History – Julie Summers

When Worlds Collide

Posted on October 11, 2024October 11, 2024 by Julie Summers

For the first six months of 2024, I was busy and taken up with two projects. The first was the centenary celebration of the disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine on Mount Everest on 8 June 1924. The second was the completion of my biography of British Vogue which was in the final stages of proofs, and we were looking to pin down the pictures. It was a delightful juxtaposition. I enjoyed flitting between exquisite photoshoots by Nick Knight and Mario Testino in Vogue and the chilly black, white and blue world of the high Himalaya. While the book proofs were being tweaked and the index completed, I took part in several events to mark the Everest 100^th anniversary. The first was at Shrewsbury School in February, the day the expedition set off from Liverpool on 29 February 1924. Then a seminar day on 26 April at Merton College, Oxford (Sandy Irvine’s college) on the day he got his first sighting of the mountain from Pang La Pass 100 years ago.

_{Sandy Irvine 1923 The Warden & Fellows of Merton College, Oxford}

And finally the major celebration at the Royal Geographical Society in London, organised by Rebecca Stephens and the Himalayan Trust. This took place on 8 June, the exact date the two climbers were last seen by Captain Noel Odell ‘going strong for the top.’ It was an extraordinary and moving event and we all felt that the centenary of the greatest mountaineering mystery of all time had been well and truly put to bed. I even announced my intention to retire from Everest-related matters.

And so I returned to the rarified air of high fashion and Vogue history. Over the summer I finalised the selection of images for the plates section, saw the final proofs off to the setters and then, as readers of this blog will know, I was fortunate enough to see the book coming off the presses on 3 September. After a short but lovely walking holiday in Greece, I returned to a frenzy of pre-publication activity for the Vogue biography. There was a glitzy launch at Iconic Images Gallery in London and a Q&A with former Vogue editor, Alexandra Shulman at the V&A at which we discussed Vogue, clothes and other things that matter.

One of the issues we talked about was how all of us make fashion choices every day, even if we think we are not interested in fashion. We make a decision about whether it’s a jeans or dress day, whether it’s warm enough to wear shorts or a skirt without tights, whether we’re trying to dress to impress or simply to wear clothes appropriate for the task in hand. Our clothes tell others so much about who we are, what we are doing, and in the case of history, to what time period we belong. Audrey Withers, Vogue’s editor in the 1940s and 1950s, said she could date a dress to a season and tell you what was going on at the time politically and economically.

Imagine my surprise when I received a call one morning the following week from a high-altitude filmmaker in Kathmandu who wanted to talk about an old boot he had found in a glacier on Everest a few days earlier. The boot was leather with nails (for grip), meaning it had been used for climbing. There was a thick woollen sock poking out from the boot – brown and cream (café au lait?) which meant the wearer had been clear that he or she wanted to keep their feet warm at altitude. Actually, I knew it was a ‘he’ because no women were on Everest in the era of nailed leather boots. It matched in type, design and weight, the boot found on George Mallory’s body in 1999. Could it possibly be a boot belonging to Sandy Irvine? If so, that would blow all the most recent theories of the Chinese removing Irvine’s body from the mountain to smithereens. How could we possibly prove it? Simple, as it turns out. Stitched perfectly onto the sock was a Cash’s name tape: A. C. IRVINE.

This incredible find, made by climber/filmmaker Jimmy Chin when he was on his way down from the upper mountain, has opened up the whole mystery of Mallory and Irvine for the second time. And in the centenary year, a quarter of a century after Mallory’s body was found by Chin’s friend and mentor, Conrad Anker, in May 1999. The fact that Chin found only a boot and sock (with the foot too) is tantalising and begs the question as to what happened and where is the rest of Sandy Irvine’s body. I have studied the mystery of Mallory and Irvine for nearly 30 years, and I have spoken to many climbers, filmmakers, mountaineering historians, glaciologists and artists. I know that objects caught in glaciers are moved, crushed and spat out by the slow-moving rivers of ice. Andy Parkin, an artist in Chamonix, specialises in sculptures created from found and recycled objects, often crushed and changed by the Mont Blanc glacier. I knew from conversations with him how things can reappear years after they fell into the ice.

^{_{Mallory replica clothing recreated by Mike Parsons & Mary Rose from fragments found on his body in 1999} _{(Mountain Heritage Trust)}}

Those who know the story of Mallory and Irvine well are aware of the sighting of ‘an English Dead’ by a Chinese climber in the 1970s. The body, as he described it to a Japanese climber a decade later, was sitting upright, as if asleep, and was wearing old fashioned clothing, puttees and red braces. Mountaineering historians Audrey Salkeld and Thomas Holzel concluded this could only be Sandy Irvine. They set off to find out if that was indeed the case, but their search was not successful. When Eric Simonson’s Anglo-American expedition set off in 1999 to search for Irvine’s body they contacted my father, Peter, and asked for a DNA sample so they could identify the remains if they found them. In the event, the climbers stumbled upon the remains of George Mallory. Photographs of his frozen body ricocheted around the globe and a whole new generation of Everest enthusiasts became hooked on the story.

One of those I spoke to frequently was Graham Hoyland, who was key to the 1999 expedition and is a relative of another member of the 1924 Everest team, Howard Somervell. In 2011 we were discussing yet another expedition planning to try to find Irvine’s body and he said: ‘I think it’s unlikely that they will find anything. There has been a lot of avalanche activity and probably landslides in the region of old camp VI. I reckon your great uncle will have been sluffed off the mountain and into the glacier.’ I distinctly recall that word sluffed. Since then, other expeditions have tried to find Sandy Irvine’s remains and all have failed. One recent expedition leader, Mark Synott, has gone on record to allege that the Chinese had taken Sandy Irvine’s body off the mountain. In the Daily Mail in April 2024 he is quoted: ‘We now have multiple sources all essentially saying the same thing: the Chinese found Irvine, removed the body, and are jealously guarding this information from the rest of the world – all to protect the claim that the 1960 Chinese team was the first to reach the summit…’

Well, that’s one theory that is well and truly put to bed now. Sandy Irvine’s body was never removed from Everest. That the boot is his, there is no doubt, thanks to the name label on the sock. And just for fun, the invoices for both the boot and the lambswool socks are in the archive of Merton College, Oxford. There is even a photograph of Sandy drying his socks at Shekar Dzong in the collection of the Royal Geographical Society. Sometimes history comes together beautifully, like a perfectly knitted woollen. And it turns out that clothes do matter.

