so sleeping accommodation as I
remember it was underground in close up bunks and there was an
airbrick at the top of our cell through which curious boys could get a
partial bird’s eye view of what was going on in the girl’s sleeping
quarters. Giggling eventually led to the girls twigging the situation and
paper was plastered over the holes. We all tried removing the paper
with varying degrees of success.

The most abiding memory is being in church morning, noon and

night every day. As a privilege, we were allowed to sleep every third
Sunday till 7.a.m. At all other times it was praise the lord before and
after every meal. It is not a happy memory.

There was a scandal when two girls ran away and turned up back
on Canvey Island. In blacked out Britain their journey must have been
very scary. The school was so awful their actions were understandable.

Mother Superior was quite a nice person. I can remember a walk

in the woods with her leading us like a latter day religious pied piper.
We did not take to it and disappeared to do our own thing. Eventually
though we had to report back to her. Everyone was caned but when it
came to my turn, she used her hands and swept me into her skirts.
When I think about it, I recall the strange sensation that initiated, only
a few seconds but remembered as a weird event. As I came out of her
skirts, the next boy was being caned. Caning was a popular activity
in the school. At the time to us kids it was a fact of life but looking
back it can be seen as the obvious result of sexual frustration. One
nun who wasn’t a teacher but a kind of teaching assistant was
particularly vindictive. She patrolled the lines of children waiting to go
into the refectory. If she caught you talking you were caned according
to a menu: four strokes for Catholics, five for C of Es and six for Greek
Orthodox, Jews and the rest.

John and I were just the last two boys at the end of the St George line. Every day in
the quadrangle there were four lines, one for each of the saints listed above. Ours was a
very insignificant position at the end of the line. I cannot remember why John was
expelled at the end of the term but I went because of something that happened with a
charade involving Robin Hood. In an English lesson we asked to create charades. My
group chose Robin Hood and I had to kiss Maid Marian. I did. Our teacher nun objected
and I swore at her which meant I was once again in front of Mother Superior.
“Reluctantly”, she said, “We’d have to leave” We thought it was a mercy to be sent
back to Canvey Island.

To teach in a Catholic school, teachers (who are already fully qualified) must
be approved by the Catholic Church (usually the local bishop). In the past, this meant
that to teach in Catholic schools, one had to be a Catholic. In our school all staff members
were members of a religious order. Even as primary school children we understood and
appreciated the bias. We did not recognize the nuns’ behaviour as child abuse and they, I
am sure, were not conscious of their activities as cruelty to children.

We went back to Canvey Island and the doodlebugs. But now the sky at night
was amazing. Around 9.p.m. thousands of lights sparkled in the sky as bombers in
massive fleets headed for Germany. In the late early hours of the next morning the noise
came back as most of the planes returned after bombing Germany. Maybe I was a child
down there when the planes responsible for fire-bombing Dresden passed over head.
Even children like us were aware of rationing and ration books. They brought a kind of
equality to everyone because we all needed them. Buff gray ones for food and different
ones for clothing. People had to change what they ate in wartime. Lots of food was not
available during the war, so people had to eat what they could get. Presumably
preparation was a problem and there were loads of problems that children did not know
about. Shops did not always have the same food each week. People could only buy what
was there. Some food such as meat and bread and some fruit would only be in the shops
for a day before it was all sold out. Queuing for food when it was available was
inevitable. Shopping was different too. You had to take your ration coupons to the shops
you had registered with. You could only buy what you had enough ration coupons for, as
well as what you could afford. People living in the countryside were the luckier ones as
they had land to grow vegetables for their own tables. From my point of view I can
remember school dinners with a certain amount of horror. We often got pork with loads
of fat on it. Teachers tried to make us eat it. I said: “If you make me it, I’ll be sick”.
They did and I was. The main vegetables we had to eat were cabbage, turnip and parsnip
with cabbage predominating. We also seemed to be swimming in oceans of tapioca
which we referred to as “frog spawn”. I can still taste it. If you can imagine eating frog
spawn, you’ll get the idea.
 The bombing of Dresden led by the RAF and involving the United States Army Air
Force which took place between February 13 and February 15, 1945 remains one of the
more controversial Allied actions of World War II. The American historian Frederick
Taylor has commented: "The destruction of Dresden has an epically tragic quality to it.
It was a wonderfully beautiful city and a symbol of baroque humanism and all that was
best in Germany. It also contained all of the worst from Germany during the Nazi period.
In that sense it is an absolutely exemplary tragedy for the horrors of 20th Century
warfare"

The bombing of Dresden although initially approved by Churchill, eventually led

him to query the legitimacy of choosing targets without reference to the civilian nature of
some of them. He wrote “It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of
bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other
pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined
land… The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied
bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly
studied in our own interests.” Our century has to a greater degree than previously
involved civilians in war. This kind of challenge is all round us today and rightly so
when you read the following descriptions from two people who were there.

There are a number of first hand accounts from civilians who present when the raids
took place. Margaret Freyer, recalled:

“The firestorm [was] incredible, there [were] calls for help and screams from
somewhere but all around [was] one single inferno...suddenly, I saw people
again, right in front of me. They scream[Ed] and gesticulate[d] with their hands,
and then - to my utter horror and amazement - I [saw] how one after the other
they simply seem to let themselves drop to the ground. Today I know that these
unfortunate people were the victims of lack of oxygen. They fainted and then
burnt to cinders. “

Another survivor, Lothar Metzger, provides an equally visual account:

“We saw the burning street, the falling ruins and the terrible firestorm. My
mother covered us with wet blankets and coats she found in a water tub. We saw
terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of
arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to
and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers,
many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire
everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw
people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from.”

. I have lived most of my life in the twentieth century which has witnessed not only the
continuance of the industrialization of much of the world but also the development of
industrial methods of mass murder ranging from gatling guns to bombs and ultimately the
H bomb. These horrors have been added to the penchant for religious killing which has
been with us for centuries to make our century probably the bloodiest in human history.
As small boys neither John nor I were aware of all this.

Memory is strange since I can recall all kinds of incidents and images from Canvey
Island but not a lot from Coventry where I went in 1946. It must have been September
because I found myself in the first form of a secondary school.

But in January on the 10th the first meeting of the United Nations (UN) took place on
San Francisco. As an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate co-
operation in international law, international security, economic development, and social
equity. It was founded in 1945 at the signing of the United Nations Charter by 50
countries, replacing the League of Nations founded in 1919.

The UN was founded after the end of World War II by the victorious allied powers in
the hope that it would act to prevent and intervene in conflicts between nations and make
future wars impossible or limited. The organization's structure still reflects in some ways
the circumstances of its founding, which has led to calls for reform. The five permanent
members of the UN Security Council, each of which has veto power on any UN
resolution, are the main victors of World War II or their successor states: People's
Republic of China (which replaced the Republic of China), France, Russia (which
replaced the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Back in Coventry for 46 and 47 I experienced a lot of bullying. The locals were
convinced that the city was the most bombed place in Britain. I disagreed. London for
me. Coventry for them. I was one. They were many. They won.

With some friends we behaved as nasty little boys. Our favourite activity was cat
hunting with catapults. There were huge allotments left over from the war where people
grew vegetables. Many of the plots had sheds often with tin roofs where the cats used to
sleep: that is until we disturbed them with stones fired from our catapults.

In 1947 we experienced the worst winter of my life, memorable for the vast
quantities of snow that fell. From 22 January to 17 March in 1947, snow fell every
day somewhere in the UK, with the weather so cold that the snow accumulated. The
temperature seldom rose more than a degree or two above freezing. In mid January 1947,
no-one expected the winter to go down in the annals as the snowiest since 1814 and
among the coldest on record. After two cold spells that had failed to last - one before
Christmas 1946, the other during the first week of January - the weather had turned
unseasonably mild.

The cold, snowy weather continued through February and into March. Any breaks in
the cold weather were short-lived.

• On no day in February 1947 did the temperature at Kew Observatory top 4.4 °C,
and only twice in the month was the night minimum temperature above 0 °C
 • The mean maximum temperature for the month was 0.5 °C (6.9 °C below
average) and the mean minimum was -2.7 °C (4.6 °C below average)
• On 26 of the month's 28 days, snow was holding its place.
• South of a line from The Wash to the River Dee, mean maximum temperatures
were everywhere more than 5.5 °C below average and, in some places, more than
7 °C below average
• Mean minimum temperatures were more than 4 °C below average everywhere in
the south and south-west of England, and almost 6 °C below average in some
places

I remember looking out of the bedroom window and seeing the snow level with it. We
had to dig our way out of the house and quarry a path down the street. I never saw snow
like this before and I have never seen anything like it since. In these days no one talked
about global warming.

Later in 1947 my father moved again. This time we went to Holybourne a village in
Hampshire between Farnham and Alton.

HOLYBOURNE, a parish in the upper half of the hundred of Alton, county Hants, 1
mile N.E. of Alton. It is situated on the river Wey, and contains the tything of Neatham.
The living is a vicarage not in charge, annexed to that of Alton, in the diocese of
Winchester. The church, dedicated to the Holy Rood, is an ancient structure, and has been
enlarged. There is a free school in the parish, founded and endowed by Thomas Andrews
in 1719. It has an annual income of about £200 per annum, a portion of which is
appropriated to the apprenticing of boys. Lord Sherbourne is lord of the manor. The
principal residence is Holybourne Lodge." [Description(s) from The National Gazetteer
of Great Britain and Ireland (1868) - Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003

Mrs. Entwhistle became the teacher in the primary school which was attached to a
grand old Queen Anne house which was bigger than the school building. Behind the
house there was a large orchard which eventually featured in my life here.

Coming from a secondary modern in Coventry I was sent to the local secondary mod
in Alton. But Mrs Entwhistle was a county council employee and this got me an
interview at county hall in Winchester where they asked me about India. I knew about
Gandhi and Nehru and company. They transferred me to Eggars Grammar School.
When I got there I justified the selectors’ faith in me by consistently coming bottom of
the class and earnt my spurs as a bad boy. But I was good at history and came top in that.
This prowess enabled me to win my first school prize and on speech day I was rewarded
with handshake and a bauble from Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery of Alamein. He
lived in at Islington Mill, a large oast house style home near Bentley, a village between
Holybourne and Farnham which I came to know well.
 One day I was sent out of an English class and in the school hall I took fifteen
minutes out of the master clock. The clock controlled the school bells. As a result
everyone left school early and I was rewarded with six of the best. We also had dirty
tricks that we played on the chemistry master. He was quite a pleasant man and did not
deserve the treatment we gave him. One of the worst was to blow down the Bunsen
burners, a most dangerous thing to do.

Life in Holybourne was vibrant. I attended church, supported the village football
and cricket teams and my father created the local dramatic society which eventually
created the Holybourne Theatre which is still there today.

Laurie Lee when writing about the twentieth century comments on the rapid growth of
noise particularly after the First World War. Slad before the war was a place where only
moving water and birdsong were extant. Holybourne in the forties was a pleasant but
noisy place although the noise came mainly from a huge rookery in the dip in the London
Road below the White Hart. It was a natural noise, the kind of noise Lee was referring
to in his reminisces about Slad. I envy him his mellifluous writing and it’s my candid
opinion that “As I Walked Out One Mid-Summer Morning” represents the peak of his
abilities rather than “Cider with Rosie”. My memories of Holybourne bring back to me
the feeling that Lee’s books evoke.

My most dangerous escapade was to try to ride a carthorse without realizing how
dangerous that was. I got out of a large tree onto the horse’s back. Surprised it galloped
away at speed. Its action gave me a shock so I jumped off and rolled in the grass. Now I
look back and realize that one hit from the horse’s enormous hooves could quite easily
have killed me. Just luck I guess. A friend who was with me at the time could only look
on with obvious amusement.

In one respect for much of my time in Holybourne I felt I was back in the
Hertfordshire convent. It was back to church morning, noon and night. At least I did not
have to get up at 6a.m but I did have to report to church at 11 and again at 6.30; in
between times it was Sunday school in the village hall. At the church I was part of the
choir even though I could not sing. This choir was very small three boys and half a dozen
girls. However the choir usually outnumbered the congregation. We were presided over
by a very old clergyman, well past retirement age. I don’t remember much about him
except that he was kindly. He died. His replacement was much younger with an
ambition to improve the choir with practice sessions. The boys amongst us protested;
after all we were already engaged much of Sunday. More time on church business did
not appeal to us so we left in the face of parental objections.

Andrew’s Endowed school is still in Holybourne. It’s where I lived for the eighteen
months I stayed in the village. In front of the house there was a large bush like a big tent.
Some of the boys in the village used it as a play camp. Inside you could imagine all
kinds of things. Current pictures (2006) show that this complex plant has gone. The
school building was very large. We did not have much furniture and my bedroom
contained nothing but a bed. In winter it was always cold. I remember getting in to a
liberty-bodice in November and out of it the following March! In summer, it was worse
as the difference between day and night temperatures gave life to the building. One
evening when I was alone in the house the contractions sounded like footsteps to a twelve
year old and really frightened I ran out of building, out of the grounds and off into the
village. That’s my first memory of “fear”.

Having escaped from Sunday in church I was able to join other village boys watching
the village teams in football and cricket. This took me to other villages in the Alton
district: Four Marks (Holybourne’s principal rival for local supremacy), Medstead,
Alresford, Bishops Sutton, Ropley, Froyle, Selborne amongst the competitors. Alresford
I remember as being deep in the watercress country. The football won the district league
championship and as a reward they earnt a game with Aldershot, then a football league
team. I saw them loose 26-0 despite the best efforts of the team’s star who played centre
half. Teams did not have fancy formations then- two backs, three half backs and five
forwards.

