Antarctica and the Moon have long existed as magical places in my imagination. Empty, desolate and far away, no nation has successfully laid claim to either one. There are no settlements on the Moon and only research stations and field camps at the South Pole.

Antarctica is the highest continent on the planet, as well as the driest, the coldest and the windiest. It covers one tenth of the earth’s land surface and ninety percent of the world’s ice. It is both a cold hell and a place of unfathomable beauty. Beyond the reach of most of us, it is unpredictable and unconquerable.

In the spring of 1950, my father was commissioned by an American publisher to write a piece about Edward Wilson. Although not as well-known as Scott and Shackleton, Wilson was widely-regarded as the most deeply-loved and admired of all the polar explorers. He died, alongside Scott on their journey back from the Pole in 1912.

As part of his research Peter was introduced to Sir Raymond Priestley, the only man to have served under both Scott and Shackleton. 75 years ago today, on April 21^st, they met for lunch at the American Embassy in London. In his diary, Peter wrote:

“Sir Raymond was only too willing to share his experiences with a keen listener and it proved to be a long and fascinating lunch. I was enthralled by firsthand accounts of the  expedition and of the men I know so well, but only from books. He described Wilson as ‘a splendid scientist, a fine artist, a perfect gentleman, a loyal friend and a Christian first, last and all the time.’”

In 1950, Priestley was Vice Chancellor of the University of Birmingham and Peter was a History teacher at a boys’ prep school in Hampshire. The day after they had lunch, Priestley wrote to Peter enclosing the transcript of a talk he had given at Binton Parish Church in Warwickshire the previous week. Peter responded with an invitation to visit Highfield to  talk to the students. Unfortunately, an epidemic of mumps swept the school the week he was due to visit and the talk was cancelled.

Reading Priestley’s lecture notes I am struck by his humility. He never exaggerates his relationship with Scott but gives him full credit for an experience that “coloured” and “moulded” his life.

“I would not be without the memories for anything anyone could give me: for any reward Fate could provide. It was the Scott expedition that left the greatest mark. I didn’t know Captain Scott intimately for long; nor did I know him very well. I was with his Northern Party and we left the Pole-seekers within a month of landing. But for two years I lived with companions he had selected, and had reason to thank God for the efficiency and foresight with which he had done the job.”

It was not until I read Priestley’s autobiography, “Antarctic Adventure, Scott’s Northern Party” published in 1914, that I learned of his own formidable challenges at the South Pole.

Raymond Edward Priestley graduated from University College, Bristol with a degree in geology. In 1910, at the age of twenty-six, he was invited to join what became known as ‘Scott’s Last Expedition’. In 1911, Priestley and five companions spent the summer doing fieldwork. They were due to be collected by the expedition’s ship, ‘Terra Nova’, but it was unable to make the return journey due to pack-ice.

“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised.” Apsley Cherry-Garrard “The Worst Journey in the World”

Priestley and his companions survived the long polar winter as a result of ingenuity and  common purpose. They dug an ice cave, measuring 12ft x 9ft and used dried seaweed as  insulation and padding upon which to sleep. They supplemented their limited food rations with seal and penguin and they ate, not only the meat, but also the brain, blubber and liver. They used the oil to light their reading lamps and served seal blood as gravy and boiled seaweed as soup.

Priestley writes:

“Very old seaweed which had lain, probably for a century or so, on the beach well above the high-water mark and a regular highway for seals and penguins, tasted of must and mildew. It is what I should expect a concentrated solution of Old Masters to taste like. If one were to strip the walls of the National Gallery, throw the canvases into a huge cauldron, and boil them for seven weeks, I fancy the resulting soup would have tasted like Evans’ Cove seaweed.”

On one occasion, they caught and killed a seal that had 36 undigested fish in its belly. “We fried them for dinner that night. Never have I enjoyed food more” recalled Priestley.

Winter in Antarctica is lived in complete darkness. The only source of light comes from the Moon. The wind blew, almost without interruption, for 180 days and temperatures dropped to -60C. Taking any form of exercise, therefore, was challenging and would only have served to intensify the men’s hunger.

“During the greater part of this inactive life we were certainly happy. It had shown to all of us, I think, with how little it is possible to be content, and it has been a most decisive proof that in many cases the luxuries of civilization only fulfil the wants they create.” (RP)

In the evenings, the men wrote their diaries and read. During the two winters he spent at the South Pole, Priestley read the complete works of Scott, Dickens and Thackeray.