These two images courtesy Sandy Irvine Archive, The Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford

Once Upon A Time …

Posted on September 7, 2024September 14, 2024 by Julie Summers

British Vogue: the Biography of an Icon Part 1: Research and Writing

Once the lightbulb moment has faded and the idea for a book begins to take shape, there comes the biggest task of all: research. For this book it has been huge but at the same time contained. The subject matter limited the amount of secondary material I needed to find but the primary research was enormous. I read every single issue of Vogue from September 1916 to December 2023, which was the cut off after which no new material could be introduced. That constituted 1,679 issues containing roughly 70,000,000 words and 8,500 fashion shoots with some 2,000,000 images. Taken as a whole it seemed overwhelming but reading 15 issues a day made it doable. Still, that was 111 days spread over three years. I spent at least 90 of those days in the archive at Vogue House, London and the remainder at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Vogue House on my last visit, 9 January 2024, to look at photographs for the plates section

The only way I could handle that much material was to create a complex database which now contains a full list of every article, regular column and fashion shoot in Vogue with the names of the contributors, models, photographers, stylists and hair and make-up artists. The database also contains the names of every celebrity featured in Vogue and comprises the greatest party list of all time. Some were surprising favourites, such as David Hockney, who has appeared in the magazine regularly over the last 60 years. Others were names from the world of fashion that are immediately recognisable, from Chanel and Patou, through Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, to Jean Muir, Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney. A few were names that were famous briefly and are known today only to a handful of people.

Taking just one step back from the magazine, I read the archive of Beatrix Miller, editor from 1965-1986. These papers were left to the Vogue Archive after her death in 2014 and had not been read. They contained delicious behind-the-scenes anecdotes in letters from readers that she received and replied to after every issue was published. Some are what you might expect: young women asking for advice on style or how to become a model (don’t give up the day job), or how to make a career in fashion (be prepared to start at the bottom). Some were letters of complaint about features or shoots, and some were just strange: ‘Dear Miss Miller, can you give me advice on how to get flying lessons for my daughter?’ one woman wrote in 1978. She received a courteous reply giving the name and address of a flying instructor in Surrey. Going back even earlier, I read the diaries of Harry Yoxall, Condé Nast Publications Managing Director for 40 years from 1923. He kept a weekly diary and tracked the first decade of British Vogue’s life as it struggled financially. By 1930 its dominance of the world of fashion magazines was established, and I argue that it has never been knocked off the top spot.

Harry Yoxall’s diaries were written in ink or typed in both English and French. They were a joy to read.

Then there were interviews I conducted with former Vogue writers, stylists and models whose lives, in many ways, were shaped by their relationship with the magazine. The overwhelming message I got when I interviewed people was: ‘don’t mess with Vogue. It was my family.’ People were deeply passionate about working for the magazine and I found again and again the reference to the Vogue family. It struck a chord. I worked at the Royal Academy of Arts in the 1980s and still feel deeply attached to the family atmosphere of the exhibitions office even 40 years later.

Finally there was material to be gathered from the Conde Nast Archive in New York. I had been there twice in 2018 when researching my biography Dressed for War of Vogue’s wartime editor, Audrey Withers. I had had the thrill of uncovering the memos between Audrey and Edna Woolman Chase that gave me the story of Vogue’s war. As Audrey and Cecil Beaton had destroyed the British archive in 1942 in the race to salvage paper, I had to rely on New York’s holding to paint the picture of British Vogue’s early years. By luck I had made good friends with a New Jersey man who shares my passion for historical detail. Ed Morrows was willing to do research on my behalf in the CN archives. Although there was nothing there pre-1931, he found a wonderful 19 page memo by Conde Nast himself entitled ‘The British Vogue Formula Report 1933’ in which he described the entire history of the establishment of British Vogue. Without Ed’s forensic research I, and therefore my readers, would have been deprived of some salient and delightful facts.

Usually when I write a book, I conduct all the research over the course of two or three years and then sit down to write in the peace and quiet of my home in springtime. That process normally takes three to four months. This book was huge and the material so overwhelming that I decided I would have to write it in three-decade chunks as I went along. I wrote the first three chapters in the early autumn of 2021, the next three in the winter of 2022, finishing in February, just before my father died, and the remaining five chapters over the spring and summer of 2023. This meant that I ended up with a huge, unwieldy first draft with big gaps where I’d noted research might go. On 26 June 2023 I wrote in my diary: ‘Walked into Vogue House at 07:45 and read the final issues to June 2020. With that I am done with reading Brogue in London. All the other issues are here [on my shelves at home].’ I also noted that I stuffed courgette flowers for supper that night.

On Tuesday 3 July I sat down to the first day of the final edit of my biography of Vogue. ‘Started with chapter 1 and struggled to make it flow. So much info in every sentence.’ That was my major problem: too much information. How to pick out the gems and produce a narrative for my reader that would not give them intellectual indigestion. My diary over the next seven weeks is filled with three different occupations: massaging the book, chapter by chapter, into submission, rowing with my crew and cooking. There is also a note about a cover that my editor, Maddy Price, sent me to have a look at. I wrote: ‘4/10 but we can work on this.’ The story of the cover will come in a future instalment of this blog.

