Author: Julie Summers

Welcome to my 13th newsletter. I’m shocked to see that I have not sent a letter out since January of this year, although I have been using www.facebook.com/Jambusters1 to mention the odd thing that is going on with the book. This book came out on 28 February 2013 and has been studiously ignored by Radio 4, all the mainstream press and the Daily Mail, who bought the serial rights but never ran it. However, the sales have been more than healthy thanks to the grapevine and the WI, who have embraced the book wholeheartedly. So thank you to everyone who has been so supportive.

Despite quiet on the review front, I have never been asked to do so many talks and events. I have spent at least one, and often two or three, days a week going out and about, lecturing about Jambusters and other projects, so I have not been slothful. However, the main part of my written work since the book came out has been for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission project.Contents

• A Grave Matter
• Mountain Matters
• Beauty on Duty
• Pen Thoughts
• Forthcoming Events

Scartho Road Cemetery, Grismby, war plot with the newly installed panel on the left © CWGCKilchoman Military Cemetery on the Isle of Islay © CWGCThe Boyle headstone, Glasgow Lambhill Cemetery
© The Scottish War Graves ProjectDoug Scott and Chris Bonington (left) crawling down the Ogre ©Doug ScottA Grave Matter

A year ago the Commission (CWGC) asked me to write Visitor Information Panels for 100 of their UK cemeteries. I know I have mentioned this extraordinary fact in previous newsletters but it bears repeating. There are 23,000 CWGC cemeteries and memorials in 153 countries worldwide. Half of all those sites are in the UK and the only country in the world that has more burials is France. Some 170,000 servicemen and women are buried in the UK. Why, you might ask? Well, it has been my job to find out and tell people, and the reasons have been far more interesting and diverse than I would have thought possible. Some died of wounds sustained on the Western Front, at Gallipoli or further afield. Others died of disease or in training accidents. Many Second World War burials are Air Force or Navy, both Merchant and Royal.

I am constantly amazed, as I take on new cemeteries for research, just how much of the social history of an area is caught up in the stories of the servicemen and women who died and are buried in war graves. The First World War, in particular, changed the history of towns and villages throughout the United Kingdom. Take Grimsby for example. There is a stunning war plot in Scartho Road, a huge municipal cemetery in the centre of the town, with 200 Second World War burials but the 281 First World War burials dispersed throughout the cemetery. Why are they scattered? They are the graves of men who died and were buried in family plots at the request of their relatives. The majority of them are local men who were part of the fishing fleet that became the first auxiliary patrol, hunting for mines and submarines off the East coast. There were 880 vessels and 9,000 men from the Humberside fishing trade patrolling the waters. A large proportion of the fleet was lost.

Then, on 18 August 1915 the E13 submarine was blown up by a German destroyer in Danish waters. Fifteen men died in the incident and their remains brought back to Hull 10 days later to be transported to their home towns the following day. One observer wrote: “The scene of the fifteen coffins, draped in the Union Jacks, each with its own hearse and drawn by black horses passing through Hull city centre, while thousands thronged the route to Paragon Station, was described as one of the most moving of the war. One was that of a local man, Herbert Staples, who was laid to rest here at Scartho Road.”

On the Isle of Islay there is a cemetery called Kilchoman with 73 graves in the corner of a large plot. It turns out that the cemetery originally contained the remains of 300 American soldiers as well as the 73 British sailors. These soldiers had been on their way to the Western Front in February 1918 when their ship, the Otranto, was involved in a collision in dense fog and more than 400 drowned. After the First World War, the soldiers were all moved either to the US or to the US cemetery at Brookwood. Only the graves of the sailors remain.

I can cope with the big stories and the social history. Where I come unstuck is when I find a family story that is particularly heartbreaking. While I was researching Glasgow Lambhill Cemetery I came across a headstone with the names and dates of death of four men from the same family. Private Robert Boyle, the youngest, is buried in Lambhill, having died of wounds in hospital in July 1916. He was 28 and I guess he was injured on the Somme. His three brothers are all named on the headstone but died elsewhere. Samuel Boyle died in October 1914 and is commemorated by name on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres, so he must have been involved in First Ypres and his body never recovered. The next brother, Alexander Boyle, is commemorated on the Helles Memorial on Gallipoli. He died in June 1915 and similarly, his remains were never identified. And then the oldest brother, David Boyle, died in August 1915 when his ship was torpedoed. He was a member of the Mercantile Marine and was 49 years old. His name is on the Tower Hill Memorial in London. How does any mother recover from that kind of horror?

It sounds, perhaps, a bit of a miserable job to write about these cemeteries but it is not. It is hugely uplifting to think that their graves are still so beautifully cared for almost 100 years after they died. The Commission is an impressive and caring organisation and I feel very lucky to be working with them. 48 completed, 52 to go.Mountain Matters

The Mountain Heritage Trust, of which I have now been chairman for three years, has begun to flourish. For the last six or seven years it has been dogged by financial worries and underfunding. However, a growing relationship between Mountain Heritage and the National Trust is changing people’s perception of what we can achieve. We hope it will lead to MHT exhibitions and displays in a small number of NT properties in climbing areas such as Llanberis, the Peak District and the South West. Mountaineering and climbing has some of the most spectacular imagery and a good number of captivating stories to tell, so we are delighted to be able to have a larger platform to bring these to the attention of the public.

Meantime, this autumn I am organising a fundraising dinner in London called A Night on the Ogre with two of Britain’s most famous climbers – Chris Bonington and Doug Scott. On 13 July 1977, just after dusk, Chris and Doug reached the summit of the Ogre, in Pakistan. It stands 7,285 metres, a height where the amount of oxygen in the air is just half of that breathed at sea level. Recognised as the hardest rock climbed at that altitude at the time, it was a monumental achievement and it was twenty-four years before it was climbed again.

After the sun had set Doug was making the first abseil off the summit and slipped on verglas and broke both his legs near the ankles. Four days later, during another abseil, Chris smashed two ribs. Altogether the descent took eight days, with Chris and Doug fighting for survival. Crawling off the Ogre in a blizzard with just two fellow climbers, Mo Antoine and Clive Rowland, to assist them, and no food for five days, resulted in an epic tale of strength and determination against all the odds.