On Saturday nights, they sang songs, drank a small glass of sherry or port and enjoyed their weekly sugar ration. “No one who has only eaten chocolate at home can realize what the ounce and a half a week meant to us” wrote Priestley.

On Sunday mornings, the men read the New Testament together and sang hymns.

On the last day of the month each man received 35 muscatel raisins. Nothing was wasted, even the stalks were eaten or smoked as tobacco.

When spring finally came, weak and emaciated, they set out on a five week march back to base camp. It was here that they learned of the death of Scott, Wilson, Oates and Bowers.

Priestley returned to England in 1913. Although he stressed that he had no desire to repeat his experience, he did admit to the “Call of the South”, a force he believed was increased rather than decreased by the hardships he and his companions had been through.

“Those very discomforts and privations have only served to convert otherwise commonplace comforts into exquisite pleasures, enhanced by a perfect comradeship. During that long ordeal there was never spoken a cross word. I learned once and for all how little material comfort matters if one has a worthwhile job and good companions.” (RP)

Two of Priestley’s sisters married fellow polar explorers. Edith married physicist, Sir Charles Wright and Doris married geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor. The three friends, therefore, became not only brothers, but uncles to one another’s children.

Men like Sir Raymond Priestley were modest heroes, disinclined to hyperbole and reluctant to promote themselves as men of bravery and courage. The polar explorers of the early 20^th century were motivated, not by the pay (which was small) but by a desire to be part of something they believed in, a cause they considered to be wholly worthwhile.

As Peter, a lifelong teacher and educator, wrote in his diary “This is the kind of spirit that should inform education – not hero worship but the inspiring influence of great characters and noble minds.”

I was in New Zealand last month and was looking forward to visiting the port town of Lyttleton from where the explorers, including Priestley and the crew of the ‘Terra Nova’, left for the South Pole. I imagined myself standing by the water’s edge, with nothing but 4,500 miles of ocean between me and the ice floes of the Great White South. I knew, before I arrived, that the Antarctic Museum, damaged during the Christchurch earthquake of 2011, had been torn down. I was disappointed to discover, however, that the only remaining salute to Antarctic exploration was a bronze statue of a sled dog outside the library.

100 years ago, Lyttleton served as the main departure point for southern exploration. Today, it is the cruise ship capital of New Zealand, capable of berthing vessels a thousand feet long that can carry up to 6000 passengers. The bustling port town that once supplied polar expeditions with food, equipment and animals, now caters to a different kind of traveller – one who breaks the journey at sea in order to visit the coffee shops and gifts stores along London Street.

Sir Raymond Edward Priestley b. 20 July 1886  d. 24 June 1974

“Antarctic Adventure Scott’s Northern Party” by Raymond E. Priestley. First pub. 1914 by T. Fisher Unwin. Reprinted 1974 by C. Hurst & Co

“The Great White South” by Herbert G. Ponting, pub. 1921

This week, John Allman ‘Paddy’ Hemingway, the last of the WWII fighter pilots, died at the age of 105. Born in Dublin, Hemingway came to England in 1938 and joined the Royal Air Force.

At the age of 21 he fought in the Battle of Britain, a conflict which claimed the lives of more than five hundred RAF pilots.

According to his obituary, John Hemingway never saw his role as anything other than doing what he was trained to do. He never spoke about bravery or sacrifice, describing himself as a ‘lucky Irishman’ who simply did his job, like so many others of his generation.

One of the 544 RAF pilots who did lose his life during the Battle of Britain was Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane.

I have often wondered why Irishmen of this generation are so often referred to as ‘Paddy’. My father was known as Peter ‘Paddy’ O’Connell when he taught at St. Paul’s School in London. He considered it to be a mark of affection.

After Peter left St. Paul’s, he opened his own school in Folkestone, where our neighbours were the Finucane family. I was four years old and an only child which inclined me to bossiness, something three-year old Niall Finucane patiently and faithfully endured. The two of us became inseparable.

One day, while we were playing, Niall told me that his uncle had been a famous fighter pilot. My mother, who was witness to this conversation, told me, many years later, that in an obvious attempt to outdo Niall, I told him that my uncle could eat more sweets than anyone else in the whole world. Niall was staggered by this information and Uncle Brendan was never mentioned again.