Diary Entry for 26 July 2023 – rowing, writing, food – usually in that order

There are many cliches to describe pulling together a draft into a manuscript, but it’s never easy. On 10 July I had a complete meltdown over chapter 5, the 1950s, but two days later I’d regained perspective and was working well on the 1960s. And so it went on, up and down, while the rest of the world carried on oblivious. Carlos Alcaraz beat Novak Djokovic in five remarkable sets at Wimbledon as I worked on the 1970s. There were record temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona of 43C over a period of 19 days and wildfires in Switzerland as I entered the 1980s. The world turned and I rowed, and edited, cooked and edited, slept and edited until, on 26 July, I recorded in my diary: ‘wrote my conclusion and fed it into the whole book: 145,013 words.’ At the beginning of August, I spent a week teaching a writing course at Lumb Bank for the Arvon Foundation. It was a good excuse to step away from the manuscript and get much needed perspective. After that, over the course of 10 days, I did a final read and edit, sending it off to Maddy Price on 30 August at 12:45 pm. Two days later I was at St Pancras Station ready to catch the Eurostar to Avignon.

There was an crisis with a lost passport (not mine) but that is an story for another day…

Remembering Helen McCrory

Posted on April 23, 2021April 23, 2021 by Julie Summers

I only met the magnificent Helen McCrory once, for an hour and a half, in a tiny room above a shop in Tottenham Court Road. But that meeting left an indelible impression on me and I will never forget the magic of her presence. I had been hired as the historical consultant on the film Woman in Black 2 and after working on the script I was asked to meet Ms McCrory and Phoebe Fox. I arrived early for our meeting and was not quite sure what to expect. They arrived together and before Helen had taken off her coat and sat down opposite me the questions began. Who was I? What had I written? What were my credentials for advising them on life in London in the Second World War? She was not impressed with Jambusters but when I mentioned that I’d written Fearless on Everest she looked at me sharply and said: ‘Sandy Irvine? The one who climbed with George Mallory? Oh that is exciting. My husband is mad about the Mallory and Irvine story. I must get him a copy of your book.’ I don’t know if she ever did but I was fascinated to learn that Damian Lewis is interested in the Everest 1924 saga.

After that we settled down. Phoebe Fox was relaxed and chatty, Helen McCrory the consummate professional. She was not there to waste her or my time and her questions were searching and intelligent. We talked about her character, Jean Hogg, and how she would get inside her head and understand what she was thinking. The conversation moved from her personality to her physical presence. What would she be wearing? A suit or a dress with a cardigan, I suggested. ‘No, I mean what would she have been wearing underneath all that?’ A corset, I said. ‘A corset? Surely that is Victorian?’ I replied that in 1940 over a third of the female population wore corsets and someone the age of Jean Hogg probably would have been one of that third since it was mainly younger women who were happy to cast corsets aside for the new-fangled bra and pants. That really captured her interest. ‘So when were bras invented?’ Well, it’s a complicated story but suffice it to say that it was only in the mid-1930s that they were mass-produced for the European market. ‘Oh I like that,’ she said. ‘So what sort of corset would Jean Hogg have worn?’ The question almost caught me off guard but then I remembered talking to my friend Marion Platt whose grandmother was a corset wearer. Marion had described watching the old lady (probably in her fifties) taking off her stays at night, rolling them up and putting them carefully on her bedroom chair. So I told Helen the story and described the simple stays that Marion’s grannie had worn.

Helen McCrory and Phoebe Fox in Woman in Black 2

‘How would that have made her look? I mean, how would it have affected her posture?’ She sat up on her chair, straightened her back and asked ‘Like this?’ ‘Not quite so stiff,’ I replied. She moved her body around, feeling for the right sort of pose. It was stunning to watch. She had perfect control over her poise and as she moved her body around, making minute changes to her posture she morphed from beautiful, natural Helen McCrory into middle-aged, spinsterish Jean Hogg. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, nor could Phoebe Fox. It was mesmerising. And then it was all over. She relaxed, smiled oh so warmly and thanked me for helping her to get inside the head and body of her character.

When she stood up to go I realised how petite she was, yet her presence was enormous. I have met other actors since, but none has made my heart beat as fast as Helen McCrory. I have watched her on television many times and I always feel a tiny sense of pride that I once met this great, wonderful, clever, beautiful professional woman whose brilliance has touched so many and whose life has been extinguished way too early.

Men on the Move: The Royal British Legion at 100

Posted on April 15, 2021April 15, 2021 by Julie Summers

I mentioned in a previous blog that one of the things that struck me about the Royal British Legion was the age of its membership around the time of its formation. Rather like the Women’s Institute when it was set up in 1915 with its members average age of 24 years old, the Legion’s profile was young. Many of the men who had returned injured during and after the First World War were in their twenties. Some had missed out on education and apprenticeships as a result of conscription. What these men wanted more than handouts or sympathetic support was a job. The Legion was active in helping tens of thousands of men to find work after the war but there was a cohort of disabled men for whom it was much more difficult to find employment. Sometimes their disabilities meant they were physically unable to undertaken manual work. A man who had suffered a spinal injury or who had lost a limb would not be able to work in a factory or in agriculture, but he needed a job.

The Legion knew that nothing was more demoralising for a man who had returned injured to be told he could not work. It worked hard on many fronts but none more so than for these men. The Poppy Factory, one of the Legion’s best-known and popular undertakings helped thousands of men and families over the years offering employment and support. It still does. Poppy making is a year-round business and although the busiest period is in the run up to Remembrancetide, there is a permanent workforce at the factories in Richmond and Aylesford who keep the poppies and wreaths pouring off the production line.

Men working at the Poppy Factory 1930s (c) Poppy Factory Archive

Working on wreaths at the Poppy Factory in Richmond, 2020 (c) Royal British Legion/Gavin Kingcombe

A less well-known project is the car park attendant scheme. It may not strike you as the most exciting thing that you have ever heard of but bear with me. By the late 1920s the motor car had become a familiar sight on Britain’s road. Of the roughly 2 million vehicles in circulation, just under half were privately owned cars. That meant that people could take use their cars for leisure journeys, such as eating out, going to the cinema or shopping. A horrible side-effect of increased motoring was high road fatalities. In 1934 over 7,000 people were killed in car-related accidents, with pedestrians being half of the victims. Put into context, there were 38.7 million vehicles registered on Britain’s roads in 2019 and the road deaths totalled 1,870.