Watching the village cricket team was more fun. Joe Piper, the barman at the White
Hart was the local cricket star regularly hitting hundreds on Sunday afternoons. The ball
was frequently hit into the nearby orchard. In late summer this meant that we could all
go and look for the ball and eat as many apples as we could manage. A little research
lets you discover that in March 1813 the gentlemen of Holybourne took on the gentlemen
of Alton in a cricket match in Holybourne, the locals won by 102 runs. The following
week the replay took place in Alton when the town team came close to revenge but still
lost by twelve runs.

Binsted, a village close to Holybourne has a firm place in my memory

because of the unique nature of its inhabitants in the late forties. Records show that eight
inhabitants were mentioned in 1086. At least 6 of the 22 people taxed in Binsted,
Madehurst, and Tortington in 1296 were probably resident in Binsted, and Binsted may
have had up to half of the 15 taxed in Binsted and Tortington in 1327, and of the 20 in
1334, and of the 31 in 1524. Forty Binsted men signed the protestation of 1642. Twenty
one adults were reported there in 1676, and the parish had 20 families in 1724. Its
population, numbered 100 in 1801 and 111 in 1841, it increased to 139 in 1871, but had
fallen back to 105 by 1901. It fell further to 87 in 1921 but had risen again to 107 in
1931, the last year for which it was separately recorded. When I lived in Holybourne I
knew that at least forty one people lived there. Two fecund families produced numbers
redolent of Victorian England: nineteen Knights and twenty-two Skeins. The women
concerned must have a hard life! Going there was always an adventure and on one
occasion when riding my bike downhill towards Binsted, I came off and pitched head
first in a large bed of stinging nettles with results I leave you to imagine.

My athletic career began in Holybourne when there was a race between the
secondary modern school and Eggars. I would probably have won but the secondary
modern boys decided to prevent me from overtaking them by blocking my path and
threatening “violence” if I tried to overtake.
 On another occasion along with several other boys from the village we decided to
scrumping in the school orchard. We were having a good time. But it did not last long.
Mrs. Entwhistle and my Dad came into the orchard and I dived over the back wall into a
cornfield where the wheat was ripe and high so I kept my head down and crawled
through to corn until well away from the orchard.

For some reason not now clear to me I decided to run away. The kit I had was not
really appropriate. I was wearing nothing much merely shorts and skimpy top with
plimsolls on my feet. I ran out of Holybourne and on to Bentley and thence to Farnham
Station where I boarded a train for Waterloo naturally without a ticket. When the train
arrived in London a shock was waiting. Getting out of the train a hand fell on my
shoulder: “Where are you going son?”
“To see my aunty at 447 Waterloo Road” “
“Where is your ticket?” “You haven’t got one” “The address you have given does not
exist” “You had better tell me what you are up to” At this point the man produced a
police warrant card. Shortly thereafter I was locked up in a police cell in Cannon Row
police station.
The next morning my father came and retrieved me and delivered me back to
Eggars with a suitable reprimand. That afternoon a girl in my class said: “I saw you
running through Bentley last night”… “Must have been someone else” I said.
She looked at me sharply disbelief in her eyes but she left it at that.

Not so long after this I chose to return to the custody of my mother and I moved to
Hampton in Middlesex and to Hampton Grammar School and a whole new chapter of my
life reunited with my brother John who had gone back to my mother a year or two earlier.
I was not her favourite son but as brothers we got on quite well and I was glad to see the
back of Mrs Entwhistle. Hampton Grammar School could not have found me a
satisfactory pupil as you will discover in the next few pages.
I was now a second year student and was placed in 2D. The school’s streaming
system was odd running as it did A, C, B, and D. If this was meant to fool pupils, it
didn’t. I arrived close to a year end and was such a bad pupil that when the year end
came I was promoted to 2B! Not much promotion was it.

Hampton Grammar School was founded in 1557 by Robert Hammond, a prosperous

London brewer; he left a house and land worth £3 a year to support a free school at
Hampton. Richard Alcocke, Vicar of Hampton, at that time became the first headmaster.
But he was removed in 1573 when Elizabeth 1st came to power. The school closed.

In 1612 Nicholas Pigeon with the assistance of the Charity Commission set the school
going again. Later Nicholas’s grandson reconstructed the school in his stables. In 1900
the school adopted the Pigeon arms and crest as its own, a tribute to its second founder.

A. S. Mason was the headmaster during my time in the school. Apparently he was
both a scientist and a linguist who from the first cherished the history and traditions of the
school. Just before the war the school had a new building constructed at Rectory Farm
on the Hanworth Road in Hampton. The opening of the new school coincided with the
outbreak of the Second World War. I came to it just after the war. Nearly 700 boys were
in the school at that time. I had the dubious honour of being caned by Mr. Mason after
scoring 3 marks out of three hundred in a maths exam. I could have scored more but I
decided to write nonsensical answers to the questions including a definition of a polygon
as a barmy parrot and the use of a blackboard duster to prove that the external angles of a
triangle added up to 360 degrees. Mason asked me: “If I thought the answers funny”
My swift response was “Yes” The consequence of that was half a dozen strokes of the
cane.

Receiving the cane in this school became a regular event in my life. It happened at
least once a fortnight at the hands of a Mr. James, the deputy head, a brave man who I
believe held the V.C. He was actually rather lenient with me since I always told him the
truth and this he appreciated. On one occasion after we had plagued the chemistry
teacher to distraction, my friend and I were sent to James. Four strokes came to me and
six went to him. The reason for the disparity became clear in the conversation that
followed; my friend “You were worse than me” “I know but I admitted it” “What
did you do?” “You tried to deny responsibility and James gave you two extra for
prevarication” “S’not fair” “Nothing ever is”.

Every year the school held a “Summer Fair”. 2D’s contribution was the “Pyramus
and Thisbe” scene from “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Boys had to play the female
parts as they did in Shakespeare’s time. What happened next was appropriate to us and to
the story of these mythical lovers.

Pyramus was the handsomest youth, and Thisbe the fairest maiden in all Babylonia,
Their parents occupied adjoining houses; and neighborhood brought the young people
together, and acquaintance ripened into love. They would gladly have married, but their
parents forbade. The parents could not prevent them from loving one another. They
conversed by signs and glances. In the wall that parted the two houses there was a crack,
caused by some fault in the structure. No one had remarked it before, but the lovers
discovered it. 'What will love not discover? It afforded a passage to the voice; and tender
messages used to pass backward and forward through the gap. As they stood, Pyramus on
this side, Thisbe on that, their breaths would mingle. "Cruel wall," they said, "why do you
keep two lovers apart? But we will not be ungrateful. We owe you, we confess, the
privilege of transmitting loving words to willing ears." Such words they uttered on
different sides of the wall; and when night came and they must say farewell, they pressed
their lips upon the wall, she on her side, he on his, as they could come no nearer.

The story is a tragic one but 2D’s version turned into farce. Our stage was in a
classroom made of desks pushed together and covered in sheets. The classroom chairs
were turned into seats in a makeshift auditorium. We filled it. But right in the middle of
our performance whilst Pyramus was commenting on the “cruel wall” the desks parted
and several cast members fell into the resulting fissure. The audience laughed but they
were not sure whether this chaos was part of the plot or merely an accident. Anyway the
resulting hilarity meant that was that.
 The school tried to produce academic excellence through a fortnightly report card
system based on the following code: VG Very Good G good S satisfactory P poor and
VP very poor. The codes were translated into house points running from 2 through to
minus 2. Anyone with an overall minus score or a VP on the card had the inevitable with
meeting with Mr. James. I rarely had a minus score but I always had at least one VP
which led to the meeting and a few strokes of the cane. Throughout my nearly two years
here I made no apparent progress and I did not count the number of times I was caned.

The school though was meticulously kept clean and we all had to change into plimsolls
on arrival. This was to keep the corridors scrupulously polished, tidy and shiny. Many of
us appreciated this when we used our satchels as vehicles for sashaying along. One day
whilst doing this at some speed I collided with the senior classics master at a junction.
He was bowled over and his books were scattered far and wide. Mr. James saw that I was
suitably chastised.

My principal companions in schoolboy pranks were Connell and Crawford and Latin
was not our favourite lesson. It wasn’t the teacher’s fault. We were the bad guys. The
worst plot we hatched involved white mice. We persuaded everyone to get some. We
managed a few each which we brought to a lesson. At an appropriate time we released
them. The resulting chaos gave us all a great deal of fun before the inevitable meeting
with Mr. James.

Maths lessons were always with Mr Bacon. Yes, you should have guessed. He was
called “Streaky” In one of his lessons which was held on the stage, we all hid for most
of the lesson between the curtains and the safety wooden doors which closed the stage.
At the end of the lesson Streaky asked out loud why his lesson had been so peaceful. Our
presence in hiding became apparent but this time there was no meeting with Mr. James.
My last lesson in the school before departing to Guildford was with Streaky, it began
with him leaning into me as he said something like:
“This is your last lesson but I am watching you, waiting for an opportunity to get you
into serious trouble”. I wasn’t frightened but I had a quiet lesson.

One teacher here I remember well was the P.E man. He regarded me as a round
shouldered second class citizen in need of remedial P.E. This meant reporting to him at
frequent intervals for remedial work on wall bars. He was right at the time but the work
was painful. I had to hang from bars whilst others pressed into my back and raise my
legs to a right angle with my stomach muscles. The physical defects he recognized have
been with me all my life.

Our English teacher told us his joke at Xmas. I am not good a remembering jokes
so it is rather surprising that I recall his. It concerned a Scots shepherd and his dog and a
public house in Scotland with a split bar area. It went something like this. The shepherd
was in the bar with his sleek and most attractive dog taking a wee pint. An American
comes into the bar and compliments him on his dog. He then offers to buy the dog:
“I will give you £20 for him” the response he gets:
 “I wouldn’t part with Jock” The American raises the stake in successive bids to £120
pounds always to the response “I wouldn’t part with Jock” The American retires to the
other side bar behind the divider but where he can still hear conversation in the bar
occupied by the Scots shepherd and his dog.
An Englishman comes into the bar and admires the dog. He too makes offers which
draw the response “I wouldn’t part with jock” until he reaches a sum of £100 which the
shepherd accepts. The American having heard this re-enters the bar and is extremely
angry that the shepherd has turned down his bid but has accepted an inferior one from an
Englishman. The shepherd’s response is:
“Aye son, do not worry, Jock will soon be back; but, he could not have swum the
Atlantic”

My sole claims to any kind of excellence whilst here were confined to physical
activities. I won the relevant age group 880 yards in a time of 2mins 36 secs; a
performance which I later discovered would have been adequate for a girl of thirteen.
Later I won the school’s junior cross-country running championship in Bushey Park
principally because I ran through a stream at its most shallow point whilst everyone in
front of me plunged into deeper waters. The senior championship was won by G.P
Eastland who was separated from his pursuers by a herd of deer. Running for Hampton
a large inter school event in Richmond Park I received a card with 117 on it, hardly a
distinguished performance.

On speech day, the school proudly paraded young men who had succeeded in
reaching Cranwell and Sandhurst. I was impressed at the time but later I came to
recognize that this was not a very good level of academic performance.

We lived in a block of flats called Norman Court on the Upper Sunbury Road. Our
neighbours included a motorcycle enthusiast with a willowy wife and a savvy Alsatian
dog. We often went walking with him. He was accomplished at coping with cats and
anyone else who threatened his welfare. I remember the crowds passing on their way to
Kempton Park and the strange tipsters in the crowd.

One of them was Prince Ras Monolulu, the most famous black man in Britain at this
time. Between the wars, he was a national icon renowned for his eccentricity, a racing
tipster of such theatricality that even in the days when newspapers carried few
photographs and television was in its infancy, he was still the most recognizable racing
personality other than the top jockeys. I can remember seeing him pass along the Upper
Sunbury Road on the way to Kempton Park. Everyone knew that he wore a bizarre
costume of massive baggy trousers, and a headdress of ostrich feathers atop ornate
waistcoats, and colourful jackets. Prince Monolulu would be at all the important race
meetings where he would sell his tipping sheets in envelopes. He was very funny, and
would have the crowds in stitches with his banter - just like a market trader, only with
much more style.

His catchphrase became "I gotta horse!" Newsreels frequently featured him.
 He claimed to be the chief of the Falasha tribe of Abyssinia, but in reality he came
from British Guyana and was of Scottish descent - his real name was Peter Carl Mackay.
According to his memoirs, called, funnily enough, "I Gotta Horse", he started out as a
sailor but re-invented himself as a Prince after being press-ganged aboard an American
ship in 1902. He was told princes were important people, and he figured a prince
wouldn’t be shanghaied again.

“The Maze at Hampton Court, the royal palace on the Thames to the west of London, is
probably the most famous hedge maze in the world. It was planted as part of the gardens
laid out for William of Orange between 1689 and 1695 by George London and Henry
Wise. The Maze was planted in the Palace Gardens in 1702. It still attracts people from
all over the World, and every year thousands of them are happy "to be lost" in it. It was
described with great wit in Jerome K. Jerome's novel 'Three Men in a Boat.' Now it’s
possible to download a version from the internet which you could play at home. In the
late nineteen forties we often visited the maze, played in it, got lost in it, though we did
not recognize it as the “most famous hedge in the world” We used the palace as a posh
playground and we always enjoyed the Easter Fair which took place on the green in front
of it. The inside of the palace was also well known to us so we became familiar with
Henry VIII and the Tudors in general. This gave us a good grounding in history and an
immediate familiarity with landscape design. The flower garden behind the palace and
the water canal which stretched away towards Kingston were places and sights we
enjoyed frequently. It is still redolent in my memory.