This escape has taken its place amongst the legends of mountaineering history and I believe it will be a terrific evening in October. MHT keeps me on my toes and takes up far more of my time than it really should, but with stories like this to be told, I cannot really complain.Beauty on Duty

Utility Underwear from a wartime collection belonging to Eve DaviesI am never completely happy when I haven’t got a good book project on the go, so I was genuinely excited and thrilled to be asked to write a book on the history of wartime fashion for Profile Books. It will be published in time for an exhibition on the same subject at the Imperial War Museum in Spring 2015. The IWM will be closely involved in the project and I hope their historians will help me to avoid clangers about seams, stitching and styles. Those of you who know me well will smile at the idea of me writing about fashion. I am definitely not fashionable. But I have been brought in to look at the social history side of wartime clothing, hair styles and the like, so it should be a great fun project and I cannot wait to get my teeth into it.Pen ThoughtsBill Drower at the old Toosey family home in Birkenhead for the launch of The Colonel of Tamarkan in 2005Mattie (left) and Tiggy, my constant companions in my office. They have a wine box each and show no interest in my writing whatsoever.

Next month my literary agency, Felicity Bryan, celebrates 25 years in the business. It is a fabulous achievement. So when I was on a recent cycling holiday in Devon, I took the time to write to my agent to offer my congratulations and thanks for a very creative partnership that has lasted nearly a dozen years. I wrote by hand, as I always try to do with personal letters, and she told me she received the letter with trepidation. A hand-written envelope is often a harbinger of bad news. That got me thinking, because in my line of work, a hand-written envelope invariably means someone of the older generation writing to me with comments or, if I’m very lucky, a story.

My all time favourite hand-written letter came from Bill Drower, who had been in a prisoner of war with my grandfather in the Far East. Towards the very end of the war he had fallen foul of the psychopathic camp commander, Noguchi, and had ended up being imprisoned in a hole in the ground for 77 days. Oxford educated, a gentleman to the core, Bill never held a grudge against the Japanese for his torment and his letter to me opened thus:

“My dear Miss Summers, My name is Captain William Mortimer Drower and your grandfather was kind to me when I got into a spot of bother in the camp gaol…”

After that initial contact in 2003 I got to know Bill quite well and I count it as one of the great privileges of my life to have met and spent time with this remarkable man. The last time I saw him he was short of breath but still full of vim. I had my youngest son with me and Bill challenged Sandy to a game of chess. They played on a board that had been dropped into his prison camp by the RAF in 1945. Sandy was a good chess player but Bill beat him soundly. Three weeks later he had a fall and died. When I told his daughter, Sarah, the story of the chess match she said she was amazed. He had not played chess since 1945, although he had kept that board as a memento of his time in the POW camps.

I have kept all 23 of his hand-written letters in their hand-written envelopes. To me they are anything but bad news.

Julie Summers

August 2013, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.uk

Welcome to my 12th newsletter – the first of 2013. Happy New Year to you all. It is six months since I last wrote but there was little to report as I was in the final editing phase of my WI book and busy working on a long-term project with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. However, 2013 is going to be an exciting year. Jambusters, three years in the making, is due to be published next month and very thrilling it will be too. I don’t think I have ever worked and reworked a book so thoroughly and I know that none to date has produced as much interest and comment in advance of publication as this one has. Rather than tell the story of the book I thought I would devote part of this newsletter to an appreciation of archives, such a vital part of the book’s genesis. Archives crop up in older newsletters as an afterthought but a few things have happened recently that make me want to set this up centre stage.Contents

• Heritage Matters
• Jam Tomorrow
• Pen Thoughts
• And Finally…
• Forthcoming Events

Heritage MattersSiegfried Herford on a traverse, 1911

Archivists are the custodians of our national memory. Without them, precious material that makes up this memory would be lost. And believe me, much has already been lost. I set up the Sandy Irvine archive in 1999 and took advice from conservationists about handling fragile material such as old letters, original photographs and engineering drawings. However, I’m no professional, so handed the whole thing over to Sandy’s old College, Merton, in 2007 and it was a great relief. A few organisations – not just Oxbridge colleges – are lucky enough to have a professional archivist and this is an advantage beyond most people’s understanding. Many of the archives I use when researching my books are run by amateurs. Some are good, some less so and a few are excellent. Let me tell you the story, briefly, of an archive I am associated with and why it works where others do not.

Oxygen mask and regulator used by
Dougal Haston on the Mount Everest
expedition 1975
Mountain Heritage Trust Collection
© James BettneyOne of my roles is Chairman of the Mountain Heritage Trust, based in Cumbria. The trust, or MHT as it is known, cares for the vast legacy of British mountaineering and climbing which stretches back almost 200 years. It is run by Maxine Willett, the only employee of the trust, and her post is part- funded by the British Mountaineering Council. Apart from collecting material for the MHT archive, Maxine’s main role is to record where material is lodged in other collections, private or public. Mountaineering and climbing clubs now routinely give Maxine information about what they have, they ask her for advice on how to deal with their archive material and they benefit hugely from her expertise. As the database of information grows, so her knowledge has expanded and she is now one of the best informed people on the history and heritage of British Alpinism and climbing. So, if a researcher, historian or author wishes to know, for example, about the development of oxygen sets for high altitude mountaineering, they can start at MHT, which holds Dougal Haston’s set from his and Doug Scott’s 1975 Mount Everest ascent. They can learn that the 1950s sets are at the Royal Geographical Society and that the 1920s sets are . . . Oh, where are they? Well, there is an oxygen cylinder at the Alpine Club, a re-formed set at the RGS but, unfortunately, a tidy-minded curator in the 1970s threw away Sandy Irvine’s prototype set because it was old, dusty and taking up too much room. Along with a whole lot of other material in a certain collection. What a shame.

The greatest danger to an archive and its contents is when the company that owns it or the overseeing body goes through a restructuring process. A very well-respected organisation, that I work with regularly, redefined itself about 35 years ago and destroyed all personal records because they were of no interest to the new entity in its new guise. This has since proven to be one of the great losses to historians interested in the First World War and, search though one will, there is nothing left from this unique area of history. When archival material is destroyed, the national memory loses out.