On his next visit to Folkestone, Uncle Bobi, a man who did indeed enjoy the sweet things of life, was surprised to discover that he was an object of enormous interest to the little boy next door. Niall no doubt imagined that a world champion consumer of confectionary must, by definition, carry plentiful supplies about his person.

I was lying, but Niall, it turned out, was telling the truth. Uncle Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane was not only a fighter pilot but the youngest ever wing commander in the RAF and a hero on both sides of the Atlantic. Finucane, who was profiled in Life magazine and The New York Times, was known as “The Flying Shamrock – Terror of the Nazis”.

When a well-intentioned member of his ground crew added a circle of swastikas to the shamrocks on his personal aircraft, Finucane asked for them to be removed. He felt it was inappropriate to take pride in actions that had resulted in the death of an unknown number of young men.

Niall’s grandfather, Thomas ‘Andy’ Finucane, had fought as a volunteer alongside Eamon de Valera in the Easter Rising of 1916. A devout Catholic, Andy married Florence, an English Protestant. She converted to Catholicism and their five children were raised in the Catholic Church.

All three sons joined the British Army: Raymond Finucane followed his older brother into the RAF and Kevin, Niall’s father, was a captain in the Royal Artillery. In a 2004 Irish radio interview, Kevin recalled that it was a source of great disappointment to Andy Finucane that England and Ireland never united against Hitler.

Ireland was neutral during WWII and only a very small handful of Irishmen volunteered to join the Royal Air Force.

As Winston Churchill once said “Whenever a bitter feeling arises in my heart towards the Irish, the hands of heroes such as Paddy Finucane seem to stretch out and soothe the feeling away.”

Brendan Eamonn Fergus Finucane shot down thirty-two enemy aircraft before he himself was killed over the English Channel in 1942. He was twenty-one years old.

Three thousand people attended his Requiem Mass at Westminster Abbey.

On St. Patrick’s Day this year, John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway, the last of ‘The Few’, died peacefully in a Dublin nursing home. Hemingway was a modest man who remained  puzzled by the many accolades he and his fellow pilots received during WWII.

“I don’t think we ever assumed greatness of any form”, he said. “We were just doing our job”.

John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway    17^th July 1919 – 17^th March 2025

Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane  16^th October 1920  – 15^th July 1942

The Swiss do things well. They do things really well. And, sometimes, they do things a bit too well.

A few months ago I was on a bus in Zurich, struggling to purchase a ticket at the machine. My coin was either damaged or no longer legal tender. The error, of course, had to be mine as Swiss ticket machines are notoriously well-maintained and efficiently managed. Any possible excuse I might have up my sleeve, including an inability to understand what was being said to me, would fail at the first hurdle: Swiss ticket inspectors, I learned many years ago, speak English.

As I persisted with my five franc piece, I became aware of raised voices at the back of the bus. An inspector and a passenger were in dispute. The woman did not have a valid ticket and the uniformed official was refusing to hear her reasons for failing to purchase one. She, in turn, declined to give him her name and address. Eventually, she stood up and, at the next stop, she got off the bus. He got off too and, as the doors closed behind them, I could hear the woman shouting angrily at the man, warning him not to follow her home. Swiss ticket inspectors, it seems, are authorised to pursue fare evaders to their very doorsteps. Possibly beyond. I got off the bus at the next stop and walked the rest of the way.

A few weeks after this incident, I read an interview with the British journalist, Jon Snow. He was asked whether he had ever experienced any “close brushes with the law”. He said that he had once been arrested in a Swiss hotel in the middle of the night. A decade earlier, he had failed to pay a 30Sfr. fine for running a red light. “The police burst into my room at four in the morning, dragged me naked from my bed and carted me to a police station in a blanket, where I lingered for some seven hours in a cell”.

I forwarded the Snow story to my friend John, more as a joke than anything else. He was neither shocked, nor surprised. Last year, he told me, his cousin had been arrested at the Swiss border. Apparently, the manager of a shop in Bern had reported him for trying to make a purchase using a counterfeit note. He had no idea it wasn’t genuine. He just thought it was an old note that had been withdrawn from circulation. No big deal. He paid with a card.

John’s cousin spent several hours at a police station while his wife sat in their car at the border. He is now under caution. Should he re-offend in Switzerland in the next three years, he faces a jail sentence.