Some of the most dangerous places were town and city streets. With no official car parking in place, apart from in London, motorists simply left their cars where they wanted, regardless of how dangerous that might be to fellow road users and pedestrians. Councils realised that something had to be done and in 1927 the Rochdale South Branch of the Legion set the ball rolling. They agreed with the town council that in exchange for a rent-free piece of land they would employ two disabled men to run the first town car park. Rochdale Council let the Legion erect a hut and the two men, in attendants’ uniforms, manned the carpark on behalf of the town. This was so successful that it was repeated in towns and seaside resorts all over the country. It thrived after the Second World War and by 1960 the Car Park Attendants Scheme employed over 3,000 men. Today carparks are generally automated but spare a thought when you leave your vehicle in a little car park tucked away behind a municipal theatre or town market-place: it was probably first run by a disabled veteran supported by the Legion.

Men inspecting a taxi at the London Taxi School (c) Getty Images

We all know about London taxi drivers whose knowledge of the metropolis within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross is so great that they are known to have a larger and more developed hippocampus than the rest of us mortal souls. Did you know, however, that at one stage a third of all London cabbies had been through the British Legion’s London Taxi School? I, for one, did not, so thought it worth exploring. The School opened its doors in 1928 and was available to ex-Servicemen. It was particularly popular amongst those with spinal injuries who could not stand for long periods or operate heavy machinery. The idea came from Lieutenant General Sir Edward Bethune who was a veteran of the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-80, the First and Second Boer Wars, and the First World War. He believed that men who had learned to drive during the war would be suitable students. The scheme was supported by the Legion’s Honorary Treasurer, Sir Jack Brunel Cohen MP, who had lost both his legs in 1917. He and Sir Edward succeeded in getting Lord Nuffield to donate a taxi for training purposes.

14th October 1947: Mr Turner briefs prospective taxi drivers on bicycles at taxi school at Harleyford Street, Kennington. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

The Taxi School was run by the Legion, who paid for a third of the costs, the remaining two thirds being covered by the government. The training was arduous, taking at least 12 months and often longer with men going out day after day, week after week, on bicycle or on foot, notebooks in hand, noting routes and “points” where taxis are usually picked up. Fred Marks, who completed the course in 1947, wrote about his experiences: ‘When at long last the Carriage Office is satisfied [with your knowledge] then comes your driving test – a stiff one. You are directed into a narrow back street and told to turn your cab around. A private motorist would do it in 20 movements, perhaps. You must do it in three.’ Remember, readers, this is pre-power steering, so not an easy feat. The Legion’s London Taxi School ran for 67 years. By the time it closed its doors in 1995 over 5,000 men had passed the famous Knowledge and the stringent driving test to become a London cab driver.

There is still a connection today. Any ex-Serviceman or woman who is scheduled to attend the National Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in London in November can hail a participating Poppy Cab at one of the agreed points around the capital and find him or herself transported there and back for free. The cost of this service is supported by the Legion, which gives the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans an annual grant. It is one of the most popular ways of helping veterans to get to and from the Cenotaph. The taxi drivers, some of whom had been through the Legion’s Taxi School, see it as a way to pay back part of the debt owed to the veterans old and young.

One way and another the Royal British Legion has helped to keep veterans on the move for over a century and in a way that we, the public, have all benefited from.

The Duke of Edinburgh

Posted on April 9, 2021April 11, 2021 by Julie Summers

When the Duke of Edinburgh’s death was announced this morning, I found myself recalling a wonderful afternoon in Paris in 1992 when I had to show him around an exhibition. I was working for the Henry Moore Foundation at the time, and we were staging a huge show of his largest sculptures in the Jardins de Bagatelle in Paris. It had been the most complex logistical project I had ever worked on and the installation alone had taken three weeks. The lorries bringing the sculptures from Perry Green in Hertfordshire to Paris had to travel through the night as convoi exceptionel were not permitted on the periphérique later than 5am.

Early morning delivery to the Jardins de Bagatelle in Paris (C) M. Muller

We would all gather at the magnificent baroque entrance gates to the Parc at around 6am, where the crane and lorry drivers would be standing around eating croissants and drinking coffee with the prostitutes who occupied that spot during the night hours. They were a fabulous group of people and we had many laughs about the ridiculous idea of lifting three or four tons of bronze over a set of Baroque gates every morning.

The installation team from the Henry Moore Foundation and MoMart with me and Catherine Ferbos Nakov (centre) trying to keep control.
(C) M. Muller

The installation of 29 massive works by Moore was an interesting combination of heavy lifting and exact precision. Each work had to be lowered by crane or forklift onto a pedestal that was less than 5cm larger than the base of the sculpture. And it had to be done exactly right each time as any shifting around damaged the plasterwork on the breeze blocks which meant retouching and repainting.

Lifting several tons of bronze over a Baroque gate is a terrifying manoeuvre (C) M. Muller

Hill Arches the right side of the Baroque Gates (C) M. Muller

By the time we had finished the exhibition in late May I had cycled hundreds of kilometres around the beautiful Jardins de Bagatelle, avoiding the peacocks. The opening of the exhibition was to coincide with a royal visit to Paris and would be conducted by Her Majesty The Queen with the Duke of Edinburgh, in the presence of the François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, who at the time was Mayor of Paris. The Foundation’s director, the late Sir Alan Bowness, was to show The Queen around the exhibition and I was asked to guide the Duke.