A well-maintained and documented archive can do more than supply information to specialist researchers. It can provide material for wide-reaching projects that are cross-curricular. We at MHT are going to open a dedicated mountaineering and climbing exhibition gallery in the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery in 12 months’ time. 2014 is the anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War and through our collections we have succeeded, effortlessly, to put together an exhibition that will tie climbing and climbers into the anniversary. One of the smaller archives we have acquired is that of Siegfried Herford. He was, before his untimely death in January 1916 at the age of 24, one of the most brilliant rock-climbers of his generation. Before the war he took part in a series of climbs which were filmed by the Abraham Brothers, pioneers in climbing and mountaineering photography, and a major collection of their material has been given to MHT on long-term loan. Thus we can draw, in one exhibition, on climbing, photography, film-making, equipment, personalities and the tragedy of the Great War. And that is just from MHT’s own collections.Jam Tomorrow

Coming back to my work on Jambusters, there is no way that I could have written that book without the well-preserved archive material in the WI’s national, county and institute collections. ‘Collections’ is grandly put: some of these treasures, such as record books and photograph albums, are passed from secretary to secretary, president to president, and reside in boxes under beds, in cupboards or in attics. But they are vital. They tell a story that is fading from the national memory as the generation of women who lived and worked through the Second World War are reaching their nineties. The National Federation of Women’s Institutes ran a campaign in 2012 to encourage institutes to look at their old material with a view to archiving it or handing it over to county federations for safekeeping. It elicited a lot of responses. But most precious material remains in private collections and is dependent on the whim of family members responsible for clearing out attics and cupboards, often at a time of considerable distress.

One of the most useful personal collections for me was in the correspondence of Mrs Denys Blewitt from Essex, who was President of her local WI and a prolific letter writer to her son and daughter, both of whom were in uniform in the Middle East throughout the war. Her daughter returned her letters to her mother for safekeeping and Mrs Blewitt was sure that, being filled with ‘such very parochial matters’, the correspondence would probably ‘share the fate of most old letters of going into the paper-basket, considerably dusty and yellowed some years hence without further reading’. How wrong she was, and how fortunate for researchers that her daughter placed them with the Department of Documents at the Imperial War Museum so that they can still be read and enjoyed. They offer a fascinating window into the world of an Essex housewife in the mid-twentieth century and I have used them in Jambusters.

So, archives matter, heritage matters. Whatever you have in your attic, however irrelevant it might seem, don’t throw it away until you have at least asked an expert’s opinion. There is bound to be an archive somewhere that will be happy to take it off your hands and to look after it for future generations.Pen Thoughts

As I work my way through the research I am undertaking for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, let me leave you with one thought. There are 23,000 CWGC cemeteries, memorials and burial sites throughout the world. The ones we all think of are those on the Western Front or perhaps Gallipoli, but what if I were to tell you that over half, yes half, of those sites are in the UK? No other country has more Commonwealth war burials apart from France. Not even Belgium. There are over 12,800 sites in Britain with 177,000 war burials and over 133,000 missing men and women of the forces commemorated by name on memorials such as the great naval ones at Chatham, Plymouth and Liverpool, or the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede. Behind every name there is a person, a family, a story. Now – there is a national memory we cannot forget.And Finally…

Jambusters is released on 28th February 2013 with a launch in London followed by an open lecture at the Imperial War Museum North on Sunday 3rd March at 1pm. It would be lovely to see anyone who can make it at the IWM North.

Julie Summers

January 2013, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.ukForthcoming Events

• Jambusters book launch and lecture
  3rd March 2013, 1pm
  Imperial War Museum, North
  Free entry www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-north
• Jambusters: Stories of the WI in the Second World War
  22nd March 2013, 10am
  Oxford Literary Festival
  Tickets and further information
• Children of the Atlantic War (lecture based on When The Children Came Home)
  23-24 May 2013 Battle for the Atlantic Conference, Liverpool
  Naval Regional Headquarters, Liverpool
  www.globalwarstudies.com
• Jambusters: Stories of the WI in the Second World War
  9th May 2013, 12 noon
  The Gateway Theatre, Shrewsbury
• Jambusters: Stories of the WI in the Second World War
  15th June 2013, 3pm
  The Ball Room, the Bear Hotel, Devizes
  www.devizesfestival.co.uk/

Welcome to my 11th newsletter. There is only one story to tell this quarter so I hope you will forgive me.

I have to admit that when I received an email on Sunday 3 June at 11:08 with the subject ‘Invitation to private audience with the Dalai Lama, London, 20 June. The British in Tibet’, I did not take it seriously. In fact, I ignored it. I was about to consign it to my Junk E-mail box when I saw the postscript at the bottom of this relatively brief email: the name of someone I knew well, which made me look again. On reading the email properly I realised that it was a genuine invitation and it was meant for me . . . and 59 others.Sandy Irvine in Tibet on the first day of the trek across the plateau.
The Dalai Lama immediately recognised this as Western Tibet.Sandy’s photograph of the interior of the Holy of Holies at Shekar Dzong, destroyed during the 1950s.This photograph was taken by Captain John Noel at Shekar Dzong.
Sandy is holding up the Mark V oxygen apparatus.
© Sandra Noel (not to be published without written permission of Sandra Noel)Sandy took this photograph of Shekar Dzong when the expedition spent a night there in April 1924.
He, Norton and Mallory tested his Mark V oxygen apparatus on the rocks below the Dzong.
The Dalai Lama was fascinated by this picture and kept scrutinising it.

His Holiness was undertaking a 10-day tour of the UK, and it had been suggested that in London he might like to meet members of families whose relatives had been in Tibet prior to 1950. Apparently this was something he had done before, and this time the organiser, Roger Croston, had decided to invite members of the families of the 1920s Mount Everest expeditions. So, on the appointed day at the appointed time – 10am – Julia Irvine, son Simon and I met outside the Dean’s gate at Westminster Abbey and were duly shown through the fabulous medieval complex of buildings, past the dining room where Julia’s son, Alexander, has dinner (he’s at Westminster School) and into a lobby that led into a suite of rooms that ended in the Jerusalem Chamber, which is not open to the public. Simon and I were dressed in scruffy clothes as I did not want to travel in my cream skirt and silk jacket and Simon did not have a suit in London. We managed to get changed into our finery and joined Julia in the magnificent, historic chamber.

