Earlier this week, our 4 year-old granddaughter told us, in a tone of great earnestness, that there was something she really wanted but she didn’t think her parents would agree to it. We imagined something brightly-coloured and made of plastic, another princess doll perhaps, so we were both surprised to hear that she wanted …. a balcony.

I thought about her request: Polly and Mike are planning to extend and renovate their house (some day), so perhaps they could include a balcony. That way, Thea would be able to ‘stand on it and look out at the view’ which is the vision she has for herself.

Many years ago, when Polly and her sister were small, there was something I really wanted too: a ranch house in Arizona. Rather like Thea’s balcony, I realised that it wasn’t something that could be realised immediately, or even any time soon. I didn’t mind, not really, and in some odd way I quite relished the idea of working slowly towards my dream.

At that time, we lived in Switzerland. I decided to start saving for my house in Arizona and I put aside every two franc coin that came my way. Five years later we moved to England and the two franc coins became fifty pence pieces. Polly and Lucy even bought me a savings tin in the shape of a letter box and, every once in a while, I would deposit the money in my ‘Arizona’ savings account.

It’s thirty five years later and I don’t own a house in Arizona, although I do still collect 50p coins.

As the German composer, Richard Wagner, said Joy is not in things. It is in us. The joy for me was in my imagination. I had no real understanding of landscape or logistics or what it would mean to own a house in a faraway desert. Arizona was a symbol of hope and redemption, something that was uniquely mine and a wild and precious dream that I held lightly, but seriously too.

This afternoon, as we pulled into a multi storey car park, Dan asked Thea where she would like to park. ‘At the very top’, she replied. He circled through the levels until we reached the open air where there were no other cars. We walked over to the concrete wall and, up there on the 5^th floor, Thea and her little sister stood looking out over the trees and buildings of their town.

‘It’s lovely’ said Thea.

‘It is’, agreed Dan. ‘It’s a bit like having your own balcony’.

The following morning,  Mike was taking the girls to nursery. As they drove past the multi-storey, Thea looked up and said quietly: ‘There’s my balcony.’

The Hertfordshire town of Letchworth entered my vocabulary in 1971. I was twelve years old and my father thought it would be a good idea to send me to boarding school – either to one in the United States, which was his first choice, or to one in the UK, a three hour drive from where we lived in Folkestone. Massachusetts seemed a long way to go but I was intrigued by the idea of St. Christopher in Letchworth. My mother was strongly against my going to boarding school in either country and so, after much debate, I stayed home and became a day pupil at Ashford School for Girls.

St. Christopher School, founded in 1915, was inspired by the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, an Indian mystic and philosopher whose book, Education as Service, was published in 1912.  Krishnamurti believed that man “could only find truth through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.”

In The Angry Island, Hunting the English, the writer and journalist, A.A. Gill, describes his alma mater as ”hippy-alternative, non-competitive, vegetarian and organic before ecology was a word”. He was a student at St. Christopher in the 1960s and describes it as “a weird and unconventional place with a high proportion of Quakers, many of whom wore sandals all year round and one of whom wouldn’t speak on Wednesdays in memory of those killed in Hiroshima.”

In 2000 we decided to send our own daughters to the school. Polly and Lucy’s years at St. Chris were pretty much how I had imagined my own might have been. They enjoyed their schooldays and made lasting friendships.

Once they left to go to university, however, we debated whether to move somewhere else – back to London or the south coast. My husband, Dan however, is from Chicago, and Letchworth, he says, reminds him of where he grew up. We decided to buy a house, put down roots and, twenty-three years later, this is the town we call ‘home’.

When I told other parents, who like me, had moved to Letchworth to avoid boarding the children, they were confounded. “What …  you’re not going back to London?! But what will you do here?”

I had moved around a lot in my life and I was looking to settle, plus Dan had a point: why start a new life elsewhere when we had a fine one right here in the Garden City?. It’s a 30 minute journey into London and Cambridge on the train; we can meet friends, have dinner, see a play and be home before midnight.