I was given a few instructions about protocol including a warning not to ask any questions and not to leave long silences. When the Royal party arrived, I was standing in the appointed place and curtsied to The Queen, who looked at me with her piercing eyes, and then presented to the Duke with whom I set off, a few steps behind The Queen and Alan. We got to the first sculpture, Hill Arches. The Duke turned to me and said: ‘I don’t like Moore’s sculptures’. Oops. This was going to be a very long hour and a half, I thought. Then I remembered he was interested in engineering. ‘Well Sir’ I said, ‘shall I tell you how we got them into the grounds?’ He was fascinated and asked many questions about the cranes we used, the lorries making their stately progress across northern France and the prostitutes who shared our croissants with us.

The Duke of Edinburgh and me at the opening of Moore a Bagatelle, 10 June 1992 (C) M. Muller

At one stage we had to walk through a long lane between dense shrubs with no sculptures to look at but with a lovely view of the west of Paris in the distance. ‘I grew up over there.’ He said, pointing to Neuilly. He spoke a little about what it had been like growing up outside Paris and how he had known the Jardins de Bagatelle when he was young. Then there was silence. I got a bit anxious, so I decided to chance it and bring up my grandfather, who he had known well in the 1970s when he, the Duke, was Patron of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and my grandfather was the president.

Brigadier Sir Philip Toosey, also known (to us) as Grandpa Bush (c) Toosey Family

At the mention of his name the Duke stopped dead in the middle of the lane, looked me straight in the eyes and said: ‘Good gracious, are you Phil Toosey’s granddaughter?’ When I said I was he went into a long speech about how much good work my grandfather had done for the Far Eastern Prisoners of War and what a great contribution the School had made to FEPOW health under his presidency. He ended by asking me: ‘Is your mother here today?’ When I said she was he insisted I point her out so he could go over and shake her hand, but not before he had met the lorry drivers who had brought the sculptures to Paris. As we approached the end of the walk, where the crowd of guests had gathered to meet the Royal party, he marched past all the dignitaries from the British Embassy and the Mayor’s office, straight up to Eric, the head lorry driver, whose 42nd birthday it was, and wished him a very happy birthday. ‘A date you share with me,’ he added with a twinkly smile. Of course, it was 10 June 1992, the Duke’s 71^st birthday. Eric was overwhelmed but the Duke’s greeting put him at his ease.

He then walked over to my mother, who was shaking like a leaf, and said: ‘Hello Gillian, it’s very lovely to see you here.’ He talked briefly about her father and how much he used to enjoy seeing him in Liverpool when he attended meetings at the School of Tropical Medicine. After that, the Royal party left and Mum and I went out with my husband Chris and various other members of the Henry Moore Foundation team for a long dinner.

There is a PS to this story. Fast forward to 2005 and the publication of my book The Colonel of Tamarkan, the biography of my grandfather and his role in the construction of the bridges on the River Kwai. The book came out in October and the following April a very excited postman arrived at my door with a special delivery. The Duke had seen the book in a catalogue and had bought and read a copy. On page 361 I had written the story of the Blackpool FEPOW reunion of 1973 when my grandfather had hosted him at an event for 3,000 former prisoners of war. The Duke had a strong connection to the men as he and his ship had picked up two Royal Marines in August 1945. The two had been prisoners of the Japanese and had escaped from captivity in the final days of the Second World War. They spotted British vessels near the entrance to Tokyo Bay and immediately stripped off and swam out to safety.

The Duke told this story to the 3,000 men gathered in Blackpool and as soon as he finished a voice piped up from the back of the hall: ‘They’re here!’ The Duke and my grandfather made their way through a sea of excited men who cheered and clapped as the two former Royal Marines and their erstwhile rescuer were reunited. On that occasion the Duke spent so much time with the men that he had to leave for his next appointment without having met and shaken hands with the Mayor of Blackpool and other grandees. My grandfather was highly amused by that.

When I saw the postman this morning, we reflected with sadness that there would be no more recorded deliveries from Windsor Castle for me. But what memories.

Home Fires Season 2 Episode 6 The True Cost of War

Posted on May 4, 2017 by Julie Summers

As the second season of Home Fires draws to its dramatic close I thought I would concentrate on a question I have spent a great deal of time working on: the true cost of war The cost of the war in human terms. Not numbers of killed or wounded but the impact it had on their families.

HOME FIRES EPISODE 1 Pictured: CLAIRE PRICE as Miriam Brindsley, DANIEL RYAN as Bryn Brindsley and WILL ATTENBOROUGH as David Brindsley. Photographer: STUART WOOD This image is the copyright of ITV and must be credited. The images are for one use only and to be used in relation to Home Firs, any further charge could incur a fee. — HOME FIRES
© ITV

One of the cruellest notifications a family could receive, short of killed, was Missing in Action. This was the fate of the Brindsley family in Home Fires. Miriam refused to believe that David was dead and held onto that hope against all the odds. In Jambusters I told the story of diarist Clara Milburn whose son, Alan, was posted as ‘missing’ after Dunkirk. Her diary entries over the summer of 1940 make haunting reading. In June she wrote: ‘How curious this life is. A sort of deep stillness comes over everything from time to time. There is not much traffic on the roads during the week and the village seems empty in the evenings. One misses the young life everywhere, particularly Alan coming in in the early evening.’ A month later there was still no news of her son: ‘Always one is thinking of him, wondering whether he still lives and if so, whether he is well, where he is, what he does all day, what discomforts he is suffering. If… if… And so the days go by.’ At the end of July she heard that he was a prisoner of war and hugged her husband ‘for sheer joy at the good news’. It was not until October that she received a letter from him, a full nine months after she had last spoken to him over the phone. Alan Milburn returned safely but a very changed man.