The Jerusalem Chamber is probably best described as super-domestic scale, in that it is intimate but there is plenty of room for a good crowd of sixty to seventy. The walls are decorated with magnificent tapestries and the ceiling, we were informed by the Dean who welcomed us, is original, i.e. 14th century. As this was my period in architectural history I was very excited to be in such a beautiful and important part of the Abbey complex. Someone whispered in Julia’s ear that Henry III had died in front of the fire while warming himself but the Dean corrected that and told us that Henry IV had died in the chamber. My great friend Graham Ives, who is the best informed person on the architectural and general history of London that I know, filled in the details. In 1413 Henry IV was planning to go to the Holy Land but when praying at St Edward’s Shrine in the Abbey he suffered one of his frequent blackouts, akin to an epileptic fit, thought to have been caused by kidney disease. He was brought to the Abbot’s house and laid by the fire where he recovered consciousness. The King asked where he was and was told ‘Jerusalem’. It had been prophesied that he would die in Jerusalem and so now that he was ‘there’ he could die in peace, which he did.

The crowd that had gathered for the audience was a mixture of Everest families and others whose relatives had been in Tibet. I was particularly pleased to meet two great-nephews of one Charles “Bunny” Searle, who was a doctor in Tibet in 1940. He had been a rower and had been coached by the greatest of coaches of all time, Steve Fairbairn, at Jesus College, Cambridge in the 1920s. Fairbairn used to criticise him for shunting forward with his bottom. Long after Serle had left Jesus he was sculling on the Thames near Putney, minding his own business when he heard a booming voice: ‘Stop shunting!’ He knew immediately who this was. Great coaches never forget their rowers and their idiosyncrasies.

Another very exciting meeting for us was with Christopher Norton, whose grandfather led the 1924 Mount Everest expedition. He produced photographs of sketches done by his grandfather of the expedition members and we saw, for the first time, a lovely caricature of Sandy Irvine. It was a good thing we had all this fascinating history to think about as we had over an hour and a half to wait for His Holiness.

Eventually, ten minutes later than billed, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, walked into the room. There was an audible gasp and then applause broke out. He beamed and made straight for the nearest person to him and shook him warmly by the hand, only to be grabbed by the Dean’s minder and ushered behind a podium in front of the fireplace. He seemed amused by the protocol. There were to be speeches first, he was told. He laughed, which made us all laugh and relax. Clearly, organising an audience with the Dalai Lama is a great deal more difficult than with, say, a member of the royal household, as he likes to do his own thing. The Dean gave a short welcoming speech, alluding to the long and distinguished history of the chamber. Then a man called Giles Ford, whose father Robert had been asked to give a short welcome by his friend, the Dalai Lama, but who was indisposed due to a bad cold, stood up to read out his father’s message. [Robert Ford worked as a radio operator in Tibet from 1945-50 when he was captured on the border by the invading Chinese army. He spent five years as a prisoner and wrote a book called ‘Captured in Tibet’.] During this speech the Dalai Lama noticed a little boy in the audience the great grandson of Captain Thornburgh, who was one of the four British (and the only Westerners ever), who were present at the enthronement of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa in 1940 . He had seen him when he walked into the room and had nodded and waved to him, but now he indicated to an aide that he wanted his bag – a sort of sack in the deep red of his robes. Smiling all the while and looking around the room, and nodding encouragingly at Giles, he delved into the bag with his left hand and produced a sweet which he took over to the little boy and, kneeling before him, offered it on his outstretched hand. It was enchanting and everyone relaxed just a little bit more.

Then he spoke. He talked about the value of democracy and how it was possible to have a figurehead and a democracy, citing the Queen as head of state. He spoke about Tibet and how it had been savaged by the Chinese, but he also mentioned our own dodgy past with reference to the mission to Lhasa before the First World War. Then, he said, the soldiers had shown restraint and only used force where necessary. Later the Chinese were indiscriminate and brutal and undisciplined. Hard-hitting stuff but he had an unquestioning audience. Commonsense and compassion would always win over the gun, he claimed. He said that his experience showed that the Chinese political leaders had lost that part of their brains where commonsense is usually housed. ‘I told Obama,’ he said, grinning as we applauded his spectacular name drop, ‘I told President Obama to bring some commonsense to the Chinese.’ He concluded by asking us to keep the history of his country alive but not to be starry-eyed about it. Not everything prior to 1950 had been as perfect as often painted, nor is everything as bad as critics of the current status quo would have everyone believe. It was a strong message and whether you believe in it or not, he is compelling to listen to on the subject.

Next up we had our moment of glory, which was really special. The crowd had been divided into groups of 12 based on the dates when their relatives had been in Tibet. The Irvines (and Mallorys, Moresheads, Noels, Odells and Bruces) were in group C so we got an early slot. Simon, Julia and I were pushed forward to shake his hand and to show him photographs of Sandy in Tibet which we had taken with us. I had chosen a photograph taken by Sandy in the temple of the Holy of Holies at Shekar Dzong, an important monastery about a day’s walk from Everest base camp, which was destroyed in the 1950s. The Dalai Lama was fascinated by the image and pointed to the temple and then the photograph of the great Buddha with real enthusiasm. He grabbed Julia’s hand and held my arm while we had our photographs taken. Simon reckoned we had over a minute with him. I don’t know as it felt somehow timeless. After that others had their turn and we could stand back and enjoy their pleasure. At one stage he met an old lady the daughter of the botanist, Francis Kingdon-Ward, who had explored Tibet. She was tiny – about 4’5″ – and he bent down and touched her forehead with his in a most passionate gesture. It quite took my breath away. We never did learn why he was late but we were very happy that he spent over 40 minutes with us rather than the scheduled 15.

So, what was he like? It is hard to describe him without resorting to clichés. He is every bit as impressive as you would expect but the two things that struck me most strongly were his force of inner life and his constant movement. He was never still, not for one second. If it had been a child or another person you might have said he was fidgeting but it was not that at all. It was as if a powerful, inner energy was bursting to get out and it manifested itself in his perpetual but very graceful motion, sometimes in large gestures, often in small. That is what I will take away from our audience with the 14th Dalai Lama, that inner energy and that remarkable strength.