The deeper you dig, the more outlandish the stories. In 2020 an eight year-old Swiss boy was arrested for asking the shopkeeper in his village whether he could use a fake note he had found on the street during Basel carnival. Heavily decorated with Chinese characters, it would have been obvious to anyone that the boy was playing a practical joke. The shopkeeper, however, called the police and the eight year-old was taken down to the station. An officer subsequently visited his home where he and his parents were questioned for three hours. The house was searched and the boy was given a police record which will remain in place until 2032. The story made it into The New York Times.

If, therefore, you’re planning a holiday in Switzerland this winter, I encourage you to check the validity of your bank notes, make sure you obey the rules of the road and never, ever assume that you can evade the long arm of Swiss law enforcement.

Douglas Van Dyck Brown taught Woodworking at a Massachusetts boarding school for 50 years. He retired in 2021 at the age of 82.

The following excerpts are taken from his biography “The Man in the Blue-Striped Shirt” by Una Suseli O’Connell, published, November 2024.

—

“Mr. Brown is clear about who he is. He was a stabilizing figure on campus, an
anchor, and I think that’s something teenagers really need. Mr. Brown was
always calm and trustworthy.” (Julia)

The grandfather and grandmother clocks, the secretaries and sea chests, the piecrust, Shaker and tuck-away tables, the corner, roundabout and thumb back chairs, all built in Mr. Brown’s Woodshop between 1970 and 2020 were, for the most part, made by students who had never before held a chisel or planed a piece of wood.

In an English class, you arrive with pre-existing knowledge and learn how to assemble your words and ideas into a well-composed piece of creative or factual writing. In woodworking, you start with a photograph or an idea of something that already exists. Nobody came to Mr. Brown’s Shop knowing how to make a tambour desk or an inlaid card table.

“Shop is not like Crew or writing and yet, here we were, 10th graders making furniture that looked like it came out of a museum or a fancy store.” (Kara)

In 1973, his Fifth form year, Curtis asked Mr. Brown if he could make a bombe serpentine desk.

“I feared he was going to tell me that, as a seventeen year-old with little woodworking experience, I couldn’t possibly attempt such a complex project. Instead, he was very encouraging. He was good at explaining things. Of all the Shop teachers in the world, Mr. Brown may be the only one with an English degree from Harvard.

“Mr. Brown gave me confidence. As a landlord in California, especially in the early years, I didn’t automatically hire tradesmen. Instead, I took the time to figure things out for myself. I recall having some difficulty building an octagonal flower box around a mature oak tree – as much a test of my geometry as my cabinet-making skills. I said to myself: ‘Curt, you made a bombe serpentine desk with claw and ball feet, so you can certainly build this flower box.’”

Doug’s teaching style was unusual.

“There was no group learning,” explained David, who graduated in 1979, “no class demonstration on how to make table legs. He would give you whatever you needed to move forward with your project, but students had to take the initiative and ask for help if they needed it. If you were going down a wrong path, then Mr. Brown would guide you but essentially we all worked at our own pace. Either you loved that or you hated it.”

“We learned basic skills – how to use a chisel and a drill – but Doug also taught us how to use architect paper to draft out dimensions and scales. It was a practical Math project. We had to figure out how things came together.” (Ben)

“Mr. Brown’s teaching made Math – geometry, fractions, ratios – understandable for the first time in my academic career. Having a tangible way to translate concepts into something you worked with your hands was invaluable.” (Trux)

Mr. Brown had few rules in his Shop: no food, no gum and no popular music. The radio was always set to the classical station, which he alternated between Mozart and Haydn symphonies played on his record player.

“Carpenters, in my experience, generally prefer music with a steady beat, like Country and Western. In the Shop at school, there were noisy machines running at full tilt but, in the background, there was always this wonderfully soothing classical music.” (Amy)

Byron, who graduated in 1998, says he learned as much about proportion and beauty from the classical music in Mr. Brown’s Shop as he did from the woodcarving.

Bill described the Shop as a sanctuary and spent much of his free time there.

“In the 1970s, they weren’t as quick at figuring out a student’s learning differences. I wasn’t academic. I wasn’t on the debating team. The Woodshop was my superpower and the furniture making gave me confidence and recognition. I would have had a pretty miserable time at school without the Shop.

“Sometimes, I was the only kid there, but Mr. Brown was always there. He would be twenty feet away, seemingly working on something else, but also paying attention to me. Occasionally, we went to look at furniture together. My aunt had a grandmother clock at her home in Boston and Doug thought it would be a good piece for students to replicate. We drove down to Beacon Street and he took measurements and pictures.