My knowledge as a small boy about events in India led me to follow Gandhi and his
“satyagraha” methods of peaceful resistance to what he considered unjust oppression.
In 1945, the British government began negotiations which culminated in the Mountbatten
Plan of June 1947, and the formation of the two new independent states of India and
Pakistan, divided along religious lines. Massive inter-communal violence marred the
months before and after independence. Gandhi was opposed to partition, and now fasted
in an attempt to bring calm in Calcutta and Delhi. After independence (1947), he tried to
stop the Hindu-Muslim conflict in Bengal. On 30 January 1948 he was assassinated in
Delhi by a Hindu fanatic, Nathuram Godse. Even after his death, Gandhi's commitment
to non-violence and his belief in simple living--making his own clothes, eating a
vegetarian diet, and using fasts for self-purification as well as a means of protest--have
been a beacon of hope for oppressed and marginalized people throughout the world.

I remember the news bulletins. My memory is blank apart from one or two
memorable films: Olivier’s Hamlet and a version of The Three Musketeers with June
Alyson and Van Heflin. But research indicates that Angela Lansbury of “Murder She
Wrote” played a small part in the latter!

Most of 49 I spent in Hampton. I found my first girlfriend Freda Boswood and later
May Briggs. Eva and I went to the Kingston Empire to see amongst other people Issy
Bon. “Let by gones be by gones” was the kind of song that Bon would sing. He was a
music hall star with a distinctive style and a somewhat maudlin appeal. I only went one
but I remember it well. The cliché adequately rejuvenates the reminiscence. The words
and the music for this piece wee written by J G Gilbert.

I am not sure of the moment when we left to live in Guildford but by 1950 I was I was
a student at the Royal Grammar School where I remained until 1955 but in academic
terms I was a year behind everyone else. This was not surprising since by this time I had
changed schools twenty-two times and had attended nineteen different schools. I have
often wondered whether this might not be an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.
Skinny and round shouldered my girl friend’s father was to call me “Spindle”! I think I
spent some time in IIIB before being promoted to IV Arts, the class to which you went if
you had a poor science record like me.

Entering big school was quite an experience. You could imagine how it had been for
boys down several centuries many of them with only a couple of masters and perhaps
half a dozen monitors. In big school in 1949 you could feel the history and see it on the
emblazoned names on the walls. They stood out against the black wood and the
generally serious disposition of the room.

Nicholas Orme is Professor of History at Exeter University and a Canon of Truro

Cathedral. His book recent book “Medieval Schools” gives us a picture of what life might
have been like for boys like me several hundred years right here in “big school”.

Pupils in schools like this were encouraged to write in Latin about their everyday life.
The schoolroom was a large oblong with benches facing inwards. The boys sat on these
benches, side by side, and there was much pushing and grabbing. One boy says,
'Sit away, or I shall give thee a blow.' Another complains, 'He hath taken my book from
me.' When the master left you can imagine the scene.
 Another scene described in the book shows a master shouting to keep order: 'Cease,
thou wanton boy! Put out of thy mind that wantonness here, for and if thou do not, thou
shall say hereafter that thou hast a great cause to complain.' Masters could pass
recalcitrant boys to ushers “monitors” for punishment. Chastisement generally took the
form of a good thrashing. Professor Orme’s book tells a story which will hardly be
credible to the young men of today. The boys went to the toilet to escape boredom. After
all translating Latin all day must have been tedious. Apparently they could also leave the
room to drink or even just to go home. “One boy describes how he played truant for a
whole day, but there was a painful sequel.’Yesterday I took my pleasure in the town,
walking to and fro into the castle and about, but today, when I came to school I was
welcomed in the new fashion!' “ He probably received a good thrashing.

The masters made attempts to keep the boys interested by allowing them to translate
insults and expressions we would consider mildly obscene “ 'I am almost beshitten',
'Thou stinkest', 'His nose is like a shoeing horn', 'Turd in thy teeth!' and 'He is the veriest
coward that ever pissed'. “ No doubt this kind of thing appealed to the boys.

Professor Horne continues: “Even sex was not forbidden territory. One translated
sentence runs 'He lay with a harlot all night'. William Horman, a fellow of New College
who became headmaster of Winchester and Eton, got pupils to translate 'A common
woman liveth by her body' and 'He gropeth uncleanly children and maidens'. This does
not mean that schools were encouraging vice - far from it - but they were willing to
handle the subject more freely than schools were to do for many centuries afterwards.”

What we might call popular culture came in the room through proverbs; Horne cites,
'Betwixt two stools falls the arse down', 'He that cometh last to the pot is soonest wroth',
'Pepper is black but has a good smack', 'I proud and thou proud, who bears the ashes out?'
and 'Was he never good swain that left his errand for the rain'.

Horne is writing about schools in Oxford but his comments appear appropriate for
Guildford’s “big school”. They help my imagination create a time warp which enables
the mind’s eye to see what it must have been like when the RGS stood behind a cobbled
street and the church and the birch played a very powerful role in the lives of the boys.

I found myself enrolled in Beckingham House. The houses with their colours are:
Austen (yellow) Beckingham (red) Hamonde (dark blue), Nettles (light blue) Powell
(maroon) Valpy (white). Only four houses existed when I joined the school. These six
are there now.

The Royal Grammar School was founded in 1512. It was part of the Tudor
‘educational revolution’. Boys were taught Latin – ‘grammar’ – and the classics, before
going on to the Inns of Court or the universities. The free grammar school in Guildford
was founded with money from lands given for that purpose by Robert Beckingham, a
London grocer who had died in 1509. He had by this time already given the town a
property in Castle Street and the school was probably housed there, with perhaps twenty
or thirty pupils and one schoolmaster.
 Unfortunately, the rules of the school required the pupils to pray for Beckingham’s
soul, and this effectively made it a chantry. The abolition of chantries in 1547 led to the
school’s endowment being confiscated. Nevertheless, Edward VI recognized the value
of such schools and re-established Guildford’s Grammar School in 1552, granting it a
royal charter. It was around this time that the boys of the school were recorded as playing
‘creckett’: the first reference in English to the game. In 1555 the Mayor and Approved
Men bought an area of land at the eastern edge of the borough (now the Upper High
Street) and began building a schoolhouse there in 1557. At this time, however, there was
trouble brewing. Archbishop Heath, Queen Mary’s Lord Chancellor, thought it and other
such schools were nurseries for Protestantism and demanded the surrender of the school’s
charter. However, the death of the Catholic Mary and the succession of the Protestant
Elizabeth enabled the school to survive. The building was not completed until 1586, by
which time the two wings for the Master’s and Usher’s houses had been added, with a
gallery linking them along the High Street frontage. The gallery contained the books
bequeathed to the town by Bishop Parkhurst of Norwich, an old Guildfordian, in 1573.
In this way the chained library was created.

The Guildford I knew had all the characteristics of a Surrey market town from the
ornate clock which dominates the high street to the Angel, the Eashing farm diary café
and the Lion hotel complex You could almost feel the earlier times and that you were
part of a continuing community infused with a tradition which was soon to disappear.
Walking in the high street, drinking coffee in the Eashing Café was part of every day
life. It certainly was not 24/7 something that would eventually dominate English
everyday life.

In 1812 the National Society for promoting the education of the poor in the principles
of the Church of England founded a school in Guildford at the foot of Pewley Hill. It was
also known as Holy Trinity and St. Mary’s School. By my time the school was simply
known as Pewley, it was a superior kind of secondary school considered higher in the
pecking order than Stoke and Onslow, the bog standard schools of the day. The pecking
order of schools in the Guildford area at the end of the forties was as distinctive as the
levels in our honours system. RGS was at the top of the food chain followed by
Godalming and Farnham grammar schools. Stoke and Onslow were at the bottom. The
eleven plus system caused havoc in middle class homes. Girls who passed the eleven
plus could go to the County Grammar School on the Farnham road. Its status seemed
only to apply to girls. In was in the pecking order but out of it too. It did in our house
but more of that later.

In the playground behind big school and below Pewley were the “fives” courts and a
large room which passed as a kind of gym because it had a few wall bars and some quire
mats. Most boys played fives in breaks and at lunch time. The quire mats had a
particular purpose; they were at the heart of Sergeant Major “Stinker” Stent’s physical
education lessons if you can call what he presided over “lessons”. He was principally
involved in just two activities; boxing and war ball. This latter pursuit was Stinker’s
contribution to education and peculiar it most certainly was. When we arrived at the
“gym” we had to get hold of two quire mats and place one at each end of the room, split
ourselves into two teams, grab a large medicine ball and after that we had to play what
amounted to indoor rugby without any rules. Push, shove, pull, wrench, use any method
you saw fit to get the medicine ball on the opposition’s quire mat. Each time the ball was
landed on a mat a team scored a point and the team with most points was the winner. The
activity would make the All Blacks “haka” look tame! Whilst I was at the school,
Stinker retired and was awarded the BEM. Such an award seemed eminently suitable to
his station. Some of us thought it confirmed his social status but he was happy enough.

But my time in the school altered the course of my life and here at the end of 49
seems a good place to conclude the first chapter.

Chapter Two (1950-55)

I remember coming home from school in the fifties to find my mother always listening
to the first post-war soap on British radio. It was Mrs. Dale's Diary. . Who could forget
Marie Goossens' harp introduction to the programme or the reflective comments of Dr.
Dale's rather serious wife?
The title character was a pleasant middle-class doctor's wife, Mary. She lived
with her husband Jim at Virginia Lodge in the Middlesex suburb of Parkwood Hill.
They had a son called Bob played by Nicholas Parsons, Hugh Latimer, Derek Hart, and
by Leslie Heritage for nearly twenty years. and a daughter called Gwen who was
successively Virginia Hewitt, Joan Newell, Beryl Calder and (for many years) Aline
Waites. Bob was married to Jenny and they had twins. One does not need any further
commentary to get the tenor of the quintessentially fifties radio soap. My Mum liked it.
They set the scene for the evening which was later illuminated by Dick Barton and
his sidekicks, Jock and Snowy.
My brother and I used to practice tennis strokes against the walls in the small
yard beside the house. The crinkled bricks made sure that the balls came back at
awkward and difficult angles. We played imaginary games against the great players of
the day and wrote our own ranking list in chalk on the breeze block in the garden shed:
Hoad, Rosewall, Trabert, Gonzales, Sedgeman, Drobny. Et al. Sedgeman, Seixas and
Drobny were the winners at Wimbledon in this period. Some time around this period I
joined a local tennis club even though I wasn’t very good. They had a ladder system
based on age and I found myself giving three points in every game to younger boys who
were better than me. This made for a losing streak which was frustrating and tedious. I
did not persevere in the tennis club but continued to while away hours with tennis balls in
the yard.
From our house to the school was around one mile. I usually only had a few
minutes to spare when going to from one place to the other, an early sign of my dislike
of mornings, especially early ones. I was fortunate to have been given a place at the
grammar school partly because I had come to the town from another similar school and
partly because my mother’s husband was a Pendry. The Pendry family was well known
in Guildford and the sons had all been to the grammar school. Later rather sadly, they all
died of cancer. Sam Pendry was a local builder who had built the house we lived in as
well as many others in the neighbourhood and the one where he lived high up close to
Pewley Down. He played a big part in the town’s life as secretary of Guildford Cricket
Club. Every year the club in Woodbridge Road hosted county matches usually between
Hampshire and Surrey. Another county chosen at random usually played against Surrey
during the second week of a two week inter-county season. This was a period when
Surrey under the leadership of Stuart Surridge dominated the cricket county
championship.

In this period one of the most popular activities for youths was cycle racing on dirt
tracks. For a short time the sport was very popular. The boys imitated motor-cycle dirt
track racing on small oval tracks leaning into the corners like motor cyclists, skidding
hard and swerving the rear wheels with as much élan as they could manage. There was a
league and a great deal of enthusiasm amongst the town’s young people. The other
youth league was a soccer league. I played in it as a winger in the Holy Trinity scouts
team. We were awful and I cannot ever remember us winning a single match; scores
against us usually ran like this Northway 5 Holy Trinity nil, Southway 6 Holy Trinity
nil. We did not have a coach or a manager so there was no one to sack or blame. If there
had been a prize for fair play we probably would have won that because it was usually
the other teams that did the fouling. They had the ball most of the time after all.
At the grammar school the classes were split into “Arts” and “Sciences”. I have the
impression that if you weren’t very good at science subjects you ended up in the “arts”
class. That’s naturally where I went but having come from “2D and “2B in Hampton, I
wasn’t academic, period. I was dropped at once from Latin and Greek since my
knowledge went only as far as “ammo, amass, amant” and to epsilon in Greek. My
French was better but not much better so they placed me in the Spanish class. Our
teacher was the Revd Joseph O’Dwyer, “Holy Joe” to us, the class of language duffers.
For a couple of years I was just one of a bunch of bad students in “Holy Joe’s” mob. He
wasn’t a good teacher although he was not an unpleasant man. I don’t know what he had
done to deserve his class of desultory students.
When it came close to fifth year exams my form teacher Mr Malleson or “Mally” to
the boys suggested that it would be a good idea for me to pass the “O” level exam. If I
didn’t the passage to a university was impossible. At that time such thoughts were not on
my horizon but I listened and went to Holy Joe and promised to follow his instructions.
That was barely six months before the exam was due. Franco was in Spain then so
culturally our family was anti which did not make my task any easier. We arrived at the
mock exam and with the exception of one boy, Brian White, we all failed. My practice
concentrated on vocabulary. Every whack with a tennis racquet carried a new word. I
could read and translate from Spanish back to English, going the other way was difficult
and I never was able to achieve any competence. Eventually the real exam arrived and
with one exception, we all failed only this time the exception was me. On speech day I
felt like a proper fraud as I received the Spanish prize!
My brother John did not have my good fortune and he had to go to Onslow
Secondary School, a place that would now be called a “bog” standard place. He had
taken the 11plus twice and failed. He took the 13 plus and failed that too. My mother
was distraught and John didn’t have much option except to be in receipt of an
“inferiority” complex. He was given a private tutor and he went for some classes to
Guildford Technical College. Eventually he went on to achieve amazing “A” level exam
results. In passing he won the 220 yards in the Surrey Tech championships. He was
Surrey Chess champion and he played for the Oxford University chess team. His
academic prowess was a great deal better than mine. But he was never a lucky man.
At this time too I was in the school cadet corps. Other kids in the town used to
ridicule us in our uncomfortable serge uniforms. The school thought it important that we
play at being soldiers. Suddenly school masters were officers: Colonel Bowey, Lt Col
Burns, Lt Martin and the sergeants were prefects from the Upper Sixth. My most
graphic memory is of an all night exercise on Blackheath, a stretch of heath like ground
near Wonersh. There was a hamlet there and a cemetery as well as the heath. My
sergeant told me to climb a tree and fire on the “enemy” when I saw them. In the early
hours of the morning the referee told me to come down. I had officially been shot and I
was allowed to go back to Blackheath village hall for a cup of tea and a kip in my
sleeping bag. I was glad being both cold and damp though officially dead. I guess it was
kind of adventure. Some time later the officers decided that we should take responsibility
for a 303 rifle, clean it, polish it and generally nurture it. This task did not appeal to me
so I declined the order. My sergeant reported me to Lt Martin. He reported me to Lt
Colonel Burns who reported me to Col Bowey. He remonstrated with me and threatened
me with the “Squash Mob” the place where less valued boys went. Eventually I was
sent to Mikey, Mr. Hallowes, the headmaster. He told me that if I didn’t clean my rifle I
would be demoted to the squash mob. I resisted these pressures and went to the squash
mob where it was forecast I would not have a successful school career. I resisted the
threats but the prophecy for me turned out not to be true. As an adolescent my concerns
at the time were mostly involved with authority and sex. I needed justification for the
first and knowledge about the second. These were not easy to work out.