There is no room for any more in this newsletter and, indeed, how would I follow that life-changing experience? Rather than look forward I am happy (unusually) to enjoy the moment.

Julie Summers

June 2012, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.uk

Welcome to my 10th newsletter, written on the warmest day of the year thus far. 20C in March certainly does not feel normal.Contents

• Sticking My Oar In
• Children’s Tales
• Zeitgeist
• Jam Tomorrow
• Pen Thoughts
• And Finally…
• Forthcoming Events

Sticking My Oar In

Rowing is usually relegated to ‘and finally’ in my newsletters but this quarter it reaches the top of the pile. A few weeks ago I was offered what turned out to be an irresistible challenge: to write a short history of rowing for Shire Publications. Start to finish, including sourcing and acquiring 70 pictures, four weeks. I do not think it is clever to boast about writing something quickly because all my texts benefit from iterative attention but this was an exciting challenge: to describe in brief the history of something that makes my pulse beat faster, a sport that grips me to the extent that a close finish brings tears to my eyes; and to do so in a very short space of time. I greatly enjoyed the challenge and although the book is tiny – just 10,000 words – I am pleased with the final version. It may not be the cognoscenti’s ideal summary of the sport but I hope it will enthuse armchair rowers and parents. It also permits me to indulge my family’s continuing fascination with the sport and to record that Richard rowed in Lents for Christ’s and won his blades after four successful bumps. If that means nothing to you, then don’t worry, it’s gobbledygook to anyone but an oarsman. However, if I flesh it out a bit and explain that the bumping races are the aquatic equivalent of dodgem cars at a fair then although you may not get the importance you can probably imagine the fun.Children’s Tales

Meantime, When the Children Came Home has appeared in paperback. This book, more than any other I have ever written, has given rise to unexpected and very rewarding results. In earlier newsletters I have written of Jessie Nagel and Sheila Shear and how their stories have resonated with the readers. Sheila’s Jewish family was billeted with a Christian bachelor in Chesham and the relationship grew into a lifelong mutual friendship which has become one of the most commented on in the book. Jessie suffered a brutal and deprived childhood but spent four years during the war living in a hostel run by three Guiders. Their leadership, affection and example changed her experience of childhood and she credits them with giving her a life she could never have dreamed of without the interruption of the Second World War. But let me also touch on Nigel Stanley’s story, because that has been rewarding in a different way. As a result of my grandfather’s experience in the Far East during the Second World War I have always had a special interest in the war in the Pacific. As usual I must qualify that and say that war interests me not at all – I hate violence and death – but the reactions of ordinary human beings faced with extreme situations fascinate me. And the Far East certainly produced its fair share of extremes. Nigel Stanley’s story is the longest in the book, and so it should be, for it is not a story that can easily be condensed. Dr Cuthbert Stanley c. 1940.
His story and that of his son is
one of the most moving I have
ever written aboutIt took me quite some time to pluck up the courage to approach Nigel to tell his family’s tale and I felt a great weight of responsibility to tell it with respect but also to reflect, as far as possible, a balanced view of one narrative in the context of the whole story of the Far East. Imagine, therefore, my delight, when I received just the other day an email from a woman whose father knew the Stanleys so well that she had photographs of Nigel’s parents at her own parents’ wedding. For Nigel this was a piece of the pictorial jigsaw of his father’s short life and for me it was proof that stories matter, that they resonate and echo, even decades later.ZeitgeistAnn Tetlow (left) with her friend, Dorcas Ward.
Both their mothers were active WI members during the warJack Beresford, 7 times winner of the Wingfield Sculls
and the first man in history to win 5 medals at
five consecutive Olympic Games.My very large surprise at Kingston Head Race

A very long time ago, longer ago even than last Tuesday, to misquote A.A. Milne, I had a long, uncomplicated and life-changing experience that shaped the person I am today. The catalyst was a German friend whose life story drip-fed into my adolescent self and changed, minutely but effectively, the way I look at the world. Some people change lives because they can, and others, like my German friend, just tune in to a very narrow wavelength at the perfect time, enabling an individual recipient to benefit from that magnetic pulse that can slightly change the course of one’s thinking and make a fundamental difference. If all this sounds a bit vague and woolly it is because I have not yet worked out how I am going to share the story with the wider world, or indeed, if I am going to share it. But I think I will. In the end.Jam Tomorrow

This book about the WI in wartime has been more difficult than I had imagined at the outset. The research into the history of what the WI did in wartime and how they sorted out bureaucratic nonsense, used the Black Market to best effect and made enough jam to feed the population for a year was not difficult. The WI is a wonderful record-taker and there was more information available than I could possibly use. Anecdotes abound, but what were more difficult to pin down were biographical stories that shed light on personal, individual experiences. My editor pressed me to talk to women who were WI members during the war but the trouble is that women who were influential in the 1940s would have been in their 40s or older, since younger women would have been engaged in war work, and I have not come across many people aged 110+ who are prepared to be interviewed. However, I was not going to give up and I put out further pleas for information and contacts, and have now found a small posse of women who were children or adolescents during the war but who were involved in the WI through their mothers. Ann Tetlow, for example, has vivid memories of going to the second half of WI meetings as a child and watching drama productions. She then joined the WI when she was older and so can look back on her life as a post-war WI member and use her own knowledge to breathe life into the beautifully written minute books that were kept by their WI. It is one place removed from the actual wartime experience but it sits beautifully with the overall story and I hope Ann and the other handful of younger women I have interviewed will prove to be the golden thread that illuminates the WI tapestry.Pen Thoughts