Letchworth is the World’s First Garden City and, according to A.A. Gill, this makes it “one of the most important and influential places ever built – as inspired as Wren and Hooke’s plans for post-inferno London or Haussmann’s Paris, as revolutionary as Niemeyer’s Brasilia and more practical and longer-lasting than a Frank Lloyd Wright millionaire’s weekend home.”

The town was founded in 1903, not by a town planner or a wealthy industrialist, but by Ebenezer Howard, a middle-aged shorthand clerk from London. At the age of 21, he went to the United States to start a farm in Nebraska. When his venture failed, he moved to Chicago and found work as a stenographer.

In 1871, the year Ebenezer Howard arrived in the United States, The Great Chicago Fire ignited on the west side of the city. It burned for two days and destroyed more than 17,000 buildings. Howard was living in the city during its reconstruction and reformation and Chicago’s motto, ‘urbs in horto’ (city in a garden) was to influence his ideas around the creation of a Garden City.

Ebenezer returned to London four years later and took a job as a parliamentary reporter in the House of Commons. Over the next twenty years he developed a strong interest in social issues that stemmed from, what he believed to be, over-crowding, urban poverty and poor city design.

In 1898, at the age of 48, Ebenezer Howard published To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform in which he advocated the creation of a Garden City movement. The book was translated into French, German, Russian and Japanese.

His idea was to offer an alternative to urban living in the form of inexpensive, yet attractively–built homes and workplaces that would combine with green spaces in new communities. Unlike the new industrial towns, Port Sunlight and Bournville, which were built by factory owners for their workers, the garden cities were to be self-governing and run for the benefit of all.

In 1903, his dream was realised when the Garden City Association founded Letchworth, the World’s First Garden city. Brothers-in-law Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, who had a reputation for designing good quality working-class homes, were appointed as the town’s planners and architects.

Howard decided to learn Esperanto as a way of promoting international understanding through a universal language. “Esperanto and the Garden City” he said, “are both bringing about new and better conditions of peace and agreement.”

His close neighbour and friend, George Bernard Shaw, described Ebenezer as “one of those heroic simpletons who do big things whilst our prominent worldings are explaining why they are Utopian and impossible.”

In 1905 the Cheap Cottages Exhibition showcased 125 cottages of different shapes and sizes, each one built for a maximum of one hundred and fifty pounds. Over a three-month period 60,000 people visited Letchworth to see the exhibition.

The architecture of the Garden City was strongly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement which focussed as much on social reform as on the aesthetics of design. “The root of all reform lies in the individual, and the life of the individual is shaped mainly by home and surrounding.” wrote Gustav Stickley in The Craftsman Home in 1909.

Houses were built of plain brick, pebble-dashed and white-washed, with gables and sweeping, steeply-pitched terracotta rooflines. The open-plan living areas offered both space and sunlight. Attention was paid to small details such as hinges and door handles.

The town planners incorporated allotments and spinneys (extended areas of woodland bordering back gardens) and residents were encouraged to grow their own fruit and vegetables and raise chickens. Letchworth was the first town in England to have a green belt and 100,000 trees were planted with a different species chosen for each street, including oak, elm, locust and staghorn sumach.

It is the Broadway, a wide boulevard, framed by mature trees, that reminds my husband of Chicago, specifically the Midway, a one-mile stretch of parkland on the south side of the city. Dan grew up in the western suburbs, near Oak Park, home to the world’s largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed private residences. The Arts and Crafts style homes mirror many of the architectural features of Letchworth Garden City.

In 1910, the Spirella Corset Company, founded in Pennsylvania in 1909, established its first overseas operation in Letchworth. The Spirella motto was ‘Healthy Happy Workers are the World’s Best’. The factory had large windows, good ventilation and a garden setting.  Workers were offered baths, a library, free eye tests and a bicycle repair department (for those who suffered punctures on their way to work). The company paid 50% of its employees’ medical bills and subsidized their dental treatment.