For some time during this period Mikey tried without much success to persuade
my mother that she should become involved in Moral Rearmament. The basic tenet of
MRA is that the reformation of the world can only be achieved by creating a moral and
spiritual force, by convincing all men of the necessity of absolute honesty, absolute
purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. To help themselves achieve this
members were expected to practice these cardinal virtues. It was suggested that members
engage in the exercises of sharing, surrender, substitution, and guidance. MRA sought to
involve people who held prominent positions in social and political life. My mother did
not fit the usual stereotype and Jim Pendry, my stepfather, regarded the exercise with a
good deal of cynicism.

The guru of this fervent religious group was Dr Frank Buchman. He thought the
world was in need of moral and spiritual awakening. Buchman put his case in striking
phrases. But that was only words. He thought that man should turn to God to achieve this
revival. My mother was not convinced. To me MRA seemed to be a way of keeping the
peasants under control. To quote him: “Now I find when we don’t know how, God will
show us if we are willing. When man listens, God speaks. When man obeys, God acts.
The secret is God-control. We are not out to tell God. We are out to let God tell us. And
He will tell us. The lesson the world most needs is the art of listening to God “ I was an
agnostic when I listened to this and nothing has changed much since.
 One night at around six in the evening after I had been home I was out walking in the
town when I was spotted by a prefect. He gave me a detention for being without a cap. I
protested and landed up in front of Mikey. When I explained the circumstances he
sympathized and he said: “I’ll have words with the prefect but I am afraid you’ll have to
have the detention because I must be seen to back our prefects. You’ll be one some day
and you’ll know you have my support.

The school did not have a physical education department but I witnessed the
extraordinary leadership of the school captain who without any staff help created one of
the best school rugby teams in the south of England. Chris Thorne was remarkable. His
abilities were even more praise worthy when you knew that his brother and his mother
were killed in the Lynmouth disaster .
Headline: 1952: Flood devastates Devon village

“Twelve bodies have been recovered and 24 people are missing feared dead in the
flood which has swept through Lynmouth in north Devon. The normally picturesque
holiday village was evacuated early today as troops and council workers were brought in
to begin clearing the devastation. Hundreds of people have been left homeless. There
is no water, gas or electricity supply. All the boats in the harbour have been washed
out to sea. Four main road bridges have been swept away. The flood followed
yesterday's torrential rain. In the 24 hours before, some nine inches (22.9cm) of rain
had fallen on Exmoor, just four miles (6.4km) away. “

No one mentioned global warming but now this particular disaster is

forgotten because we have had many more since.

Chris introduced members of the rugby team to the connection between

training and performance. Team members were expected to train every day! They
did. But more than that Chris’s methods were tough and hard, so hard that
sometimes the odd injury occurred during training. The results were spectacular.
His team won all their matches bar an encounter with the Royal Military Academy,
Sandhurst. Mikey used to love recounting the scores in big school on Monday
mornings: RGS 25 Portsmouth GS 5, RGS 40 Purley GS 5 and so on, results like
these were usual. Many of the victories came in the last twenty minutes of games
as opponents were overwhelmed by superior physical fitness.

His example inspired those of us who were runners to train hard like his rugby
players. We did and we had considerable success eventually. In the school yard one day
in June we listened to a radio commentary on the final of the 1500metres in the 1952
Olympic Games. The event was amazing, extremely competitive with just over two
seconds covering all the competitors:

1. Josy BARTHEL (LUX) 3:45.1 OR 2. Robert McMILLEN (USA) 3. 3:45.23. Werner LUEG (GER) 3:45.4
4. Roger BANNISTER (GBR) 3:46.0 5. Patrick El MABROUK (FRA) 3:46.0 6 Rolf LAMERS (GER) 3:46.8
7. Olle ABERG (SWE) 3:47.0 8. Ingvar ERICSSON (SWE) 3:47.6

The commentary made it clear how close it was with the lead changing hands
regularly. As far as I know Josy Barthel is still the only athlete from Luxembourg ever
to win gold and certainly the first and until now the last one to win this particular event.
The commentary was fascinating and together with Chris Thorne’s example played a
large part in motivating me. Life would never be quite the same again. Looking at the
times set in this event it does not now seem particularly outstanding against the low 3.30s
which are now needed if you are to be considered world class.

On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister became the first sub-four-minute miler when he
covered the distance in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. Six weeks later, John Landy, an
Australian, followed suit with 3:58, breaking Bannister's record Since then sub four
minutes has become routine. New Zealander John Walker traveled round the world
regularly running the distance in less than four minutes living in a caravan most of the
time. As an athlete I never managed to cover the mile in less than four minutes. But in
1954 I won my first championship, the Surrey Schools senior cross-country
championship.

Bill Bowey was the history teacher. The Pendrys didn’t think much of him but he
was an enthusiast. He taught lower levels in a didactic fashion which would appeal to
out-reach branches of the Open University but his real ability became plain enough in the
“A” level years. His favourite story concerned Frederick, the oldest son of George IInd.
According to Bill Frederick was killed by a cricket ball in 1751. Bill reckoned he was
quite a talented man and he would have handled the situation with the American colonies
wisely without a war, and if that had occurred the history of the world would have been
different. George IIIrd reigned for longer than any other monarch in British history.
Eventually he declined into madness. Having been defeated on land by Washington,
British power was under mortal threat when Admiral Lord Rodney won the Battle of All
the Saints on 12th April 1782 off Dominica in the West Indies. The battles produced by
accident or design a new naval tactic, one which Nelson used so dramatically a few
years later. As the French line passed down the British line, a sudden shift of wind let
Rodney’s flagship Formidable and several other ships, including the Duke and the
Bedford, break through the French line, raking the ships as they did so. The resultant
confusion led eventually to the surrender and the retreat of the French fleet. Rodney had
managed to produce a situation using the wind that enabled the British ships to fire on the
French without receiving any return fire. Rodney’s ships could also sail across the bows
of several ships effectively holing them at or below the water line. The British lost 243
killed and 816 wounded, and two captains out of 36 were killed. The French loss in killed
and wounded has never been stated, but of captains alone, six were killed out of 30. An
estimated 2,000 French sailors were killed or wounded. This is one of the most
important victories in British naval history and its importance has always been under-
estimated. If the French had won there would have been nothing to prevent an invasion.

Cricket balls and naval tactics were not the only arcane subjects that interested Bill
Bowey; he was fascinated by the national traits of the French and Germans particularly as
illustrated during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The war began over the
ascension of a candidate from the Hohenzollern royal family to the vacant Spanish throne
as Isabella II had abdicated in 1868. This was strongly opposed by France. They issued
an ultimatum to King Wilhelm I of Prussia to have the candidacy withdrawn. Aiming to
humiliate Prussia, Emperor Napoleon III of France then required Wilhelm to apologize
and renounce any possible further Hohenzollern candidate for the Spanish throne.
Bismarck was the German chancellor at the time and he tampered with the diplomatic
messages to help the war along a bit. Napoleon IIIrd declared war on Prussia. The
efficient German army under Von Moltke easily won the ensuing struggle which was
concluded in 1871 with the resignation of Napoleon IIIrd. Bill’s particular interest was in
the behaviour of the soldiers on either side. Despite being on the losing side, French
soldiers were better at making decisions based on an individual initiative than the
Germans. The latter were better at obeying orders. It is interesting to me that this
judgment was echoed nearly a hundred years later in the disturbing writing of the Italian
Auschwitz survivor, Primo Levi though he was writing about Germans and Russians.

Geography did not have the same allure as history but the teacher was excellent. Tom
Tillett once complained that our essays were too short, .so between us we decided to “sort
him out” by giving him a lot of extra works. Six of us produced essays thirty odd pages
for him to mark. He took it in good heart and mildly suggested that “There was no need
to go over the top”!

Before getting to the last two years at the school, I had to appear in an historical
pageant directed by Mr. Malleson, the principal English teacher and the man who most
influenced me. I don’t remember much about the pageant except that I had to wear some
ill-fitting clothes and speak about three lines. The event was promoted to celebrate the
four hundredth anniversary of the school. The event was staged in the Guildford Rep
North Street theatre which has long since disappeared following what we might politely
call the “yuppification” of the town. The atmospheric Surrey market town disappeared
under a swathe of gilded concrete, the usual signature of modern suburbia. Mally
probably did not approve then and certainly would not now as the concrete has continued
to flow.

Personally I tend often to be a rather noisy person. Mally was quiet and rather self-
effacing. He never gave orders in the traditional schoolmaster fashion. He made modest
suggestions and was always embarrassed by the sexy bits in Chaucer and in Shakespeare.
We often brought blushes to his face when we tried to provoke him into comment on
these passages. Usually his comments on the literature and the writers we studied were
effulgent, competent and interesting. The works we studied included Joseph Conrad’s
“Heart of Darkness”, Thomas Hardy’s “Mayor of Casterbridge”, and Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar. Earlier we spent time with the poems of John Masefield which reminded
me that in Hampton we spent time on the poetry of Alexander Pope particularly “The
Rape of the Lock”.

What dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs,

What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,
I sing-This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due;
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise,
If She inspire, and He approve, my Lays.
Pope’s poetry was important in Hampton because he was a local man. He was very small
and he suffered from several disabilities which coloured his outlook and led to his verse
being terse and even acrid. I appreciated his mastery of rhythm which is why I
remember him. By contrast Masefield, poet laureate then, was fun with his passion for
the sea encapsulated particularly in Sea Fever:

"Sea-Fever"

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover And
quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

John Masefield (1878-1967). (English Poet Laureate, 1930-1967.)

These very different poets followed an earlier introduction to the muse:

Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore -

No doubt you have heard the name before
Was a boy who never would shut a door!
The wind might whistle, the wind might roar,
And teeth be aching and throats be sore,
But still he never would shut the door.
His father would beg, his mother implore.

These lines proved to be eminently suitable as an introduction for small boys to

poetry. It turned out to be particularly appropriate for me since I have retained the ability
to leave doors open. Perhaps there is a gene for this since my sons appear to have
inherited it. The writer of this poem is not someone well remembered but his name
William Brighty Rands seems apt enough.

But over the years we spent more time on prose than on poetry although we
considered a number of well known English poets including Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Gray, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Oliver
Goldsmith, A E Houseman and others. .

Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” was written in 1902 and we were

studying it half a century later. The book set out to expose the tenuous nature of
"civilization" and the brutal horror at the centre of European colonialism. Conrad's
crowning achievement recounts the physical and psychological journey of the
protagonist, Marlow, as he ventures deep into the heart of the Belgian Congo in search of
the mysterious trader Kurtz. This is a book that lives with you for life. Amongst the
many people whose lives have been influenced by it, we find Francis Ford Coppola and
his enigmatic film “Apocalypse Now” where the story is brought to life by Marlon
Brando as Col. Kurtz, Martin Sheen as Marlow. Robert Duval adds a bit more menace
and Coppola uses it to express horror at US involvement in Vietnam. Mally’s classes
were an introduction to life.

In pursuit of involvement in English outside the classroom, we did not go out very
often but we did go to the Hammersmith Empire to see Philip Massinger’s “A New Way
to Pay Old Debts” with its powerful central character Sir Giles Overreach played by the
surprisingly energetic Sir Donald Wolfitt. The part is nearly caricature and was made
famous in an earlier age by one of our greatest Shakespearian actors, Edmund Kean.
Wolfitt as this time was an actor-manager a role that had a long tradition dating back to
Shakespeare’s time. He was a larger than life character whose presence is with me now
more than half a century later. Philip Massinger’s life overlapped with Shakespeare’s
and he often collaborated with Thomas Dekker. I mention Dekker because my
stepfather’s brother, Eric Pendry wrote a book about him. Eric was an itinerant
academic who worked in Japan, Finland and the UK. He had been the school captain in
Guildford in the late thirties and he inherited the Pendry family cancer gene which killed
him prematurely when he was a professor in Bristol University.