I have written before in praise of archivists, those brilliant professionals who gather together fragments of lives, pieces of history and nuggets of beauty to help historians and family researchers to put together stories. They are a highly skilled group of people who do a vital job that most of us do not even think about. When trying to convince truculent doubters about the value of heritage I remind people that you can only understand how important an achievement is when it is set in the context of history. A recent example from my rowing book: a young man called Adam Freeman-Pask joined a vastly distinguished group of scullers who have won the Championship of the Thames, also called the Wingfield Sculls. It was first raced in 1830 and has been won by some of our greatest oarsmen, including Jack Beresford who won the race 7 times in a row in the 1920s and Steve Redgrave who won it 5 times in the 1980s. Adam became only the second sculler in the history of the race to win it in under 20 minutes, the first being Peter Haining, three times world champion in the 1990s. That is a lot of statistics. But it also shows the extraordinary importance the rowing world attaches to this race. Without the archive for this event there would be no history. Now very few rowing clubs have professional archivists so this Pen Thought is in praise of those volunteer, part time, often amateur archivists who keep precious material together for posterity. And not just for rowing history. The WI, mountaineering, Second World War postal history archives are all part of that scene. I use such archives in all the research I do and I want to record my thanks to people who put them together and maintain them for general use. You do a fantastic job, thank you.And Finally…

A real treat. I went to watch the Kingston Head of the River Race on 11 March and was delighted to see not only my youngest son, Sandy, sculling for Magdalen College School but Richard rowing with his Christ’s crew. A surprise and a pleasure. Rowing is one of the glues that sticks our family together.

Julie Summers

March 2012, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.ukForthcoming Events

• 13th March, The Rucksack Club, Manchester, 7:30pm
  Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine
• 21st March The Winding Wheel, Chesterfield, 7:30pm
  Stranger in the House

Welcome to my ninth newsletter, posted at the very end, I suspect, of the season of mellow fruitfulness. I can hardly remember a lovelier autumn and certainly the trees in my garden have put on an unrivalled display of beauty.Contents

• Mr Irvine laid to rest (for a while)
• The Warpath Leads to Woodstock
• E.E.K.
• Clowning about
• Pen Thoughts
• Forthcoming Events

Mr Irvine laid to rest (for a while)Sandy Irvine

My lecture tour “Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine”, organised by Rebecca Varley from Speakers from the Edge finished on 3rd November in Andover. I even got a nice review from Nigel Vardy in Derby. Six weeks on and off the road has been tiring but exhilarating in equal measure. Sandy’s story has certainly engaged those who heard it, and I don’t think for a minute that interest in the 1924 Mount Everest exhibition is diminishing. On the contrary, fascination with it seems as alive as ever. Earlier in the summer I had a small spat with Tom Holzel, an American who believes that he knows where Sandy’s body is lying on Everest; he intends to go and dig him up and find that all-elusive camera that will prove whether or not they got to the top. Proof? What proof? What does it prove if there is no picture of the summit? It could indicate they didn’t make it, yes, but it could also be that the film was damaged, that it was dark on the summit, that Sandy’s hands were too cold, that the camera jammed. It might be possible to prove they did make it, but conclusive proof that they did not make it will never exist. That is unless Sandy sat on the Second Step and wrote on a piece of paper ‘bother, beaten’. Unlikely, I think.

Then there is Somervell’s relative, Graham Hoyland, who wrote to me a while back saying he was sorry to have to tell me that after a lifetime of believing they had got to the summit he had now come to the conclusion they had not. Should his opinion on the greatest mountaineering mystery of all time change my life? I think not. Why should I give credit to any of the conspiracy theories and hair-brained so-called research into this story? I’ve been endlessly polite and patient when people ask me about it, but actually I’m getting fed up. I am constantly asked ‘wouldn’t you like to know if Mallory and Irvine got to the summit?’ The answer is that I don’t really care either way. What they achieved is so remarkable and inspiring that the last few hundred feet do not matter. And, in Hillary’s famous words, you have to descend in order to be able to claim the summit. What was does bother me is people’s determination to find an answer and in doing so to expose Sandy’s frozen, bird-pecked mortal remains to greedy media hungry for sensational images. If he could be accorded the same dignity in death as are those soldiers of the First World War battlefields whose remains are still found in areas where the war was fought, then I would be less uncomfortable but that will not be the case. So my answer is: ‘No, I’d rather he was left alone.’The Warpath Leads to WoodstockTank made from Woodbine cigarette packet.
Holley/Cornelius Collection, Bletchley ParkSwiss climber Ueli Steck on the North Wall of the Eiger, 2008, photographed by Robert Boesch ©
(not to be reproduced without permission from the copyright holder)

Objects for the showcases piled up on a table waiting to be given breathing spaceA corner of the toys’ showcase with the penguin and the crane living happily side by side

While I’m on the warpath, I want to mention briefly the exhibition I have been working on that opened in Woodstock at the Oxfordshire Museum last month. We succeeded in squeezing a quart into a pint pot without, I hope, giving the sense that the exhibition was overcrowded. It is titled Children and War and it looks at all aspects of war and how that affects children’s lives, both for the worse and the better. There is a lovely online version of the exhibition which you can visit. Cramming boy soldiers, innocent victims of war, commemoration, evacuees, asylum seekers, refugees and toys into a single gallery was a huge challenge but with the help of the very talented Glenn Howard, our designer, it worked. Borrowing works is always a pleasure and a delight for an exhibition organiser and especially so this time when dealing with Mark and Min at the Holley/Cornelius Collection at Bletchley Park. They lent us the bulk of the toys in the exhibition, including a doll’s house that had been commandeered by a father from his daughter to teach his troops house-to-house combat, and a tiny model tank made out of a Woodbine cigarette box. If you are in the vicinity of Woodstock it’s worth popping in. The exhibition is free and suitable for children from the ages of 4 to 104. Corny but true, believe me.E.E.K.

Alongside my other work I am currently Chairman of the Mountain Heritage Trust, which is growing and developing all the time into a serious and exciting project that takes care of Britain’s rich climbing legacy. Everest is always going to be part of this story, which I suppose is why I got roped into joining the Trust seven years ago. This year, however, it is the second E, the Eiger, that will dominate. We are holding our big, annual, fundraising event at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 1st December and our two speakers are going to be Chris Bonington, talking about the history of the North Face, and Swiss climber and super speed merchant, Ueli Steck, who climbed the face in 2008 in 3 hours and 47 minutes. A staggering feat by any stretch of the imagination. There is more about that event on our newly jazzed up website www.mountain-heritage.org which got its overhaul at the hands of Glenn Howard – yes, the name will be familiar to you from Children and War – in July.