“Every discovery I made, I felt as though he was making it with me. If I made a mistake, I would try to cover it up because I was embarrassed, but Doug would just say ‘Let’s start over.’ It was about perspective rather than discipline; discovery rather than obligation. It was quiet in the Shop and there was no requirement to contribute. It was empowering and I didn’t have that feeling in any of my other classes.”

Bill went to Brown University and received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is a professional furniture designer and maker, often referred to as ‘The Chef of Wood’. When asked about his early influences, he never fails to mention Doug Brown.

Chloe, who graduated in 2012, learned a new skill in every class.

“It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I wish I could have had this in my other educational journeys. Mr. Brown’s feedback was always very specific. I would show him my work and he would take a pencil from his breast pocket and shade the areas that needed to be redone. I would keep going back to him until no more shading was required. During our exchanges, he never said a word.”

Chloe appreciated Mr. Brown’s quiet instruction. “When he is satisfied, he does not say much, but his silence speaks. I worked hard because I didn’t want to disappoint him.”

Doug had high expectations for his students. He made them take apart and redo any sloppy work, which was a valuable lesson for those who were used to succeeding in other subjects with minimal care and attention to detail.

Court, who graduated in 1986, built the first replica Townsend Goddard block front secretary, a 9’4” tall immensely intricate piece of furniture.

“I saw a picture in a magazine and took it to Mr. Brown”, explained Court. “His response was, ‘You can’t build that, it’s much too complicated.’ “But when he saw that I was serious, he agreed to support me on condition that I committed myself to finishing the piece once I’d started it.

“We spent a lot of time drawing it, using callipers and an architect’s ruler. We went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and to Yale, both of which have original pieces. They let us take pictures but we couldn’t touch the antiques.

“It was hard work,” Court told me. “Mr. Brown had very high standards and a salty no-nonsense attitude. The sides of the secretary were twenty-four inches wide, too big to fit through the eighteen-inch planer, so I had to hand plane them. It was exhausting and my hand was blistered and blue from the steel. Doug didn’t appreciate grumbling and quietly said to me, ‘Court, this is going to be a long journey. Grumbling isn’t going to help you. You have to be more positive.’

“When I was making the interior lattice work for the drawers and pigeon holes, I milled the wood stock 1/16th of an inch too thin for the prepared grooves. Doug watched me but let me proceed to see if I would self-correct. When I was nearly done, he walked by and casually shook the lattice work and of course the pieces wobbled. ‘This wood has been milled out too thin, Court,’ he said. I responded that it was ‘good enough’ and that I could use glue to hold them in place.

“Doug’s response was, ‘No, that’s sloppy work.’ He pulled out every piece of wood, stacked them up, took them to the giant band saw, sawed them all in half and threw them in the scrap box. ‘You’re better than good enough, Court. Start over,’ he said and walked away.”

It took Court another month of scraping and sanding to mill the wood to the correct thickness, but it taught him an important lesson.

“Mr. Brown was simply saying: ‘I have respect for you and I want you to respect yourself.’ He taught me to always demand the best of myself.”

“Reproducing a piece of furniture from scratch requires an intimate knowledge of each step of the process. A failure to anticipate a crucial step could prove irreconcilable. Of all my course work at school, Doug’s curriculum was most like the work I have encountered in the real world. It forces you to manage complex scenarios where decisions made today will have significant influence on the choices available to you in the distant future.” (David)

Doug Brown was an early champion of girls in the Shop.

“Girls in the 1970s didn’t get a lot of recognition and in Mr. Brown’s Shop everyone was equally taught.” (Amy)

Kara shared this opinion. “I had never done any woodworking before and I wasn’t very good at it, but I learned that if I worked hard, listened to Mr. Brown and was dedicated, I could make progress. Historically, in many schools, there has been this idea that Shop is mostly for boys. Mr. Brown’s class demonstrated that girls, too, could make amazing objects and feel confident working with their hands. Mr. Brown always encouraged boys and girls equally. The class made me think differently about what I was capable of.”

Doug was “a stickler for adhering to originality.” He was insistent that students do as many operations as possible by hand. Julia recalls spending a great deal of time scraping and sanding a small, long, connecting piece for a side table.

“I kept catching the grain on the wood and I began to worry that the width might be compromised. Eventually, Mr. Brown opened a drawer and whipped out a sander. I was shocked, flummoxed and a bit irritated. I could have saved myself hours of work! Then, I realised that it was more meaningful to have sanded the piece by hand. Hands aren’t perfect but they are part of the art of handmade objects.”