Marlon Brando was a sour name in our house because I argued about his surly
performance as Antony in the film of Julius Caesar. My mother thought he was too
American to play the part of Antony but I was rather taken b his performance. We argued
about it frequently. The film was an excellent aid to the academic study we had to make
of the work. Ever since I have found Brando’s performances to be charismatic.

Thomas Hardy stands out as possibly the greatest British novelist of the nineteenth
century with perhaps only Dickens as a rival. Hardy for me always creates a most
evocative “sense of place”; something many modern writers of crime fiction can do;
consider Simenon and France, Donna Leon and Venice, Ed McBain and New York,
Raymond Chandler and Los Angeles. Hardy’s “Dorset” is perhaps different in so far as
the sense of place is so strong that in “Return of the Native” in particular it is an
additional character. Hardy also tackled the unique English class system, a problem
that did not face the other writers mentioned above. Henchard in the Mayor of
Casterbridge is an example of the “driven” man unable to get to grips with himself; the
central theme of the novel may be as enigmatic as "anything is possible at the hands of
Time and Chance, except, perhaps, fair play. The novel's subtitle, “A Study of a Man of
Character”, suggests that it must be related to Henchard's capacity for suffering, since for
Henchard--in part owing to his failure to communicate his true feelings, "happiness is but
the occasional episode in a general drama of pain". Hardy seems to imply in this novel,
that to meet the vicissitudes of life heroically or defiantly is not enough--one must do so
with love, compassion, and charity. We were given time to read other Hardy novels not
in the curriculum giving us a breadth of reading not accessible to similar adolescents
today.

A E Housman was a poet of great ability though he did not ever really appreciate the
quality of his talent in his own time. He was a homosexual at a time when being one was
extremely difficult. Although we studied a number of great English poets from Chaucer
onwards, his “The Shropshire Lad “ collection made a lasting impression perhaps
because with this poem in particular he appealed to me as an athlete. Any ambient glory
briefly achieved would indeed be brief. But life itself is a bit like that; something you
appreciate when you have had your three score years and ten!

To an Athlete Dying Young

by Alfred Edward Housman

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honors out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
 And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round the early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s

In the fifties youth clubs were an important influence on the lives of young people and
there were lots of them. Some were based in church halls but others were just clubs like
the one I went to for a while in Onslow School which then was a secondary school and is
now only a primary establishment. The clubs promoted the soccer teams and the cycle
speedway and we also did quite a lot of country dancing both English and Scottish.

The basic idea behind youth clubs was to keep teenagers off the street but clubs without
hidden agendas did a lot more than that. I shall come back to this subject later in this
book.

In 1954 I won the Surrey Schools senior mile championship at Motspur Park in what
was at that time a new county record of 4min 28.2 seconds (twenty or more seconds less
for 1500metres) It was a remarkable win because I had been eliminated in the heats of
the Surrey clubs championship an event eventually won by W F Corneck of Polytechnic
Harriers. But during 1954, I actually had the benefit of a coach Geoff Daniels or
“Danny” as I called him and a tough training partner Dick Haskell. Dick won the Surrey
clubs 880 yards after running the distance twice in 2minutes each time in the same
afternoon. There were athletes who could run faster but they could not produce two
excellent performances in one afternoon. So Danny set about getting me over my poor
performance in May in preparation for a better one in July. He concentrated on upper
body work and speed. As the Guildford champion I had no heats to run as it was a
straight final.

Danny told me to run the third lap as fast as I could and hang on during the fourth.
The fashion then as now was to pursue for three laps and then run as fast as you could
over the last lap and the fastest finisher would win. I followed Danny’s advice and at the
end of the third lap, I had a substantial lead and the pursuit began led by Mike Tomsett,
the Croydon champion. Off the final bend he was on my shoulder. I felt him there and
ran wide off the bend to maintain maximum momentum. Finally I won by a very small
margin less than half a second. Both of us were well inside the national standard but
Tomsett was not chosen to go the English Schools. After such a brilliant race with both
mothers as well as the crowd screaming at us, it wasn’t justice. This was the one and
only time that my mother watched me race. The final event was held in Northumberland
in Ashington. I reached the final after a good performance in the heats but I was felled in
the final where after being left last I managed to get up and come seventh.

In early 1955 our club team won the South of the Thames cross-country team title.
During a discussion with my mother’s father, Grandad Morgan, I mentioned this, he told
me that he had run in this event in 1905 exactly fifty years before my participation. He
had worked for the Post Office throughout his life, much of it at the main sorting office
in Mount Pleasant. He lived in Mitcham and he regularly walked to work. It’s a long
way from Mitcham to Mount Pleasant. The information inferred that his life had been
tough. He was eighty-four when he died. Granma Morgan was really tough and
eventually she came to live in Dunsdon Avenue where my mother said she was preserved
in alcohol. She could be found frequently drinking milk; milk laced with whisky.
Finally she went to a home where she informed my mother she was going to marry again.
She was ninety-five at this point but she died shortly afterwards without being able to go
through with her plans.

We lived in Dunsdon Avenue where the house we occupied had been built by Sam
Pendry. Jim Pendry was my stepfather. In this house John and I got a political
education. For me this was an important addition to the cultural education that came
from the school. It was perhaps that I learnt that in many important ways I was an
outsider even though being in a grammar school it appeared that I was inside. People
who are genuinely to the left will always be regarded as outsiders perhaps because
capitalism is a right wing creed. Jim helped us think about politics by talking to us about
what he called the political forward line: outside right = fascist; inside right =
conservative; centre-forward=liberal; inside left=labour; outside left=communist.
Taking the forward line as a circle instead of line, you get extreme right and extreme left
touching each other at the point where they become totalitarian. This gave you a simple
structure to use when thinking about politics. To a schoolboy this was helpful.

We could see the point of it in what was happening elsewhere. Stalin died in
1953. Franco ruled in Spain. In our house Franco was anathema. Eventually Franco was
to become something the Spanish would rather forget, an ugly family secret, a massive
skeleton in the cupboard. To help make ends meet my mother had a foreigner stay with
us. He slept in our bedroom; three of us in the same room, John, Juan Manuel
Travesedo and I. Juan’s family owned the bus company in Salamanca and they were
wealthy fascists, so every night we had the same litany: From Juan:
“Franco is a wonderful man” ; from John “Franco is a fascist pig”. The show ran for
several weeks that’s why the litany has stuck in my head. The reality was awful, more
dreadful than we really knew in that bedroom in the fifties. Picasso’s “Guernica”
commented on the first whole sale civilian bombing. Manuel Azana was a Spanish left
wing politician who was briefly prime minister before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil
War. Writing in the Diario de Burgos in the early thirties Azana’s words echo down the
years with greater authority than Franco ever possessed: “Today to be a republican,
purely republican with no fascist or communist adulterations, is to believe in tolerance,
transigence, respect for ideas, the superiority of reason over strength, peaceful processes,
and good manners, in other words it is to believe in a liberal spirit that is the crowning
achievement of centuries of civilization and culture … We cannot suppose that all that
humanity has learned will be swept away by Marx, Lenin and Mussolini. We have to
believe, if we want to preserve our faith in the higher destiny of man, that today’s fascist
and communists movements are fleeting and superficial, a moment of barbarism in the
history of civilization”
 These sympathies were common in our house. However my mother in particular was
rather like Tony Blair’s government, she promised more than she delivered. Jim was
given an OBE which he was reluctant to accept but my mother wanted to go to a royal
garden party, so he accepted it. Later when we were operating a sanctions policy
against South African goods whilst members of the African National Congress we found
her buying South African oranges. When we protested, she just said: “They are the
best”!
In 1955 I passed a sufficient number of “A” levels to win a county major scholarship
which meant that Surrey would pay for me to go to university. Eventually I went but
only after spending a year doing a variety of other things. My results included an A pass
in history and as the best historian in the school I was awarded my third academic prize,
the Sir Philip Magnus Memorial Prize, some heavyweight books. I suppose I thought
that after my eccentric school career such a result was reasonably satisfactory. I left
having been elected house captain, won the sports “Victor Ludorum” and qualified for
university entrance. But this was a blemished record when compared to my brother’s
performance, he managed six straight “As” at A level with marks in the nineties and an
open scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford and all that without the assistance of a
grammar school education.

CHAPTER THREE. 1955-56.

A VARIETY of THINGS.
During the year I spent between leaving school and going to university, I
was occupied in numerous ways. They all added to my education.

The first jobs we had were in Bentalls, the department store in Kingston
on Thames. It was like being part of the TV series “Are You Being Served” complete
with Mt Gerald, the rather effete boss. I worked in Bentall’s post office with another
young man who was as daft as I was. People would buy things and come to the post
office to send them to friends and relatives. Behind us at the back of the counter area was
a large parcel cupboard with a chute leading to a lower level. It was capacious and could
take a large number of parcels of all sizes. From time to time one or other of us would
shuv the other into the cupboard and close the door so that only one of us would be left
serving. We were very unsatisfactory employees fooling about all the time. On one day
when we were in the mood, we both treated some most the customers in an idiotic
manner. I remember quizzing someone about a tuppenny ha’penny stamp in a silly voice.
“What you want some tupenny ha’penny stamps” “Really” How many?” “What she
wants tupenny ha’penny stamps” “How come?” “What for?” “Are you sure?” The
voices were really silly and the customers amazed.
 Elsewhere in the store there was a young couple recently married; one of them the
woman in the food department, the other the man in hardware. We used to go and look
for them to see what state they were in. The bags under their eyes would allow us to
calculate how much sex they had had the night before. Some days they appeared to have
difficulty keeping their eyes open. My mate’s comment: “They must have been hard it
last night”. “They are in a bad way. I wonder whether Mr. Gerald will notice”
Everyone was in awe of Mr. Gerald. He was almost royalty in Bentalls. The company
was founded in 1867 but is now part of the Fenwick group although the Bentalls name
has been retained. There will be no Mr. Geralds any more though and I guess the
employees will not have as much fun as we had.

Bentalls’ world would later be seen in the in the TV programme “Are you being
served?” The slogan “Are you free” could be ascribed to Mr Gerald. It suited him. My
mother thought having a “Bentalls’ charge account was a status symbol. Now of course
we know that charge accounts are just a marketing tool to keep the cash rolling through
the retail tills of companies who sell regularly to the same customers. The name Bentalls
still exists but it now belongs to a retail chain. The family sold out.

At this time we lived in a large bed sit in Surbiton with a couple of really weird
people from a clerical background. The couple whose house we lived in were very old
and frail. The man had been clergy. The wife was tiny shriveled up and she wore a wig.
She stays in my memory because one day when passing in a train across the bottom of
her garden which backed onto the Waterloo-Portsmouth-main line, we saw her stark
naked without her wig, totally bald. It was as if she had come from another planet. It
was a picture you could never forget.

From July to August 1955 I was a commuter from Guildford to London

where I worked in Fenchurch Street for Escombe and McGrath, shipping brokers for
amongst others P and O. It was a clerical job filling in customs forms and visiting
various embassies around London with documents to be verified. There was enough
freedom for me to be able to continue to train most of the time in Queen’s Park. The only
problem I had was the occasional remark to the effect that I had been “a long time”.
“Hold up in the Cuban Embassy” was a popular excuse with me. It was immediately
obvious that in this family firm progress was a privilege reserved for people called either
Escobar or McGrath. But after a few weeks I came to conclusion that “commuting” was
not a way of life that appealed to me and I left to become a railway porter on Guildford’s
main railway station.

I did three months with British Rail at a time when trains on the Waterloo,
Portsmouth, and Isle of Wight line were described as the best and most reliable in the
world by some of my American passengers. Little did I know at the time that the line
would eventually end up in the not very tender hands of Stagecoach with the result that
some of the trains ceased to run at all, that half a century later our railways would be in
every way inferior to those of our neighbours, that in 2006 only 2% of European high
speed lines would be in the UK. My duties included shutting doors and mundane
platform tasks. But for several weeks when on morning shift, I had to get up at 4.a.m.
and being in the station by 4.30. to board the down train to Petersfield to throw out
packets of daily papers in Farncombe, Godalming, Witley, Liphook, Liss and Petersfield
before returning on an up train to the station to continue the shift. Inevitably I used to
doze off on this journey and one day I woke up as the train stopped at Woking Station, its
last stop before Waterloo as it was a fast train. Now I had to get a down train back to
Guildford where the foreman greeted me with “Where the hell have you been?” My
explanation did not receive a friendly reception.

In October 1955 I signed up in the army for three years only because by
so doing I would get paid properly and not just get pocket money for doing national
service. I spent three weeks in the service and they are engraved on my memory as if it
had all taken place yesterday. A long time later I met a brigadier who had retired from
the parachute regiment who asked me about my military service.
“What was wrong with it”
”Very poor discipline”
“I do not believe it, Explain please”

When I went into the army I was very disciplined indeed. As an athlete, I
trained hard every day; I did academic work; I went to bed at ten and slept soundly
every night. I needed the sleep to sustain me. Eventually it would be the sleep that was
denied me in the army that led to my medical problems. It was to be a momentous three
weeks.

First things first, the army took my clothes and I got army gear in return. To have
one’s clothes removed, it felt like going into prison but in my case, in view of my athletic
prowess, I got to keep my training kit. Eventually this would prove to be a godsend. I
could not leave the garrison in army gear but in running kit no one recognized me and I
was free to come and go whenever I wished. There were times when I needed to get out
of Blenheim Barracks.