And the K? Well, that stands for Kendal. It’s time for the annual mountain-fest of film, literature, extreme talking and drinking which runs for a weekend every November. Always entertaining, usually exhilarating and very often downright funny, it is a weekend not to be missed if you are interested in catching up with what is going on in the great outdoors. It is not just about photographs of people dangling from overhangs by a pair of ice hammers and the toes of one cramponed foot high above an icefall, or films of young, beautiful people slacklining high above Lake Geneva; it’s also about the environment and mountain culture, about historical personalities as well as today’s rock athletes. I recommend it as an invigorating weekend away.

There is another K, namely K2. Doug Scott ran a successful series of lectures last year for his charity Community Action Nepal, entitled First on Everest. This year he is launching First on K2 in Oxford and we anticipate it will be an equally fascinating event. I have to admit that Doug’s energy makes me feel slothful by comparison. He is one of the busiest people I’ve ever met. So if you fancy finding out more about either E or K, then Mountain Heritage’s website for the former and www.mountainfest.co.uk and www.canepal.org.uk for the latter.Clowning about

Several times a week I get unsolicited emails from people, usually but not always in connection with my books. Some are poignant, others are crackpot and just occasionally the odd one is fabulously rewarding. One of the best came from a clown called Leela Bunce who wrote to me a couple of years ago to tell me about a show she was putting together called Waiting for Stanley which focused on a young woman during the Second World War waiting for her husband to return. She had read Stranger in the House and had found many of the stories moving and relevant to her research. Something about her energy and enthusiasm made me want to keep in touch with her and I’m very glad I did. On 16th October 2011 I went to the Greenwich Theatre in London with my friends Andy and Graham, to watch the premiere performance. It was absolutely remarkable: funny, agonisingly sad, shocking and brilliantly evocative. Some of the pieces in the performance (it was more or less all in mime) were breathtaking and I can only recommend you go to see it if it comes to a theatre near you. Leela and the director, Alex Parsonage, are very talented and their clever performance will appeal to anyone from about 8 years old upwards. Check out www.fingerinthepie.com/stanley if you want to find out more.Pen Thoughts

Setting up an exhibition is always a pleasure. After months and sometimes years of planning there is nothing more exciting than seeing the fruits of one’s imagination realised. Although I am not artistic I have a strong visual sense and it is years since I have been surprised by how an exhibition looks once it is up. However, individual showcases or groups of objects still have the power to take my breath away, especially if they have been difficult to bring together in the first place. Moving an object 2 cm to the left or raising it a few millimetres on a Perspex plinth can make all the difference. Objects need to exist in their own space and say ‘hey, look at me, I am the most important.’ The showcase I am most proud of in Children and War in Woodstock is that of the toys. Everything from a wooden wobbly penguin to a large metal crane with wrecking ball hunkers side by side. There are over 20 toys in that case, which is far more than I would ever have dreamed of putting in a Henry Moore showcase for example. I wondered why this was and came to the conclusion that Moore’s sculptures, even the maquettes, demand a lot of breathing space. He created them to be turned over in one’s mind and one’s hands. Their abstract forms are often not easy to read and they demand time. A pop gun or a wooden tank is a familiar object that is easily recognisable and so it tells its story more quickly and simply. It is not that those objects have less value, it is just that they need less introduction. They are part of the story rather than the whole. I still needed to fiddle and ensure that each was shown to its very best effect but the overall is as important as the individual. If you visit the exhibition I hope you will think it works.

Julie Summers

November 2011, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.ukForthcoming Events

• 17-20 November 2011
  Kendal Mountain FestivalI will be interviewing writers for the Boardman Tasker prize and introducing events throughout the weekend including the Mountain Heritage Trust ‘Antiques Road Show’www.mountainfest.co.uk
• 24 November 2011
  Aston Scott School will be reliving evacuation day and I will be attending as a guest speaker
• 25th November 2011 at the Gateway Education and Arts Centre, Shrewsbury 11:30am
  Shrewsbury Book Fest When the Children Came Homewww.shrewsburybookfest.co.uk
• 26th November 2011 6pm Wayfarers’ Club lecture in Ambleside
  Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine
• 29th November History Channel
  When the Boys Came Home
• 1st December at the Royal Geographical Society, London
  Triumph and Tragedy on the EigerI will be introducing Messrs Bonington and Steck at this Mountain Heritage Trust evening.www.thebmc.co.uk/News.aspx?id=3766

Welcome to my eighth newsletter. Last time I wrote I mentioned that my chickens were scratching around my garden. Unfortunately our local fox put paid to that activity, killing all six in one night but the garden has benefited from their demise, even though we miss their clucking, not to speak of the delicious eggs.Contents

• Let’s get the show on the road
• Jam Tomorrow
• Oh what a wonderful war
• Pen Thoughts
• Forthcoming Events

Let’s get the show on the road

When I left the Ashmolean Museum nearly ten years ago I did not imagine that I would get involved in the kind of projects that have come my way. This autumn’s lecture tour in theatres around the country is definitely a new and exciting departure. For five weeks I will be criss-crossing the country, from Inverness to Southend, Llandudno to Andover talking about Sandy Irvine in a lecture called ‘Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine’.

It is one of my favourite talks because although I cannot supply the answer to the question of whether Mallory and Irvine reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1924, I can take people on a journey of discovery, after which they can form their own opinion. Since I first wrote the book I have discovered more photographs and, most excitingly, film footage of Sandy so that the talk brings him to life in a three-dimensional way. To see him walking out of the rowing club on Putney Embankment, just two doors down from where my son Simon has lived for the past two years, and climbing into the boat prior to the Boat Race is breathtaking and very moving.

If the show comes to a theatre near you I would love to see you. Please do encourage family and friends to come along too. The talk is fun as Sandy’s short but action-packed life was full of excitement and passion. I have an intensely moving clip from an interview with Peter Lunn, the last person alive today who knew Sandy. Peter was a 9-year-old boy living in Switzerland when Sandy went to Mürren to learn to ski and get some experience on ice. Sandy promised to write to him from Everest and he kept his word. The letters were lost in the Second World War but my great-grandfather had made copies and they appeared quite out of the blue in 2000. You can imagine how overwhelmed Peter was to see those letters again, more than 75 years after Sandy wrote them to him. Then there is some footage of Harry Abrahams, son of one of the famous photographer brothers from Keswick. He remembered Sandy talking to his father about the oxygen apparatus that he was preparing for Everest. Harry has now died but his interview is lovely and I’m glad to be able to include it in the talk.