When I reminded Doug of this story, he said:

“Hand-sanding and hand-scraping were part of the Shop experience. I wasn’t there to teach kids how to operate machinery. The unspoken philosophy at the heart of what we were doing was perfection. Of course, we never achieved it, but it was in the trying. The medium I worked in was very physical. You can see the errors but you can’t fuss over four cabriole legs forever. You have to let it go and move on to making the table top.”

At weekends, Doug enjoyed visiting antique tool markets.

“The steel in the old chisels is a better quality,” he explained, “and the shape of the handle lies more comfortably in your hand than chisels cranked out by a machine in China. It’s like a favourite pen, it feels just right.”

—

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Henry Brooks Adams 1838–1918

David has known his former teacher for forty-seven years. “Doug is at first a man of very few words. He has no ego. He is not interested in taking your time and showing you what he knows. And yet, ask him a question and he is extremely generous with his knowledge.”

Trux, who graduated in 1986, describes Doug Brown as “a master craftsman, a teacher, an advisor, a confidant, a therapist and a friend.”

“The Shop and Mr. Brown enabled me to develop a sense of self-worth that buffered me from the social challenges at school. Indeed, even today, when I have had a bad day at work, I will sit in the living room and look at my oxbow, claw and ball footed desk and use the knowledge that I created and built that desk as a touchstone.”

As a Swiss passport holder I am legally permitted to travel to the country of my birth and enlist the support of Dignitas or Exit in order to end my life. In 2002 Diane Pretty, who was suffering with advanced Motor Neuron Disease, was denied the right to travel to a clinic in Switzerland. No one could have prevented Ms. Pretty from getting on a plane to Zurich but, as she was unable to make the journey alone, her husband would have been seen as an accomplice and so run the risk of arrest and prosecution upon his return to the UK. It is this concern for loved ones that is a major obstacle for foreigners wishing to die in Switzerland.

Switzerland is one of the few countries to accept foreign nationals at its assisted dying clinics. Dignitas reported that in 2018, more than 90% of its applicants were non-Swiss. Some believe that Switzerland has one of the most progressive policies in the world regarding assisted dying; others accuse it of promoting ‘suicide tourism’.

I have no experience of MND or other incurable conditions such as Locked-in Syndrome but, when I walk myself to the far reaches of my imagination, these are some of the questions that arise:

What are my choices? How much freedom do I have to pursue those choices? What are my responsibilities as a spouse/parent/child/sibling? How do I end my life with dignity? How do I engage the issue of respect – respect for my right to choose; respect for the opinions and wishes of others? What does fear look like? How do I take ownership of ambivalence in a decision so final? What if I have a change of heart? Will I have the courage to tell my family and friends, with their brave faces and their dry eyes, that I suddenly have reservations about drinking a cup of poison in an unmarked unit on a Zurich industrial estate; that leaving this world, this life, these people that I love, might be harder than I could ever have imagined? Will they support me? Will they worry that I might change my mind back again?

I know of two people in Switzerland who have chosen the path of assisted dying. One had been paying an annual subscription fee to Dignitas for many years. Rather like an insurance policy, there are various levels of service available. In this man’s case, he had paid to die at home with a medical team present. It seems that he had no reservations or second thoughts. He was carefree and relieved. He had made the decision to end his life at a time when his mind and body were still fully functioning. His children and grandchildren, however, were sad and said they couldn’t agree to the man’s request to be with him when he died. In the end they changed their minds, perhaps because they didn’t want to live with regret; they wanted to be with this man, this father, this grandfather until the very end of his one wild and precious life*

On April 29th, 2002, the day Diane Pretty lost her case in the European Court of Human Rights, her husband, Brian, told the press that he felt disappointed for Diane because she had been denied her choice of when to die. He added: I’m pleased in one respect because it means I have my wife here for a bit longer.

Diane Pretty died twelve days later in hospice.

*from The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

2024/2021 Una Suseli O’Connell

In England the standard gratuity for restaurant service is 10%. This is generally added to your bill and referred to as a ‘Service Charge’. If you are of the opinion that your server was less than satisfactory, you can request that the charge be removed, or indeed remove it yourself. This is not common practice, but it remains an option.