I had joined the Royal Army Service Corps only one degree better than the Pioneer
Corps and this was to be basic training Aldershot style. Perhaps my step-father’s joke
about the football team also applied to the RASC “oughta shot em ages ago”! My first
fortnight was a long one and I spent it in a room that came as close to bedlam as any sane
person would ever want to be. The group in the room was dominated by what could best
be described as a Glaswegian gang. The rest of us were frightened. The gang
particularly picked on the Welsh amongst us. Later as a teacher I learnt that groups of
young people require supervision 24/7. The basic problem in our barrack room was that
during the night in the absence of any supervision, the Glasgow gang presided over
what amounted to a reign of terror. They forced everyone, almost everyone, (they left
me alone), to join them in card games. They were forced to gamble and of course the
Glaswegians always won and then expected to be paid. The noise went on for hours and
sleep was not possible. Sleep was hardly ever possible for days an night on end.

As if the Glaswegians were not enough tribulation on their own our immediate
NCOs were real bastards. They used to invade the room in the early hours to get us
moving. The room was not comfortable and they insisted that it always be spotless;
something that was impossible to achieve in the circumstances. The room’s floorboards
were very narrow, about ten centimeters across. The cracks were quite wide and dust
issued forth in clouds. Just walking there brought forth the dust. Each morning the
NCOs insisted on cleanliness and each morning they were dissatisfied. They threatened
us with “extra early rising” each time they were dissatisfied. Early rising was what we
received, earlier and earlier, day by day. Eventually we were reduced to only four hours
of sleep only we did not even get that because the Glaswegians were busy bullying us all.

One day I discovered that one of the Glaswegians had stolen my cutlery set. Losing
it was an offence which could put me in hot water. So I dressed in running kit and took a
training run to Woolworth’s in Aldershot to buy a replacement set. No one molested me
and the exercise was simple enough.

The result was that fatigue gathered momentum. This was amplified by the nature
of our daily life, marching up and down, sweeping up leaves each day; more came down
as soon as we cleared the area. Always more were waiting to be cleared. NCOs shouted
at us the whole time in the stereo typical way most people think they do. The guy in
charge of our room was nuttier than the rest. A young man hardly much older than me
was the senior officer in my section. Two or three middle-aged NCOs, one wearing the
Korean War star, seemed to be in possession of commonsense which then as now was in
short supply. As the days went by I got more and more tired. The officers set us an
intelligence test and the marks I got would not have done justice to a zombie. I was sent
to see the local psychiatrist who told me I could say whatever I liked to him. He told
me: “I have no rank; you don’t have to call me sir. You can speak your mind” I told
him about our bonkers barrack room, the bullying and the fatigue. I said to him: “How
would you manage an intelligence test if you were deprived of sleep for several nights on
end?” It was not a question he could answer. He agreed with me that my grades at “A”
level were a better judge of my abilities than the army’s tests.

After about ten days of this my inability to march in step became a nightmare for
those around me. They were often caught out of step. I never was until one day when it
became apparent to the officer that I was the platoon culprit. I was balled out:

“You fucking idiot! What the hell are you doing! The words came at me through the
haze of fatigue. Very suddenly I became awake. Enough adrenaline came from nowhere
to get the blood running strongly and the anger rising. The orders came from one of the
NCOs.

“Squad shun” “Squad left turn” “Squad quick march” I remained rooted to the spot.

The subaltern I have already mentioned appeared in front of me. His cool was gone.
His exact words I don’t remember but a torrent of swearing and abuse came my way. He
got angrier and angrier. I remained rooted to the spot in absolute silence. He got so
angry; he jumped up and down on the same spot yelling that I was a bastard etc. I did
not move or speak. Just how long this would have lasted no one knows. But after several
minutes the sergeant with the Korean star approached the officer: “Excuse me sir, would
you please come with me” The officer was led away and a corporal came for me “Come
with me son”. The corporal told me that I was brave showing such defiance to an
officer. He added that I had just ruined the officer’s career because he had lost his temper
in front of the platoon and abused a ranker in public. These were not offences that could
be forgiven or put to one side.

A day or two later was pay day and I fainted in the queue. No one could understand
this and the decision was made to discharge me from the army on medical grounds but
before this could happen, I was transferred to a holding company and a barrack room
even more diabolical than the one I had just left.

The sergeant in charge of the holding company did not live in our barrack room but he
was ever present one the less. Not long before this I had been studying the armies of
Prussia in the Franco-German War of 1870. Our sergeant reminded me of this Prussian
army, the army of Von Molke. He was a big man with a loud voice and a real military
haircut. The hair that he did have was scarcely three millimeters high across the whole of
his head, standing proud like the spikes of a fiery hedgehog... He obviously thought
that being put in charge of a holding company was, to say the least, a humiliating
experience. Beneath his dignity, it was an insult to his military status.

This time our immediate corporal had a private bedroom at the end of the barrack
room. Each morning he came flying out it and leaping onto the table in the centre of the
room: “Get up you bastards, out of bed you fuckers. Rise and shine. Snap to it” and
variations on these words. He had more terms of abuse than most of us will ever know
and he used them all the time. In the week we spent here, we did not do much, plenty of
cleaning and some marching and plenty of gossip. One lad told me he hated the army.
He made a profession of running away. He lived in Doncaster and he spent most of his
time either there or in military police cells in Aldershot. He told me: “It’s peace time. I
hate the army. The MPs will eventually get fed up of coming to Doncaster to fetch me.
I’ll get chucked out and that’s what I want” Someone else said: “Well that’s one way to
get out of military service”.

A collection of odds and sods and we were usually assembled as a line rather than a
squad. One day, line assembled we were being inspected by the Prussian sergeant who
paraded up and down the line tapping his stick on his heel as he went. He was muttering
under his breath. He turned to our barmy corporal having inspected the line several
times: “The buggers”, he said, “none of them is good enough for this job” “What job is
that?” said the corporal. “Some bugger to hang the colonel’s washing on the line” came
the answer. “No one in this pathetic bunch can appear in front of the colonel’s missus”
“Can they?” The sergeant left the corporal to it and no one had to attend to the washing.

When my release day finally arrived the sergeant came into the barrack. Passing
down the line of beds he came to mine where my kit had been carefully and neatly
assembled. “Bastards like you” he said, “should not be able to get out of the fucking
army like this”. He kicked the kit all over the floor. “Now clear it up” I piled it up
carefully and neatly again and waited for him to kick it all over again. He simply
stormed off, his boots clicking as he went.

My discharge papers simply said “Ceasing to fulfill army medical requirements” I had
been a member of the RASC for precisely three weeks. Some time later I received
ordinary national service papers telling me to sign up again. I pointed out that I had
ceased to fulfill army medical requirements but before the army would forget me a
question was asked in parliament by the Conservative member for the Langstone division
of Portsmouth. Considerably later my army record was to catch up with me again, but
more of that later.

Now back in Guildford, I decided I would go to university and from the places
offered to me I selected Exeter because Devon appealed to me as a good place to live for
a while. Then I had to find some work to earn a living from October 1955 through to
October 1956. The time would be spent “On the buses”.

I worked for the London Transport Executive (LTE), and then simply called London
Transport. I was a bus conductor: a meticulous late middle-aged driver I called Ted was
the other part of my crew. He was an excellent driver. I was a pretty awful conductor. .

The organization was created by the Transport Act 1947 and replaced the London
Passenger Transport Board. It was in public ownership. It became part of the British
Transport Commission, which meant that London Transport and British Railways were
under the same management for the first and last time in their histories.

A great deal of the early work of the LTE was spend repairing and replacing stock
and stations damaged during the war as well as completion of delayed projects such as
the Central Line eastern extension. The London Transport Executive started direct
recruitment of staff from the Caribbean in the early fifties. Although London has been a
multi-cultural city for a long time, this development perhaps marked an acceleration in
the process which has continued to this day. Perhaps with conductors like me they
needed to.

As a result of labour shortages following World War II, London Transport began a
major recruitment drive; in 1956 this recruitment was extended to the Caribbean in
conjunction with West Indian governments. As a result many thousands of people made
the decision to immigrate to Britain and begin a new life working on London’s public
transport but none of them arrived in Guildford. If they did, I did not meet any.

My driver and many other staff members in the Guildford garage worked with a
sense of service to the public. Ted was particular enough to want to operate his buses
exactly to the minute. One morning passing along the main street in Send, it was
amazing to see doors open and people rush out waving at the bus. Most of them
managed to catch us but they all complained that the bus was early. Ted told me to tell
them it was exactly on time. “Well then”, the passengers said “It’s usually late”. I told
them they should not count on that. Later when the bus reached the terminus near the
mainline station in Guildford people came off the upper deck complaining. “You are late,
I’ll miss my train” “No we are exactly on time” “Then you are usually early”. Most
drivers arrived early to get a longer tea break, not Ted, a stickler for time keeping, more
important to him than a longer tea break.

I worked on three main bus types; the first was a route master type as seen in the
picture; the second I call the 463 (which I will describe in the next sentence) and finally a
single deck coach style which was the easiest to work. The principal route operated by
the latter was the 425 –Guildford to Dorking. This route was great fun particularly early
in the morning when the scenery was at its most attractive. The 463 was operated by a
particular kind of squashed double deck bus purpose built to navigate bridges lower than
usual. It had the upstairs corridor along one side let bin to the lower deck. This meant
that upper deck passengers all had to sit on long seats and those people close to the far
window were a long way from the conductor. Collecting fares was a difficult task and an
embarrassing one reaching across people to get money and deliver tickets. Passengers
downstairs sitting beneath the upper corridor were liable to crack their heads when
leaving the seat. On top of all that the buses had ineffective springs. Working on them
was an unpleasant experience. When offered overtime, I always asked on which route
and when told 463, the answer was always “No”.

My misadventures were inevitably on board the 463. The 463 ran between Guildford
and Stains via Addle stone. One day when we had been busy we took our lunch break in
the Addlestone garage canteen. The food was good but the garage was several hundred
yards away from the route so a walk was required. After eating we had some resting time
and I went to sleep. Ted woke me up with a start and we walked back to the bus stop to
board an incoming 463. As the bus moved away from the stop on its journey to Staines,
I discovered that I had left a lot of necessary equipment on my seat the Addlestone
canteen. No ticket rack, no waybill, no bus key, no ticket punch, all I had with me was the
money bag. This was an age when automation had not arrived. To operate as a
conductor, you needed a rack of tickets; each ticket was about two inches square and
was pinned to a rack with springs; you needed the ticket punch to put a canceling hole in
the side of the ticket; you needed the bus key to change the indicator panels at the front
and rear of the bus; you needed the way bill to record your ticket sales and calculate the
amount of ticket money to pay in at the end of the shift and to present to any inspector
who might board the bus. Oh dear! What a shambles!

Suddenly realizing my predicament, I pulled the emergency cord and stopped the bus.
Ted was informed but he could only remonstrate about the incompetence of young
people. We could not return to Addlestone and passengers to Staines had a free ride.
When we got there, I borrowed a key from another bus and changed the indicator panels
and an inspector arrived. I could only recount my forgetfulness to him. He was a
remarkably tolerant man. He simply said: “Let’s forget I have ever seen you”. A phone
call was made to the Addlestone and they said they would see I got the missing gear back.
When we arrived back at the relevant Addlestone stop, a large red route master came
around the corner and a man got out and gave me back my gear. “No one was gonna
walk up here” he said. Amazing, rescued by a big red bus. Eventually the long day was
over and I was able to get of the serge uniform which itched just as my cadet corps gear
did when I was in the grammar school. The episode would have done justice to the TV
series “On the Buses”.

But my strangest experience on the buses was very different.

Being a bus conductor and completing athletic training was not easy and during this
period I was not fit for competition. Nevertheless as the only athlete working on London
Country Buses and Coaches I was asked to take part in the London Transport athletic
championships. The teams had unique names: Metropolitan Line, District Line, Central
Line, Central Road Services, Circle Line, HQ Staff and several more whose names I do
not remember. I had to run 880yards and the mile. Central Line had a competent
athlete, Robert Horne. He beat me in the 880yards. The mile was the last event on the
programme and before it started it became clear that one more win for the Central Line
and the championship would be theirs. If this did not happen then the championship
would be won by the Metropolitan Line. Many coloured athletes had competed for the
Metropolitan Line including a man called Robert Charles who covered the quarter mile in
47 seconds, a time which would rank him near the head of the current ranking list. He
did it on a grass track too. As the mile race progressed the Metropolitan line team embers
and supporters, mostly Caribbean people, began to chant “Come on zee man in zee
black!” The chant gave me enough inspiration to win the race and ensure that Horne was
beaten and that the championship was won by the Metropolitan Line. Looking at the cup
I got I noticed that it listed several well known British athletes who must have worked for
London Transport in the thirties. London Transport at this time was publicly owned and
contributed to the social lives of the people who worked for it. Presumably when she
destroyed it Margaret Thatcher was not aware of the traditions and values of this
institution. It was one I came to appreciate even though I worked for it for such a short
time.
 425 was my favourite route especially in early morning. The first village the bus
arrives at on its way to Dorking is Shalford. On its way there it traveled along the A281
which is also the main route from Guildford to Horsham. Although only a small village
its railway station escaped Beeching and is still there. A number of commuters who go to
London actually start their day’s work by catching a train from Shalford. The village is
part of the borough of Guildford and is an old enough to have been recorded in the
Domesday Book when it had three watermills on the River Way, and mills continued to
be built and operated there for hundreds of years. One still survives today, although it is
now only a tourist attraction. We pass Shalford Mill situated in the centre of the village
opposite the Sea Horse public house. Its not that old though having been built in the
18th century. It is currently a National Trust property.

Part of the route we follow runs through the Tillingbourne valley, the river itself joins
the River Wey in Shalford close to parish church. For centuries, the river provided an
important source of income for the village as the northern terminus of the Wey and Arun
Canal. It is difficult to imagine that this quiet village was once a landing place for barges,
and continues to be visited by boats today — but for pleasure rather than trade.