Dame Barbara Cartland in ATS uniform, c. 1942

For Barbara Cartland the news from France was the same as for Clara Milburn. Both her brothers, Ronald and Tony, were fighting with the British Expeditionary Force. Ronald wrote to his mother just before he went into action: ‘This is just to send you my love and bless you always. Don’t be anxious if there is a long silence from me – the fog of war is pretty impenetrable. We shall win in the end, but there’s horror and tribulation ahead of all of us. We can’t avoid it. What a waste it all is, but after months of desolation we shall gain and retain what you and I have always understood the meaning of – freedom.’ Barbara’s mother, Polly, had lost her husband in 1918 and knew full well the horror of the telegram. It came twice over that hot, dry summer of 1940. Both her sons were ‘missing’. In January 1941 came the terrible news that Ronald had been killed in action on 30 May 1940, hit in the head by a German bullet. Barbara wrote: ‘We had gradually been losing hope of hearing that he was alive – now we knew the truth. My mother was wonderful. “Missing” is the cruellest uncertainty of all, as she well knew, for my father had been missing in 1918; and that ghastly waiting, watching, hoping and praying was hers all over again – not twice, but three times, for Tony was still “missing”.’ Tony Cartland had been killed the day before his brother, hit by a shell. For Polly and Barbara Cartland there was no happy ending to their story.

In Home Fires there are men caught up in the same drama as the Cartland brothers and Alan Milburn. Sarah Collingbourne’s husband, Adam, is missing in France while David Brindsley has miraculously returned from an horrific accident at sea and Bob Simms, wounded at Dunkirk, was sent back to Great Paxford in an ambulance. It is easy to understand why Miriam clung so desperately to her belief that David was still alive and remarkable that he was able to come home.

Of the vicar’s fate we know little. Ronald Cartland described ‘the fog of war’ meaning there was confusion and chaos as indeed there was. And the pressure on families was immense. My grandfather was taken prisoner on Singapore on 15 February 1942 and the first official notice my grandmother received that her husband was alive but a POW was on Christmas Eve of that year, almost 11 months after he had been captured. For her the fog of war was exceptionally thick. And for her there was the added problem that as he was ‘missing’ he was neither dead, in which case she would have received a war widow’s pension, or alive, in which case he would have received army pay. So for nearly a year she and tens of thousands of other wives received no money.

How did they cope? Sometimes firms would make hardship payments to wives of men who had worked with them pre-war but more often than not they had to rely on family support or charities. The oldest military charity in Britain was SSAFA – the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association. It was founded in 1885 to provide lifelong support to serving men, women and veterans from the British Armed Forces and their families or dependents. In the Second World War SSAFA helped hundreds of thousands of families and their support was invaluable then, as it is still today.

So as this second season of Home Fires gives us a powerful finale, it is worth reflecting that there are very real parallels between the experiences of the fictional characters and their historic counterparts. We are going to be left with more questions than answers but then that reflects the true cost of war. Let’s just hope that one day we will get a third season to give us some answers.

Home Fires Season 2 Episode 5 Fur and Friction

Posted on April 27, 2017 by Julie Summers

ITV STUDIOS PRESENTS HOME FIRES SERIES 2 Pictured: FRANCESCA ANNIS as Joyce, CLARE CALBRAITH as Steph,RUTH GEMMELL as Sarah,FENELLA WOOLGAR as Alison, CLAIRE PRICE as Miriam, LEANNE BEST as Teresa.SAMANTHA BOND as Frances,FRANCES GREY as Erica and CLAIRE RUSBROOK as Pat. This image is the copyright of ITV and must only be used in relation to HOME FIRES SERIES 2. — HOME FIRES SERIES 2
© ITV

When I am asked what it is about the Second World War that fascinates me so much I reply that it is not war but people who excite my interest: how individuals cope in a time of emergency and how such events impact upon their later lives. One of the practical aspects that had to be considered was clothing and it is something I am regularly asked about in regard to Home Fires. Just to be clear, I am not involved in the production of the drama – my involvement stops with the scripts – but I did have the great good fortune to talk to the series costume designer, Lucinda Wright, in the lead up to filming series 1 and she took me round the fabulous collections of clothes at Angels Costumes in London. Their website claims they have over one million items and eight miles of hanging costume. Well, I didn’t see them all but Lucinda and I did discuss colour and fabrics in some detail.

HOME FIRES EPISODE 4 Pictured:CLARE CALBRAITH as Steph Farrow. This image is the copyright of ITV and must only be used in relation the HOME FIRES on ITV. — CLARE CALBRAITH as Steph Farrow.
© ITV

Everyone in Home Fires is dressed to their status. Steph Farrow wears dungarees in the fields but once she arrives at a WI meeting she is scrubbed clean and wearing a patterned dress, as would have been the case in the 1940s. Edith Jones, the wonderful diarist whose jottings form the golden thread through my book Home Fires, would always change into a frock in the evening for supper, even if it was just her and Jack eating dinner together. She is similar to Steph in many ways. At the other end of the spectrum is Joyce Cameron. Always meticulously turned out and often wearing fur. Until the 1970s when there was a huge animal rights’ movement against fur coats, women of a certain standing would have one, two or even three fur coats in their wardrobe: a mink for the evening, a pine-marten for day use and a fox stole to wear over a tweed coat.

One major change in Britain during 1940 was the proportion of people wearing uniform. You might not have noticed the change between series 1 and series 2 but it is striking and absolutely reflects what was happening in the country. About a third of the population of Britain were entitled to wear uniform during the Second World War. This would give a figure of somewhere in the region of 15 million people, a large number of whom were women. So we have in Great Paxford a mixture of RAF, Army and women’s service uniforms – that much is obvious. But then there are the women working in the Barden’s factory who all wear pinafores over their own clothes to protect them. Clare wears a uniform when she is working for Frances Barden as a maid, though not on her days off with Spencer. House coats, such as those worn by Pat, were popular and a sensible way to keep the wear and tear of ordinary clothes to a minimum.