A few years ago, following very poor service in a diner in the US, I left no tip. My American husband was appalled. Even bad service, it seems, must be rewarded with a tip of at least 10%. The now common practice of counter staff swivelling digital payment screens towards their customers, with an invitation to add a gratuity of up to 25% on an already over-priced cup of coffee, leaves me speechless and furious. I feel a twinge of shame when I press the ‘No Tip’ option but my sense of indignation wins out … every time.

Americans tip more than any other country and 20% is now standard.

We are currently staying in a remote, although popular region, several hours north of Seattle. The general store is expensive and everything, from a punnet of blueberries to a piece of locally-made pottery, has an eye-watering price tag. Over the past two weeks I have sometimes opted to drive an extra 11 miles to the nearest supermarket. As a rule, however, it’s simply too hot or too far and then, reluctantly, I drop by the general store and make a few necessary purchases.

At the counter is a notice to ‘loyal customers’ informing them (and me), that an additional 12% service fee will be added to baked goods, deli foods and hot drinks because our employees work hard to create and serve house-made products and this provides fair compensation for their dedication. No additional tipping is necessary (although, just in case you want to extend your appreciation even further, there is a Tip jar, full of dollar bills, strategically placed beside the check-out).

In effect, the proprietors of this grocery store, who are, I suspect, making a tidy profit, have arranged for their ‘loyal’ customers to subsidize the wages of their ‘dedicated and hard-working employees’. This frankly disingenuous arrangement ensures that it is the prosperous customers who pick up the financial slack and thereby provide the ‘fair compensation’ employees rightly deserve.

Tipping originated, not in America, but in Europe. Guests visiting country homes in 18^th century England for example, were expected to leave gratuities for butlers, footmen, coachmen, cooks and parlour maids. The 1776 American Declaration of Independence severed all political connections with England, asserting that ‘All are created equal’. Tipping was considered to be servile and, therefore, ‘un-American’.

In the aftermath of the Civil War however, things changed dramatically when four million enslaved people became free. Many of them had no education, no land and no jobs. Increasingly they were hired by restaurant owners who did not pay wages and expected their workers to earn a living through tips. *

In 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Minimum Wage Law, set at 25 cents per hour. Several sectors, including restaurants, were not included. Although this inequality was eventually addressed in the 1966 amendments, other detrimental changes were introduced, including an employer’s right to credit a percentage of tips towards an employee’s minimum wage.

In 1996 the Federal Minimum Wage was set at $2.13 per hour. Today it is $7.25. The tipped wage rate, however, can legally remain at $2.13, provided an employee earns enough tips during the course of a week to make it up to $5.12 per hour. All tips in excess of $20 per month must be disclosed to the employer and declared to the federal government. A share is then collected through taxes.

In the UK, the National Living Wage for employees over 21 is £11.44 per hour ($14.67) and it is against the law to use tips and service charges to form part of the minimum wage.

The US system is a minefield, especially for English visitors. Last night, we had pizza at a local restaurant. The waiter omitted to bring us plates, glasses and extra pepperoni. When it came to paying the bill, the on-screen prompt offered a ‘Custom Tip’. The machine subsequently added this amount to the standard gratuity which meant that we unintentionally left a 30% tip on a $40 pizza.

We have decided, in future, to simplify our options. We will hit the ‘No Tip’ button on the screen whilst ensuring we have a pocketful of dollars to give to our server. A return to cash tipping may help restaurant workers bypass the radically unfair system that exists in this country.

There is, however, hope on the horizon. Kamala Harris, should she be elected President of the United States in November, has promised to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.

*NPR Throughline. ‘The Land of the Fee’. Nina Martyris, April 2024.

Buildings are vessels of history and Folkestone is a town rich in historical buildings. On the corner of Earls Ave and Shorncliffe Road stands a handsome brick and stone-dressed residence, once the summer home of the Boddam Whetham family. Since the late 19th century, however, it has served as an academic institution.

In 1895, the building was Athelstan College for the ‘daughters of gentlemen’, advertising to its Commonwealth clients in the Trinidad and Tobago Mirror. In the 1960s it was Folkestone Technical College and in the 1980s it became the Adult Education Centre. Today it is home to Earlscliffe, a residential Sixth Form school, providing a full A level curriculum to overseas students.

Alongside a strict academic programme, students at Earlscliffe learn life skills such as communication, critical thinking and community service. The school’s six boarding houses have live-in staff who provide practical and pastoral support. In 2023 Earlscliffe was given a five star rating in Fortune 500’s guide to the world’s leading boarding schools.