The village also became well known for its " Great Fair" which was created
following a charter issued by King John. In its heyday, it was said to have covered 140
acres and attracted merchants from a wide variety of places across southern England.
There is even a story that the author of The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan, once lived
in this village and drew his inspiration from the fair, and from the ancient route known as
the Pilgrims' Way, which passes nearby, on its way to Canterbury. Much of my training
was done on another section of the Pilgrim’s Way, the trail across the Hog’s Back from
Guildford to Farnham.

The village despite being close to Guildford enjoys a rural atmosphere because of the
many open spaces still there and the olde world houses which can still be found.

We have now turned on to the A248 and are passing through Chilworth, the next
village along the Tillingbourne where we can find out what life was like in some cottages
close to the main road during the fifties from the work of Alan Edwards who has made a
record of life there at this time. He writes about life in his cottage:

“No 6 Magazine Cottages had 3 rooms upstairs and 3 rooms downstairs, you went up a
small passage to get to the back door. If you hadn't got a key you would find it high up on
a ledge in the outside loo, a very cold place in the winter!

Once inside the cottage, the first room you came to was what we called the scullery, we
had one of the low stone sinks with just a cold water tap, a gas stove, I can remember my
Mum making Treacle Toffee in a large saucepan. There was also a gas copper for
washing the clothes, we also had an old wringer, which I know that I pinched my fingers
in, but only the once! There was a step up into the next room, which was known of as The
Kitchen, it had one of those old fashioned kitchen ranges which was regularly black
leaded with Zebo Grate Polish, the top of it used to get red hot when we had a good fire
going, there was always a kettle steaming away. We used to put the spent ashes along the
back garden path.

In my younger days we still had gas lighting, with chains to pull which lit the mantles,
when we had electricity laid on; we still kept the gas light fittings over the fireplace in the
front room.

There was a large table in the centre of the room, we had all our meals on this table, also
in this room we had an old wind up gramophone it had two doors on the front, which
when opened let the sound out, then below another two doors which stored the pile of old
78 records, some I remember had music only on one side, some of the record labels had
the name "Regal Zonophone". Under the lid would be a couple of tins of gramophone
needles. When the records seemed to a bit more scratched than usual, we would change
the needle and imagine that it sounded better.

The other form of entertainment other than boxed games was the wireless set, which
worked with the aid of accumulators, and I remember them as heavy glass containers that
were filled with acid, and whenever they needed recharging were taken up to Mr.
Thompson in his Garage up the lane, later when Thompson's closed down we had to go
all the way to Shalford to Schupke's.

There was a cupboard under the stairs, but as it was so very dark, the only time I went in
there was when there was a bad thunderstorm going on.

As you can imagine, the Front Room as it was always known as was only used on high
days and holidays, and the fireplace was only lit during the Christmas period, and
memories of the lighting of the fire using large sheets of The Surrey Ad' to cause enough
draught to get a really good fire going, and then at the end of the day the unforgettable
smell of red hot cinders, scorched lino and singed rugs when it was time for the embers to
be carried out of the front room on a coal shovel and into the kitchen to be placed into the
kitchen range.

When it was time for bed, or "up the wooden hill, or 12 steps and a few yards" as it was
often said, the left hand bedroom was Mum and Dad's, my room was the right hand one,
and beyond that, down a couple of steps was a spare room, used by my Brother, Roy
when he came home on leave from the Air Force, he was doing his National Service at
RAF Cosford.

My Dad's job was a gardener, he used to work for Mr. Slocombe at Corner Oaks,
Halfpenny Lane, and also at Postford House, between Lockners Farm and Bottings Mill.
He also used to do the garden for The Selmes family in Dorking Road, then later at
Wonersh when they moved away from Chilworth.

After school and on Saturdays I used to do some odd jobs for Major and Mrs Poole who
lived at Red Eaves, Blacksmith's Lane, they had a son called Godfrey. I used to polish the
big brass door knocker that was shaped like a Lion's head. I also had to fill the coal
scuttles; this gave me some pocket money. I can remember they used to have an AGA
cooker in the kitchen, it had big lift-up lids on the top of it, I had never seen a cooker like
that one before. I can also remember the aroma of cooking porridge that came from the
kitchen on some mornings. “

The picture below illustrates the type of railway locomotive that passed through
Chilworth when I was conducting my 425. They were en route from Reading to
Brighton. via Redhill.

“The view from the front of Magazine Cottages where I was born and lived
for 26 years looked out across the railway line which ran from Reading to Redhill, all the
trains in the 1950's were hauled by steam engines, my ABC book of locomotives was
well underlined as I was a keen loco spotter”.

On quiet evenings it was often possible to hear the sound of the trains making
hard work of climbing up the hill from Chilworth to Gomshall, there was a long goods
train that used to go through at about 7.10 p.m. One of the trains ran each way on
weekdays between Birkenhead and Margate, Dover and Eastbourne, this train was
affectionately known as "The Conti" short for The Continental Express, but Mrs. Selmes
next door to us called it "The Big Two"' maybe because it was a big train, often of 12
coaches, and went past in one direction at just after 2 p.m. On Saturdays in the summer
months there were many more of these holiday trains running between the Midlands and
The Sussex and Kent Coast.” And here is a final contribution from Alan Edwards who
gets us into the character of Chilworth in 1955.
 Henry Downing, the Porter / Signalman at Chilworth Station scratches his head
and can't believe his eyes when this train was being loaded up with Honey and Wheat and
was ready to depart for the Quaker Sugar Puffs factory.

Our next village is Albury. We drive past the Drummond Arms, the principal public
house. Albury is in fact divided into a village and two hamlets, the village being Albury
and the hamlets Farley Green and Little London, each separated by woods and heathland.
The river Tillingbourne runs through the centre of the village and in the recent past fed
the flour mill at the Chilworth edge of the village, which has now given way to a small
estate of houses. The small village offers one post office and general shop and a pub, the
Drummond Arms. Another pub the William IV in close by Little London dates back to
the 16th century

Albury Estate covers about 150 acres; it includes a Saxon church, the
mansion (now a retirement home), a few houses and what is left of the old village of
Albury. It is owned by the Duke of Northumberland and was once the home of his
Duchess With gardens designed by Evelyn the place is ancient enough to remind us that
not so long ago it was part of feudal England. Driving through it in a misty early
morning one can easily believe that as time appears to be standing still. Having left
Albury the pass makes a right turn on to the A25 which it will follow to its final
destination in Dorking. The main road has come down the hill from Newlands Corner,
the turn back point of many of our training runs from the grammar school.

Shere is probabbly the most photographed village in Surrey! Shere might once have
been a well kept secret but when our bus regularly passed through it was well known for
its picturesque qualities; the flow of the Tillingbourne between the Downs and Surrey
Hills, its quaint atmosphere, attractive buildings, superb scenery which includes ducks
and a ford through the stream.

Our bus drove along the main road which was called Middle Street. It was lined with
old fashioned shops which sold most things. The photographic qualities of the place are
well enough known for Shere to have featured in numerous films and televison shows, so
much so that the village church has hosted quite a number of film weddings.

Houses attributable to the famous architect Lutyens can be found distributed along
Middle Street. The old Shere fire station sits right on this main
street and is now used to house the "Ladies" and "Gentleman’s"
public convenience. The building, which is wooden, still keeps
the appearance it had all those years ago when it served a
higher purpose protecting the local area from the hazards of
fire.

This village is possibly the most famous single place in the

Surrey Hills one of the most attractive places to be found in
close proximity to London. Next stop…Gomshall.
 Gomshall (locally pronounced Gumshall) is appealing though not classy; it’s left
that role to Shere. We see the Tillingbourne again and an old house which dates back to
the time of King John and there is a railway station and a packhorse bridge.

Gomshall does however make an early appearance in history as the Manor of

Gumesele, a Saxon feudal landholding which originally included the present day
Gomshall. The 1380 Poll Tax shows that Gomshall had 267 names registered. The
occupations written beside the names show land-holders and the usual country crafts but
also a high proportion of skills relating to the wool trade; there were spinners and
weavers, fullers and pelterers and many tailors. The village is no longer the hive of
industry it once was but is now occupied by commuters to elsewhere just like many other
places in this corner of the United Kingdom.

Then we arrive at Wotton, a place without much history and apparently merely
a suburb of Dorking adjoined to large buildings owned then by Friends Provident, an
insurance conglomerate which was the providers of our own index linked mortgage
which did actually work. .

Some of the description here would be appropriate enough for my wife’s parent’s
house in Falcon Road, an area of Guildford where such houses have been demolished.

Our flat in Guildford at this time did have an inside loo and was probably a better
property than those described above which overlooked Guildford cricket ground. Sam
Pendry presided there then. One of the funniest happenings occurred when we made
ginger beer in considerable quantities from plants we generated ourselves. Some of
bottles exploded during the night leaving a nasty sticky mess. Sounding like gunfire
they could also be disturbing.

CHAPTER IV
UNIVERSITIES
Two of the Pendrys had been to university but no one in my family had. So I was the
first to be followed shortly afterwards by my brother John. Our generation must be
considered one of the luckiest ever. In Surrey if you won three decent “A” levels you
were awarded a scholarship which paid your fees and also gave you an allowance to live
on. At this time universities demanded two decent “A” levels but Surrey were more
stringent and demanded the three. Everyone in the Upper Sixth at this time, with the
exception of my training partner Eric Hawkins. was fortunate enough to gain entry to a
university Eric had two but wasn’t eligible for a grant. He went on to obtain a
commission in the Royal Army Educational Corps.
 Although my qualifications were insufficient to get me a place at Oxford or
Cambridge, they were good enough to get me offers from a number of universities in
various parts of Britain. I eventually chose Exeter probably because Devon and
Dartmoor held more appeal than the Black Country and Leicestershire. But before this
happened I passed a written exam for entry to the London School of Economics. This of
itself was not enough to gain entry; there was an interview as well. Having chatted
with me the interview panel turned me down most probably because of my flippant
comments on the British press as true today as they were then. Perhaps some panel
members were readers of one or two of our more meretricious dailies.

My first year in Exeter was hectic. We were all dead scared of being sent down at
the end of the year. We all covered a variety of subjects including the principal subject
we had engaged to study; mine was Sociology, the Media Studies of its day. Then it’s
intellectual status was subject to doubt; now the same kind of doubt applies to Media
Studies and a plethora of other suspect areas of study introduced by the battalion of new
universities which have been created; some of them with most peculiar titles. In the late
fifties the then new universities were anxious to establish their academic reputations and
their behaviour witnessed the resultant anxieties. In Exeter for instance the Physics
department was known to have places in its second year for only five students yet
nineteen were given first year places. Obviously then fourteen would have to be sent
down no matter how good they were.

That was the situation more than fifty years ago. Now universities need students
because they bring cash. Does anyone believe that academic standards can possibly be
the same or similar?

My department was reckoned to be preparing to get rid of at least ten per sent of us
and we were all anxious not to be included in that ten per cent. We felt the tension
because some of the lecturers weren’t very good which made it difficult to get to grips
with some of the subject matter in Economics and Statistics. I particularly remember
Stigler’s “Theory of Price” and correlation co-efficients in Statistics.

Study and training were difficult too because the hall of residence where I lived was
chaotic with too much noise a constant hazard to both. I traveled frequently back to
Guildford to study in the local library returning to the university for exams and athletic
events. The effort I made was rewarded. I avoided being part of the “removed” ten per
cent.

During this year I did win the “Rushmere”, the university’s cross country run and I
was chosen to represent the UAU at both its national events, competitions against the
Midland Counties and the RAF and a separate event all against the Army. As usual we
were good enough to beat the services but not up to the counties who were then led by
one of the best distance runners in the world, the Coventry gardener, Basil Heatley.

1956-57 was my first year bat University, it coincided with the Suez Crisis. It was a
bad time for the West because at the same time as the Hungarian uprising took place in
Budapest. The middling European powers felt they needed control of the canal with its
connection to the Middle East. Built between 1859 and 1869 by the French engineer
Ferdinand de Lesseps, it was acquired largely by Great Britain in 1875. By the
provisions of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, Great Britain enjoyed the right to
maintain defense forces in the Suez Canal Zone.

Egyptian nationalists repeatedly demanded that Great Britain evacuate the Canal
Zone, and in 1954 the two countries signed an agreement, superseding the 1936 treaty
that provided for withdrawal of all British troops, and in 1956 all British troops left.

When Egypt concluded an arms deal with Czechoslovakia, the U.S. Secretary
of State John Dulles announced the withdrawal of all U.S. funds and assistance for
President Gamal Abdel Nasser's, who had come to power in the 1953 nationalistic
revolution, development program. In response to this treatment by the United States and
the refusal of Western powers to fund the Aswan Dam on the Upper Nile River, Nasser
nationalized the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956.

The nationalization of the canal surprised the world, especially the British and
French stockholders who owned the Suez Canal Company. Although Nasser promised
compensation to the company for its loss, Britain, France and Israel began plotting to take
back the canal and overthrow Nasser as well. When attempts to reach an agreement with
Egypt on a new form of international control for the Canal failed, Israel accused Egypt of
planning an attack and sent the Israeli army across the Sinai Peninsula toward the Canal.
(Britain, France and Israel had united in secret, something that they denied publicly for
many years, and made arrangements for Israel to make the initial invasion of Egypt and
capture one side of the Suez Canal.) When further British and French diplomatic
initiatives failed, they sent troops to occupy the canal.

The United States opposed this action as a violation of the principle of self-
determination. The American delegation at the United Nations voted in favor of a General
Assembly resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of the
invading troops. Great Britain, France and Israel eventually accepted these terms.

In March 1957, under the supervision of a U.N. police force, the Suez
Canal was cleared of wreckage and opened to shipping. The canal was returned to Egypt,
and reparations were paid by Egypt under the supervision of the World Bank. Overall the
actions of Britain and France served to draw Nasser and Egypt into further relations with
the USSR. The fight over the canal also laid the groundwork for the Six Day War in 1967
due to a lack of a peace settlement following the 1956 war.