Sir Laurence Olivier, who spent his childhood in Letchworth, used corsets produced at Spirella in his 1957 production of The Prince and the Showgirl, starring Marilyn Monroe.

The Garden City became a magnet for artists, including potters, weavers and furniture designers. It also attracted socialists, suffragettes, vegetarians and teetotallers (there were no pubs in the town until 1974). Men wore embroidered smocks, knickerbockers and sandals and women wore tea dresses – the most radical refused to wear corsets, hats and even shoes.

George Orwell, who lived in neighbouring Wallington, mocked Letchworth in The Road to Wigan Pier, describing its citizens as “that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of ‘progress’ like bluebottles to a dead cat.”

Day-trippers visited from London and two German ladies declared, on leaving, that they were “… awfully disappointed. We were assured that the people at Garden City were only half-clothed and that they all went bare headed and wore sandals, and we have not seen one person of that sort.”

Early pioneers of the town were undaunted by the critical and ill-mannered remarks. Hope Rea, a leading Theosophist, moved to Letchworth in 1907 and established the Garden City Theosophical School (now St. Christopher).

Annie Lawrence, born into a wealthy London family, was inspired to build an ‘open-air’ school in Letchworth, dedicated to “stimulating and encouraging young people to think for themselves as to the meaning of life and what their attitude to it should be.” She commissioned the building of The Cloisters, a grey stone structure, reminiscent of a medieval castle with turrets, battlements, fountains and a campanile staircase. Students slept in canvas hammocks, slung from the vaulting and classes included boot and sandal-making, weaving, bookbinding and carpentry. Annie also offered lectures, conferences and summer schools, as well as theatrical performances and organ recitals.

The town’s spirit of inclusivity attracted people of different faiths, including Liberal Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, Congregationalist, Pentacostalist, Spiritualist and Quaker. Today there are also Buddhist and Sikh temples and an Islamic Society.

A second Garden City in Welwyn, 14 miles south of Letchworth, was built in 1920 and the Garden City movement spread across Europe, North America, Australia and South Africa.

In 2003, John Prescott, secretary of state for transport, announced plans for a new town in Barking Reach on the Thames, prompting Guardian journalist, Jonathan Glancey to write  “They don’t make them like they used to … Letchworth had good homes, churches, libraries and a corset factory. Today’s new towns don’t even get a railway.”

More recently, in an interview for the podcast Reasons to be Cheerful and titled Reasons to be Letchworth, Katy Lock, Director of Communities at The Town and Country Planning Association, said that flourishing lives must be integral to democracy. “We have lost the vision in both planning and policy. We have lost the positive view of how we want to live together and how to make the places we design sustainable and stand the test of time. The current development model is creating the slums of the future.”

So what remains of the early Garden City philosophy? In terms of bricks and mortar the answer is – ‘a lot.’  121 of the 125 Exhibition cottages exist as residential properties across the town. In 2006, each one, including our own, was issued with a plaque in recognition of its historical significance. The Cloisters has been occupied by the Freemasons since 1948 and the factory floor at Spirella is now a concert and lecture venue. The Art Deco cinema, the Lido and the Library (all built in the 1930s) form an integral part of the local community.

Apart from its kerb appeal, Letchworth is, admittedly, a little short on things that are important to some people – gift shops, gourmet restaurants and boutique hotels. For these you need to travel 5 miles south to the market town of Hitchin.

During the years Polly and Lucy were at St. Christopher School there was an annual ‘Rice Day’. Lunch was a bowl of rice and the money saved on feeding the 350 pupils was donated to a local charity. There were also sponsored ‘Sleep Outs’ on campus to focus on the problems of homelessness. One year, Lucy’s class was studying the effects of climate change on the Arctic. A pupil, dressed in a polar bear suit, walked into the local supermarket and asked to buy a fish as a way of highlighting lost habitat and access to food sources.