ITV STUDIOS PRESENTS HOME FIRES EPISODE 1 Pictured : FRANCES GREY as Erica Campbell, CLAIRE RUSHBROOK as Pat Simms and SAMANTHA BOND as Frances Barden. Photographer: STUART WOOD This image is the copyright of ITV and must be credited. The images are for one use only and to be used in relation to Home Firs, any further charge could incur a fee. — House coats galore! © ITV

With so many people wearing them, it is unsurprising that the general public knew how to ‘read’ uniforms across a street or at the scene of an incident, and could identify at a glance a man or woman’s job, rank and status. And it was very important to know and trust the person who was issuing an instruction, especially during the Blitz, when people needed to know who to listen to or appeal to in a crisis. Aside from emergencies, uniforms had a hierarchy with implications on many levels, some of them more personal than official.

WW2 Christmas card, Escort! A Chelsea Pensioner looks in admiration at an RAF airman with an elegant woman on each arm. 1941 — WW2 Christmas card, Escort! A Chelsea Pensioner looks in admiration at an RAF airman with an elegant woman on each arm.
1941

Some uniforms, such as the Royal Air Force blue, gave men real status in women’s eyes. This was partly because it comprised a smaller body of men than the army, and their jobs, especially the pilots, were considered heroic and extremely dangerous. They were known as ‘Our Glamour Boys’. The PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) suffered in their khaki uniforms from being the least admired of the three services by the general public. Members of the women’s services (just over 100,000 in June 1941) were said to grade potential boyfriends in an order of eligibility in which ‘RAF officers rated tops, being classified in turn by rank and number of decorations; naval officers came second and brown jobs a long way behind’.

So as you are watching Episode 5 of Home Fires, it is worth looking out for the distinctions of dress and the way different people react to it. That is, if you have time to notice that level of detail when there is so much drama going on around you. This is another breathtaking hour where I lurched from near tears of enchantment to gasps of horror. Enjoy Sunday evening!

Home Fires Season 2 Episode 3 The Grey Market

Posted on April 13, 2017 by Julie Summers

As episode 3 opens we find ourselves in mid-July 1940. The view from the USA looks bleak, as described in the New York Times that month. It is oft repeated but bears another repetition as it sums up so beautifully the parlous state of Britain at that moment in history:

The folk, old towns of Britain, the hills and cliffs and shores and meadows, rich with history, the homes and lives of forty-five million people, the great British traditions of human worth and dignity, the folk sayings, the deep wisdom and the long-suffering hopes of a race – these, not being pleasing to Hitler, are condemned…

From our own shores we cannot see the shadow over ancient gardens, over houses hoary with age, over the graves of poets and philosophers, and the tombs of the martyrs. We know only that one of the green and lovely oases of civilisation in the wilderness of man’s time on earth, is foully threatened and that the whole world for evermore will be the poorer if it falls.

The British Channel Islands, close to the French coast, have fallen into German hands. Hitler has told his military to plan for an invasion of the United Kingdom, to be called Operation Sea Lion. In Great Paxford Stanley Farrow firmly believes the operation will succeed. He has increased his determination to safe-guard the farm. With the help of Isobel he lays barbed wire and farm machinery across the fields.

imgres — People put all manner of blocks in the roads in an attempt to impede German progress following an invasion

Meantime, Little Stan has other ideas about how to prepare for the Germans. All over the country people were anxious, trying to work out who might be a spy or an enemy, and some ridiculous misunderstandings arose, as we shall see. All foreign nationals were picked up and imprisoned either in jails or in camps on the Isle of Man. Many of the men were later freed, as they were considered no serious threat to the country, and were enlisted in the Pioneer Corps. But for the time-being the atmosphere was febrile.

The summer of 1940 saw an increase in the number of foods rationed. In March all meat was rationed and in July tea and margarine were added. Tea rationing was particularly unpopular but there were ways to increase the quantities of food available on the ration. Gardens were turned over to vegetable growing and the Women’s Institutes were very active in growing onions and tomatoes for their local country markets. Yet some things were very hard to come by in quantity and this is where people became resourceful and traded illegally. Much has been written about the Black Market, most of it speculative, because few records were kept and although some dealers were caught by the police, many were not. What I have always found more interesting and believable is the Grey Market. That was not even an official title, so vague were the lines that people were prepared to cross. People in the countryside had greater access to fresh food during the war and were happy to exchange honey for home-made lard, or eggs for butter. It was not illegal but some frowned upon it. Mainly, I suspect, if they had nothing to exchange or barter.

In Home Fires I wrote about a WI member called Sibyl Norcott whose father, Mr Shacklady, sailed very close to the wind. He had added pigs to the farm for the duration of the war. This way the family could have meat and lard from the pigs, cream and butter from the cows, eggs from hens and ducks, flesh from turkeys, vegetables from the garden and fruit from the orchard. Sybil’s father once swapped a ham for a hundredweight bag of sugar and both parties were delighted. She quickly made the point that Mr Shacklady did not keep all the sugar for himself but distributed it among the neighbours in their Cheshire hamlet. He then bought Sibyl a canning machine so that she could make a few bob on the side helping WIs and other local farmers’ wives to can their vegetables, beans and fruit for the winter. It was a good little business for both of them.

People in official positions, such as the butcher in Home Fires, had to be scrupulous with their returns. The paperwork was a headache with forms to be filled in six copies and submitted to the local Food Office along with the surrendered food coupons.

ITV STUDIOS PRESENTS HOME FIRES SERIES 2 Pictured: DANIEL RYAN as Bryn. This image is the copyright of ITV and must only be used in relation to HOME FIRES SERIES 2. — Bryn.
© ITV

Although Bryn Brindsley is, I am sure, above suspicion, a lady I know of discovered that her greengrocer would sell ‘special’ potatoes to certain customers. One day she got up the courage to ask him if she could have two pounds of his ‘special’ potatoes (these were not rationed) and when she got home she was delighted to discover she had one pound of potatoes and a one pound ingot of sugar.

With so much bureaucracy there was plenty of opportunity to exploit the systems that the government put in place but in reality people understood that rationing had been introduced so everyone had fair shares and in terms of overall percentage it was a drop in the ocean in comparison with the food bought and sold on the ration. But the grey market persisted in the countryside and the impact it had on the economy will probably never be known. However, a dozen fresh eggs or a pat of fresh butter was always a welcome addition to the larder.