Here are the dates and venues. Click the links below to book online or via telephone.

Date	City/Town	Venue
September
Friday 30th	INVERNESS	Eden Court
October
Monday 3rd	EASTBOURNE	Congress Theatre
Wednesday 5th	BUXTON	Arts Centre
Thursday 6th	LLANDUDNO	Venue Cymru
Friday 7th	BRECON	Theatr Brycheiniog
Sunday 9th	ILFRACOMBE	Landmark Theatre
Wednesday 12th	HALIFAX	Victoria Theatre
Friday 14th	DARLINGTON	Civic Hall
Tuesday 18th	STOCKPORT	Stockport Plaza
Thursday 20th	RADLETT	The Radlett Centre
Tuesday 25th	SOUTHEND	Pavilion Theatre
Wednesday 26th	DERBY	Guildhall Theatre
November
Thursday 3rd	ANDOVER	The Lights

Jam Tomorrow

Work on the WI book has continued over the summer and the book will be finished by the end of August, which gives me a month in September to edit, tweak and nudge it into shape. I’ve already written extensively about my research on this book in the last two newsletters so I will refrain from going on about it now, except to say that it keeps throwing up glorious snippets and wonderful surprises. I am learning more and more about what the WI got up to on so many different levels and my respect for the women who kept the villages running in wartime continues to grow.Oh what a wonderful warSecond World War board game owned by Mrs Joan Hale, Oxon.

I am involved in an exhibition entitled Children & War which opens at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock in October. The topic is wide-ranging and the real challenge is how to tell the story and explain the philosophy behind the exhibition in a room of limited size, without making it appear grossly overcrowded. Thank goodness for extended online exhibitions, is all I can say. When I started out on the project I imagined that it would be difficult to introduce any levity – my first thoughts ranged from the boy soldiers of the Great War to the innocent victims of the Second World War and subsequent conflicts. However, there is much to celebrate in the subject, believe it or not: children in Britain were involved in the war effort in all sorts of ways – from salvage collection and fruit picking to message delivery and undercover work. And it was not exclusively the boys either. Girl Guides were kept busy on all fronts in the Second World War and contributed an enormous amount to so many war-related activities.

For some children war generates excitement. Many people now in their seventies and eighties will attest to the thrill they felt when they saw an enemy aircraft shot down, or how they rushed to collect shrapnel and other trophies after air raids. Excitement mixed with fear, perhaps, but intoxicating stuff, nevertheless. Toys and war games add to the sense of excitement that war can have for children. It doesn’t sit comfortably with our twenty-first century sensitivities but it does perhaps explain why toy soldiers, Airfix models and war games are of such enduring interest. Today children play with War Hammer and enjoy shoot ’em up video games. It’s just a variation on a theme.

Patriotism is another topic we will be looking at. Tens of thousands of boys were prepared to lie about their age in order to take the King’s shilling during the First World War. Figures for the exact number of boys who signed up are notoriously hard to come by for the very reason that so many failed to tell the whole truth. However, a conservative figure appears to be in the region of 250,000, of whom over 10% lost their lives. Boy soldiers are nothing new. Regiments regularly recruited boys in uniform to play in regimental bands. Photographs in the collection of the Soldiers of Oxfordshire provide a wonderful visual record of some of these boys.

However, there is no getting away from the fact that war disrupts lives, whether for good or ill, and a major part of our exhibition is going to look at the impact of war on children’s lives, especially around the Second World War and as a result of evacuation, the Kindertransport and more recently refugees and asylum seekers. This ties in well with the research I did for When the Children Came Home and I will be using stories from the book to tell the story of evacuation. A surprising unintended consequence of the wartime evacuation in Britain was the effect it had on social mobility. This is a topic which I explored in the book and which several people have picked up on. Again, rather like admitting that war can be exciting, it is also provocative to point out that some children appear to have done better in terms of education and careers as a result of evacuation. Certainly Norman Andrews, who features in When the Children Came Home, put his academic success down to the fact that his foster father nurtured in him a love of literature and learning. It was not necessarily a class question either: Norman’s foster parents lived in a small house without electricity or running water, but Pop Lenton, who had left school at 14 and was self-taught, would read to Norman as they sat together in the hut at the level crossing on the Peterborough to Spalding line. He said, when I interviewed him: ‘I am very much the person I am because of Pop Lenton. I think for him I was the son he really wanted. A son who could pursue his intellectual interests.’

Perhaps the subtitle for the exhibition should be ‘how war changes lives’.Pen Thoughts

I’ve written before about design in connection with book covers, but I want to dwell for a moment on colour. If you have a look at this wonderful poster that Glenn Howard of Untitled has designed for our Children and War exhibition, your eyes will probably at first be drawn to the central image of the little evacuee children, prodded by the vicious red arrows that shove them inwards, shepherding them without ceremony towards an uncertain future. But look at the palette he has used (ignoring of course the obligatory but unsightly logos). Red, Cream and Blue. Not just any red, cream and blue, though, but war time colours. The cream of HM Stationery Office perhaps? The red that leaps out at one from the Keep Calm and Carry On poster. The reassuring blue of official forms and posters. I hope you will agree with me that it’s a very clever design.And Finally…

I’ve been out in my boat again. We competed at the Masters Rowing Championships in June in our quad. It could have been wetter at the National Water Sports Centre in Nottingham but only if Hollywood had been staging the downpour. We had over an inch of rain in five hours accompanied by gusty winds and March-like temperatures. In short, it was not weather conducive to a good day out. One veteran rower from Monmouth was bemoaning the conditions and the coach was overheard to say ‘yes, I know you could be at home watching the television, warm and dry. But you’re here to race.’ Race we did and we won gold in the Intermediate Quadruple Sculls. I then finished off with a win in my single scull at Richmond Regatta on the same day as my son Richard won in his double scull, so it has been a good season so far.

Julie Summers

August 2011, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.uk