In January 1957, President Eisenhower asked Congress for authorization to use

military force, if requested, by any Middle Eastern nation to check aggression and,
second, to set aside a sum of $200 million to help those Middle Eastern countries that
desired aid from the United States. Congress granted both requests. This policy became
known as the Eisenhower Doctrine.
 In Exeter our student body took part in this international affair. We staged a
protest. We stopped the traffic in the main street. I was nearly arrested after climbing
onto the roof of department store. I escaped by sliding down a convenient lamp post. We
were elated. We were naïve enough to think that the student protests throughout the
country actually influenced the outcome and persuaded the US to withdraw support from
the misguided Europeans. We had actually helped to bring down a prime minister. At the
time I thought we had had some influence. As an outsider I ought to have known better.

Having passed into the second year life would be easier and more interesting.
I continued to travel up and down the country racing up to thirty times a season. I also
joined the university newspaper “The South Westerner” and became the sports editor.
That was fun. One of my headlines would not have been out of place in “The Sun”. The
word SLAMMED scrawled across the page recorded a massive rugby defeat at the hands
of the students of St Luke’s College. Then a separate entity, now part of the university.
The College beat the University at almost every sport except athletics and cross-country.
The newspaper involved a lot of work. We had to collect the scripts, layout the pages,
choose the typefaces and collate al this for submission to the printers and then read the
proofs before it was printed. Work went on throughout the week. But Sunday nights were
always the busiest time. Alistair Cooper was the Editor, a position I was to fill the
following year.

Athletically we had a good year winning every race held on our own course
which was particularly vicious for visitors. There was very little level ground and some
very difficult hills included a nasty V turn on a very steep down hill section which wrong
footed our opponents. We enjoyed a good outing at the Hyde Park “Serpentine Relays”
in London where at one stage we were in the lead before relapsing to finish sixth in an
event won by Manchester University led by Ron Hill who later won acclaim as the
Commonwealth marathon champion.

During this year I began to make acquaintance with the leader of the Sociology
department, Duncan Mitchell eventually professor Duncan Mitchell sometime stand in
Vice-Chancellor of the University. He was a Methodist though this did not prevent him
having a grand funeral in Exeter cathedral. He thought that we should all be introduced
to sociology through a thorough knowledge of T. S. Eliot’s “Waste Land”. The Waste
Land is much concerned with life, death and the tentative possibility of resurrection, it is
difficult to see what if any is the connection between it and the subject matter of
sociology. It is more a comment on the state of Mitchell’s mind than on anything else.
He was a religious man. It was difficult to understand the connection then. It remains
so to this day. He found me reading Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” which he regarded as
“pop” literature. Kerouac remains in publication. Duncan Mitchell’s textbooks have
passed their sell-by date.

One of our lecturer’s was Dr Margaret Hewitt who enjoyed a little acclaim as an
authoress of a book about the lives of Victorian women. She was a good lecturer. We
only had eight lectures a week, her’s was first thing on Monday mornings. Not being
good at getting up, she was frequently absent guaranteeing a frustrating start to the
week. Another woman who lectured on statistics did not understand what she was taking
about, neither did we.

It was anthropology which most interested me perhaps because the lecturer was good.
Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture was standard reading for anthropology courses in n
universities for years.

The essential idea in Patterns of Culture is, according to Margaret Mead, "her view
of human cultures as 'personality writ large.'" Each culture, Benedict explains, chooses
from "the great arc of human potentialities" only a few characteristics which become the
leading personality traits of the persons living in that culture. For example she described
the emphasis on restraint in Pueblo cultures of the American southwest, and the emphasis
on abandon in the Native American cultures of the Great Plains. She used the
Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" as the stimulus for her thought
about these Native American cultures. She describes how in ancient Greece, the
worshippers of Apollo emphasized order and calm in their celebrations. In contrast, the
worshippers of Dionysius, the god of wine, emphasized wildness, abandon, letting go.
And so it was among Native Americans. She described in detail the contrasts between
rituals, beliefs, personal preferences amongst people of diverse cultures to show how
each culture had a "personality" that was encouraged in each individual.

Other anthropologists of the personality and culture school followed through on

these ideas--notably Margaret Mead in her Coming of Age in Samoa which was another
book we had to read.

Benedict, in Patterns of Culture, expresses her belief in cultural relativism.

She desired to show that each culture has its own moral imperatives that can be
understood only if one studies that culture as a whole. It was wrong, she felt, to disparage
the customs or values of a culture different from one's own. Those customs had a
meaning to the persons who lived them. We should not try to evaluate people by our
standards alone. Morality, she felt, was relative.

As she described the Kwakiutls of the Northwest Coast, the Pueblos of New
Mexico, the nations of the Great Plains, and the Dobu culture of New Guinea, she gave
evidence that their values, even where they disagree with the values of the anthropology
student who is reading Patterns of Culture, belong to coherent cultural systems and
should be respected.

Whatever ethical imperatives have since been described by anthropologists

as universal, not culture-bound, Benedict's work as a pioneer in describing whole
cultures, and as an advocate of cross-cultural equality, has lived.

Critics have argued that particular patterns she found may only be a part, a
subset, of the whole cultures. For example, David Friend Aberle writes that the Pueblo
people may be calm, gentle, and much given to ritual when in one mood or set of
circumstances, but can be suspicious, retaliatory, and warlike in the opposite situation.
Nevertheless, while disagreements with Benedict are in the literature, her brief
descriptions are felt to be vivid, readable, and relevant to every human being and as far as
they go, penetratingly perceptive and accurate.

During World War 2 she produced a pamphlet for the US Army arguing against
racist beliefs.

Benedict’s influence on the way I think about things has lasted to this day. She
particularly makes you repeatedly ask just “What is civilization ?” Can we dismiss
primitive societies as swiftly as Orson Welles dismissed the Swiss as mere producers of
cuckoo clocks! Are we civilized? Kenneth Clark .s monumental series of programmes
produced some time ago tried to answer the question! It remains debatable.

Human behaviour more often than not is group behaviour. Our actions often cannot be
understood except within the context of the groups we inhabit. My interest in group
dynamics dates from this time and from my own involvement in youth clubs and athletic
teams. I was particularly impressed with George Homans book “The Human Group”.

Homans proposes that social reality should be described at three levels: social events,
customs, and analytical hypotheses that describe the processes by which customs arise
and are maintained or changed. Hypotheses are formulated in terms of relationships
among variables: such as frequency of interaction, similarity of activities, intensity of
sentiment, and conformity to norms. Using notable sociological and anthropological field
studies as the grounding for such general ideas, the book makes a persuasive case for
treating groups as social systems. This approach to groups particularly youth groups is I
think vital to the way we deal with young people. Teenagers are extremely difficult to
deal with as individuals. At this stage of life the most important influence on them is peer
group pressure. Our establishment and our politicians seem totally unaware of this
simple fact. Living in ignorance of this has contributed to a number of unpleasant
developments. Amongst them an increase in crime with a subsequent expansion of the
numbers in prison to a position that records more people in prison here than any other
country in the European Union. We have also seen an expansion of our Under Class
something that we were working to reduce half a century ago. Although I have seen
great improvements in my life time, it is not all progress. Globalization by market
forces and a naïve belief in the benevolent power of those forces accepted by Clinton,
Bush and Blair has had ugly consequences for the poorest people in our societies. The
only real beneficiaries have been the ultra rich who have grown richer. They have
become a rampant new upper class which Milovan Djilas would have recognized. It is
commonsense to believe that very large differences in wealth between the poorest and the
richest must feed alienation and ultimately give rise to crime as an expression of
frustration on the part of some of them. It is a severe handicap for any society to be
saddled with a large Under Class.

This book will come back to these questions in a later chapter. For now it is enough
to point out that although capitalism Adam Smith style might be the least bad system of
social organization, the variety based on the sanctity of market forces and the
privatization of public resources has ugly consequences for us all. We can only hope
that sooner or later commonsense will persuade politicians that public management is not
always inferior and that every problem requires a commonsense solution not necessarily
one dictated by a consultant with a Harvard MBA. For now we live in hope.

. This is of course is being wise with hindsight and is not relevant to my life as it was
in 1957-58. Social Psychology interested me a great deal at this time.

Freud has to be mentioned as the founder of modern psychology before I

go on to talk about Karen Horney who has influenced my thinking. He was influential in
two related but distinct ways. He simultaneously developed a theory of the human mind
and human behaviour, as well as some clinical techniques to help cure psychological
pathologies.

Horney believed that we have two views of ourselves. The "real self" and the
"ideal self". The real self is who and what we actually are. She wanted to take some of
the emphasis away from Freud’s “id” “ego” and “super-ego” Her Psycholgy is
straightforward and initially anyway simple to follow. Examples would be parent, child,
sister, etc. The real self contains potential for growth, happiness, will power, gifts, etc.
The real self has deficiencies that we do not like. The ideal self is the type of person we
feel that we should be and is used as a model to assist us in developing our potential and
achieving self-actualization. This is a simpler version of the “egoe” and the “super ego”

Self-actualization is something that individuals strive for. It is important to know the

differences between your ideal and real self. Since the neurotic person's self is split
between an idealized self and a corresponding despised self, individuals may feel that
they somehow lack living up to the ideals. They feel that there is a flaw somewhere in
comparison to what they "should" be.

The goals set out by the neurotic are not realistic, or indeed possible. The despised
self, on the other hand, has the feeling that it is despised by those around them, and
assumes that this incarnation is its "true" self. Thus, the neurotic is like a clock's
pendulum, oscillating between a fallacious "perfection" and a manifestation of self-hate.
Horney referred to this phenomenon as the "tyranny of the shoulds" and the neurotic's
hopeless "search for glory". She concluded that these ingrained traits of the psyche
forever prevent an individual's potential from being actualized unless the cycle of
neurosis is somehow broken, through treatment or otherwise. Reading her work helped
me get to grips with some key elements of the subject as well as some insight into my
own life’s purposes and ambitions. Influenced by Freud she nevertheless did a great deal
to elucidate his ideas in a way that made them easier to understand whilst at the same
time placing less emphasis on the sexual roots of Freud’s thought than he did himself.
We perhaps needed this change of emphasis.

The most important sociologist we studied was Emile Durkheim. He was

concerned primarily with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence. It
was already clear to him a century ago that societies could no longer rely on such things
as shared religious and ethnic background to maintain equilibrium. . In order to study
social life in modern societies, Durkheim sought to create one of the first scientific
approaches to social phenomena. Along with Herbert Spencer, Durkheim was one of the
first people to explain the existence and quality of different parts of a society by reference
to what function they served in keeping the society healthy and balanced, and is thus
sometimes seen as a precursor of a functional approach to sociology. Durkheim also
insisted that society was more than the sum of its parts. Thus unlike his contemporaries
Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber, he focused not on what motivates the actions of
individual people but rather on the study of “social facts”, a term which he coined to
describe phenomena which have an existence in and of themselves and are not bound to
the actions of individuals. He argued that social facts had an independent existence.

Durkheim also made some influential comments on the types of society that we
can observe which are relevant today. Some societies emphasize law he describes as
mechanical and the law is generally repressive and is used to punish deviant behaviour.
On the other hand, in societies with organic solidarity the law is generally restorative; it
aims not to punish, but instead to restore the normal activity of a complex society. Our
politicians could still learn from this observation. We could well ask ourselves what kind
of society we are?

Rapid social change which has been a feature of modern life has continuously
broken down the patterns of behaviour previously established. Durkheim describes the
resulting social state which is distinctly impersonal as one of “anomie”. The increasing
impersonality of our social life has been a feature of our life over the last one hundred
years. This interest led him to produce his great work, probably still the finest
sociological classic, “Suicide”

The work was published in 1897 In it, he explores the differing suicide rates
among Protestants and Catholics, explaining that stronger social control among Catholics
results in lower suicide rates. We could look at this though in a Freudian manner.
Catholics can confess their sins and receive absolution. Protestants had to accept
personally responsibility for their actions.

Durkheim was also very interested in education. Partially this was because he was
professionally employed to train teachers, and he used his ability to shape a curriculum
to further his own goals of having sociology taught as widely as possible. More broadly,
though, Durkheim was interested in the way that education could be used to provide
French citizens the sort of shared, secular background that would be necessary to prevent
anomie in modern societies. It was to this end that he also proposed the formation of
professional groups to serve as a source of solidarity for adults. We can look now and see
that there is plenty of anomie about together with a good deal of religious fanaticism in
our societies..

Crime was another subject which interested him: he thought that crime was a way
in which social tensions were released, a cleansing took place. It had a purging effect.
He further stated that "the authority which the moral conscience enjoys must not be
excessive; otherwise, no-one would dare to criticize it, and it would too easily congeal
into an immutable form. To make progress, individual originality must be able to express
itself .[even] the originality of the criminal... shall be possible" We all suffer from a
deficit in this kind of authority.

Durkheim took what was called a positivist approach to his subject. He thought that
Sociology was the science of society. This brings me to the controversy that benighted
the undergraduate careers of all of us in my cohort which centred on whether or not
Sociology was a science or an art; additionally we were concerned to decide what exactly
was a social fact and whether it was possible ever to view anything entirely objectively.
Our view was that one’s point of view was a kind of tool; it was almost always
impossible for anyone to act objectively in the fullest sense of that term. Social facts
would be observed and commented on in ways which would differ according to one’s
initial viewpoint be it catholic, marxist, socialist or islamic. Your value judgements
would colour all your observations and you could use them as your tools. Currently this
view is commonplace but in the sixties Mitchell thought otherwise and we all suffered
accordingly. Our degrees were classified as BA but Mitchell thought it should be BSc.
My thoughts were that as an outsider “What more could one expect?”