In 2006, William Armitage, a governor at St. Chris, and one of the founders of David’s Books and Music (1963) on Leys Avenue, was given an MBE for services to the community. In 2018, David’s was voted runner-up in the UK Independent Bookshop of the Year Award.

Vutie Beets, a vegan cafe in town, offers supper club charity nights using rescued food from The Best Before Cafe. It also provides family support through free cooking lessons and hosts community clean up.

In June 2020, the year of the pandemic, The Letchworth Settlement, a centre of learning and creativity since 1920, announced it was closing. As the centre received no grants, the situation looked hopeless. Within days, however, a ‘Save the Settlement’ appeal was launched and the citizens of Letchworth raised £28,000. Government grants followed and the 100 year old Settlement was saved.

Ebenezer Howard would have been proud. The people of Letchworth, it seems, still have the ability to “do big things” as opposed to “explaining why they are impossible.”

Reference:

A-Z of Letchworth Garden City by Josh Tidy

Arts and Crafts in Letchworth by Josh Tidy and Aimee Flack

Related Article:

In the Footsteps of a Thousand Years by Una Suseli O’Connell, May 21^st, 2023

Today is a Bank Holiday in the UK, often referred to as the ‘late May’ or the ‘Spring’ Bank Holiday. This distinguishes it from the ‘early May’ Bank Holiday and the August ‘Summer’ Bank Holiday.

My American husband once asked me why all our public holidays are referred to as ‘Bank’ holidays and, quite honestly, I had to look it up. “The Bank Holiday Act of 1871 was introduced in order to allow banks to close on certain days without incurring a penalty”. In 154 years, it seems, no one has conceived of a better name, a worthier name, to mark any one of the eight bank holidays we celebrate in this country every year.

Dan now refers to them as ‘Blank’ Holidays.

In America there are eleven federal holidays, celebrating, amongst others, Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, Washington’s birthday, Juneteenth (the emancipation of enslaved African Americans), Independence Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving Day. It’s all in the name.

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. Originally known as Decoration Day, it has its origins in the aftermath of the Civil War when communities honoured their dead and decorated their graves with flowers. A federal holiday since 1971, Memorial Day is a day of reflection as well as celebration. The American flag is flown at half-mast until noon. Many Americans visit cemeteries and memorials and take part in parades.

This morning, to my great surprise, I learned that this day, this late May Blank Holiday does in fact have a name. Since 2022 it has been known as ‘Celebration Day’. It is neither government-inspired nor approved, although I don’t imagine that any politician would think to criticise the vision behind Celebration Day.

Introduced three years ago by a small group of friends, their website explains that the day is about “honouring and celebrating the lasting impact of those who have inspired and shaped us – whether through personal connections, history, or culture – and whose influence continues long after they’ve died.”

That’s great and I’m all in favour of celebrating lasting legacies and remembering those who have had a positive influence on our lives. It is, however, slightly burdened by a marketing gimmick – I can buy a pin badge to show that I’m part of the movement that celebrates the dead (the proceeds do go to charity and that’s a good thing) and, of course, I am encouraged to share lots of memories about my dead parents, teachers and friends on social media.

The death of those we loved may not be entirely straightforward; our emotions, even years later, may still be complex and confused. Death needs to be spoken about regularly, the death of others but also the prospect of our own death; emotions need to be unpacked slowly. Celebration Day runs the risk of confining these emotions to a single day and encouraging us to express them in up-beat sound-bites and pictures.

In 2004, the Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz, launched the first Cafe mortel/Death Cafe in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He wanted people to talk freely about the difficulties surrounding death. He wanted them to come together in a physical space, accessible to all.

Traditionally the Cafes mortels took place in restaurants and bistros where people gathered to eat, drink and talk. Wine and cheese were provided and no financial donations were accepted. “There are already too many issues surrounding money and death” he said.

Crettaz wanted to help people better manage their grief and better face what, sooner or later, lies ahead for all of us. “Death” he said, “is a lesson in life”.

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.

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