Meanwhile, the war has begun to take a serious turn and the final quarter of episode 3 is tense and dramatic. The juxtaposition of everyday concerns with situations that could spell life or death is where Simon Block’s drama sparkles. Enjoy Sunday evening!

Home Fires Season 2 Episode 2 Hearts Aflame

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Julie Summers

Episode 2 of Home Fires is packed full of love, loss, hope and pain but I do not intend to write anything in this blog that would give away the plot. Instead I thought it would be more fun to explore themes which were introduced in Episode 1. The first is that of divorce. It considered a disgrace to be cited in a divorce at almost every level of society. The stigma attached to any part in the unravelling of a marriage is today inconceivable. In the United Kingdom there were 470,549 marriages and just 7,755 divorces.

That was to rise dramatically to over 60,000 in 1947 as couples found they were incompatible in the sober light of post-war Britain. Those figures compared with 241,000 marriages and 120,000 divorces in 2011 show just how rare divorce was in the era of Home Fires.
Laura Campbell’s naming as the co-respondent in the formal break up of Richard and Charlotte Bowers’ marriage is therefore deeply humiliating and people’s attitudes towards her reflect the intolerance of 1940’s society. The fact that Wing Commander Richard Bowers was a predatory man has nothing to do with the way she is treated in Great Paxford. In reality, a disgraced woman would have brought shame not only on herself, damaging her chances of making a ‘suitable’ marriage, but also on her entire family. I recall as a child in the 1960s being told in a very hush hush way that one of my relations was getting something beginning with ‘D’. I immediately assume this meant death, but in reality she was leaving her abusive husband and filing for divorce. It was the first time I had ever hear the word. Laura is contending with a very difficult situation and we will soon learn whether there are people in the village who have sympathy with her.

Another theme is the impending invasion. All over the country people were preparing for invasion. Farmers, in particular, were called to help prevent aircraft from landing on their fields by rolling farm machinery and old junk from their buildings onto fields that might be used as a landing strip. Some villages protected themselves by rolling huge tree trunks across the entrance roads.They were often on wheels so they could be rolled back to allow legitimate vehicles through. Others created makeshift blocks out of anything they could find which would hamper the enemy’s progress.

Signposts were removed from roads, railway and bus stop signs were taken down in an effort to confuse the enemy when they landed and tried to make headway inland. Whether any of this would have worked in the face of the Wehrmacht is something that we shall never know as fortunately it was never tested. But make no mistake, even Churchill believed it unlikely that Britain would not soon be under the jackboots of an implacable foe.

Enjoy Episode 2. It is magnificent. Simon Block’s writing sparkles through the words and actions of the outstanding cast. The mood in Great Paxford is tense, tempers are short and surprises come thick and fast. Roll on Sunday evening!

Home Fires Season 2 Episode 1

Posted on March 30, 2017 by Julie Summers

Life on the Edge of Europe

Three weeks after the evacuation at Dunkirk, France fell to the Germans. Amongst the Allies who had been fighting were Polish and Czechoslovakian forces who were at risk of captured and put into German Prisoner of War camps. Churchill realised that if this could be avoided it would mean he would have experienced, battle-hardened troops in Britain. So he ordered them to be rescued from southern France. In the end some 20,000 Polish and nearly 5,000 Czechoslovakian soldiers and airmen were brought to Britain and proved themselves more than worthy of the trust Churchill had placed in them. The Czechoslovakians sailed into Liverpool and were put on a train to Bunbury from where they marched 8 miles to Cholmondeley Castle.

The villagers along the way cheered them and the soldiers immediately fell in love with the beautiful Cheshire countryside. They camped in the fields around the Castle, which had already been requisitioned for another military use, and they remained there throughout the glorious summer of 1940 until they moved on to Leamington Spa to a more permanent camp.

The mood in the early summer of 1940 was one of agitation, anxiety and apprehension, mixed with fear. People were told that careless talk would cost lives and that they should be on the lookout for spies. Signposts were taken down or blacked out, so that moving around in the dark became even more difficult.

There was a genuine and powerful fear of invasion. Even Churchill thought it unlikely that Britain could withstand a full-blown attack by the Luftwaffe and seaborne troops. The Battle for the Atlantic, which is the off-screen backdrop to our series, was about to enter troubled times. The German U-Boats had become ever more effective at targeting convoys and fears grew for the safety of passengers, especially evacuee children, who were setting out west for the safety of Canada or America. Yet once France had fallen there was a sense in Britain that, as the last man standing, on the edge of Europe, we would somehow defy the odds and emerge victorious. This mood is well-documented in diaries, letters and newspapers from the era.

So, for our village of Great Paxford, the sense of anxiety about the future is very much there. The incoming Czechoslovakian soldiers add a fresh element to the drama, as does the permeating anxiety about foreigners, spies and Nazi sympathisers. However, life did go on during the war and it will go on in Great Paxford. The everyday lives of the characters are of course affected by the external influences but themes of love, loss, suspicion and excitement are constants. We pick up where we left off with Laura Campbell named in the divorce of her lover, Richard Bowers; Alison Scotlock is still in trouble with the police over accounting and Claire Hillman is as in love with Spencer as she was at the end of the last series. Bryn the butcher is typical of the kind of man who is determined not to be cowed by the threat of invasion. He has a business to run, a pregnant wife to protect and a missing son to worry about. Pat, on the other hand, is once again knocked down: not by husband Bob, this time, but by a brawl outside a pub. For her the war is about to change her life but in a wholly unexpected way. This episode opens with the farmer going about her business and the army going about theirs. After all, this is wartime…

Home Fires airs on Sunday on PBS Masterpiece. It is created and written by Simon Block and inspired by my book Home Fires which tells the true story of the WI on the home front from 1939-1945.