Overseas students who choose to study in England are faced with a different set of challenges to their native-speaking counterparts. They must learn to communicate in a language that may not be their own and adapt to life in a country in which they did not grow up. They are separated from their families and far away from all that is familiar to them. The benefits of a good education, however, are considered to be worth any personal challenges they may encounter.

Haven For Refugees

Overseas students were also encountering a new life in Earlscliffe’s Shorncliffe Road building 85 years ago when, for a brief period at the start of WWII, it  housed the Dr Leonore Goldschmidt Schule for Jewish refugees. In 1939, as Hitler’s armies advanced across Europe, enrolments at Athelstan College on Shorncliffe Road had slowed to a trickle. It was Canon Hyla Holden, a Folkestone vicar, who offered the Headmistress, Miss Godfrey, a possible solution.

Holden had heard of the plight of Dr Goldschmidt, a German Jewish teacher seeking to escape Berlin with her students. Since Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), coordinated actions of anti-semitic violence across German territories on 8 and 9 November 1938, the British government had been supporting the evacuation of Jewish children from Nazi Germany via the Kindertransport. Miss Godfrey agreed, with the proviso that her one remaining pupil, whose parents were in India, could join Dr Goldschmidt’s charges.

Four years earlier, Goldschmidt had been dismissed from her position at a Berlin public school and told that in future she could teach no more than five non-Jewish students at a time. In the summer of 1934, her cousin, Alexander Zweig and his wife, were murdered on  The Night of the Long Knives. As the couple had no children, Leonore and her husband received a substantial inheritance which, to honour the memory of the Zweigs, they used to open a private Jewish boarding school. As the political situation grew increasingly dangerous, Jewish children enrolled in ever greater numbers at the four-storey house with its orchard garden in a leafy suburb of Berlin.

Goldschmidt always remained one step ahead of the Nazis. She realised that she needed to prepare the children for new lives outside Germany and so she employed native English speakers and registered her school as an official examination centre for the University of Cambridge. Her hope was that this would facilitate Jewish emigration to the US and UK. “Education,” said Goldschmidt, “is our highest good and sometimes it can even serve as a survival tool.”

Escaping Nazi Germany

In July 1939 the Goldschmidt family emigrated to England. Initially settling in a boarding house in Sandgate, Leonore took over Athelstan College on 1 September 1939. Three days later, the UK was at war with Germany and the borders were closed. Some German Jewish children had escaped via the Kindertransport programme. Now, via the UK branch of the Jewish aid organisation the B’nai B’rith, they started to arrive at the new Goldschmidt school in Folkestone.

“My memory of the first few weeks is of liberation” recalls Otto Fendrich, a former student. “We were trusted to go out by ourselves, to keep any pocket money we had and our letters were not censored. The accommodation and the food were also much better. The general atmosphere was very congenial, and although there certainly was discipline, it was not obtrusive or draconian. Dr. Goldschmidt, as headmistress, was clearly in charge of every aspect of the school and more than capable of laying the law down when necessary (and it quite often was necessary) but even at the height of the storm one was aware of an undercurrent of affection and humour”.

The teaching was also of a high standard. The students studied Shakespeare, George Eliot and Sheridan with their teacher, Miss Smith from Elham. As more refugees arrived, the school expanded across the road to Earlscliffe House.

Contact with the children’s families in Germany had become almost impossible. Providing a sense of community, therefore, was crucial. Birthdays were celebrated and, in the evenings, they played games, sang songs and read aloud in German. Encouraged by a new-found stability the Goldschmidts unpacked the silver, the carpets and the grand piano and rented rooms to the Workers Educational Association.

In May 1940, following Germany’s invasion of Holland, the British government announced the internment of all B-Class male aliens over the age of 16. Ernst, Leonore’s husband, was detained and she and her students were evacuated to South Wales, from where she worked tirelessly to ensure that they were able to sit the school certificate examinations that summer.

After the war, Dr. Goldschmidt continued her teaching career in England. She died in London in 1983 at the age of 85.

The Leonore Room at 29 Shorncliffe Road is dedicated to Dr. Goldschmidt’s memory. And on Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2023, Earlscliffe named their newest residence Goldschmidt House in recognition of her courage and determination.

Originally published in ‘Folkestone Foghorn’, Spring 2024

earlscliffe.co.uk

leonoregoldschmidt.com