Food, Glorious Food! - Celia Rees

 My last post magically coincided with the publication of my first adult novel, Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook. That novel began with this cookery book. The kernel of the idea was sown when I found the book among my mother's effects. The book was stained, faded and falling apart. I could have thrown it out but I stayed my hand. 

 It had an interest of its own as a historical document. A book given away with gas cookers - does anyone talk about regulos now, or even know what they are? There's a section on Invalid Cookery, Barley Water, Beef Tea, Calf's Foot Jelly and it gives a taste (literally) of what people ate in the mid Twentieth Century that we tend not to eat any more. Recipes for Heart (Baked), Sheep's Head, Calf's Head, Brain Sauce. 

It is also a kind of time capsule. When I opened it, I found all kinds of recipes that had been clipped from newspapers and magazines, many of them from the Second World War. I spent a long time poring over these, fascinated.  This was a little treasure trove, a tiny historical archive that brought a particular time to vivid life. These were not facsimiles. They were of that time, faded and folded, carefully clipped from long gone newspapers: The Daily Herald, Daily News and Westminster Gazette and magazines that had disappeared decades ago. There were leaflets and pamphlets issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Ministry of Food, '"New Wartime Recipes" price 7/12d, post free'. DIG FOR VICTORY LEAFLET No. 10'.

They spoke directly of a time of rationing, scarcity, government departments devoted to managing food production and distribution and of the ingenuity of the individual householder in managing  the family, the ration, doing his or her bit to improvise, to add to the basic ration by growing as much food as possible, digging up the garden, tending the allotment. On a macro level, they illustrate the far sightedness of the British Government in protecting food supply and distribution in a country heavily dependent on food imports which were likely to be curtailed, even cut off by enemy blockading. The simple strategy of encouraging more home production while safeguarding fair distribution and coming down hard on hoarding and black market trading were important strategies in maintaining a healthy working population and adequate supplies for the fighting troops. 

Dig For Victory was no idle instruction.  

I found all this fascinating, but the most valuable finds were the hand written recipes slotted into the pages, on different stationery, in different writing. These were from the people who had handled and used this cookery book, swapping recipes as women did then and still do. Now, it might be a link to a page or a computer print out but the desire to share a favourite recipe is common to cooks. These recipes, swapped between my grandmother, aunt and my mother, were the only written connection that I had found between them. There was something here that I knew I had to write about. I carefully saved the book. It was now  a 'found' document of special significance. 

It was years before I discovered the key that would link to that initial idea and provide the inspiration for  Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook. The Radiation Cookery Book remained central to the writing of the novel. Hand written recipes, swapped between women, morphed into coded messages; the recipes in the Radiation Cookery Book providing the key to the code. I also found a use for all those newspaper and magazine clippings. My main character, Edith Graham, is a school teacher but she has an alter ego, the rather dashing cookery writer,  Stella Snelling. This allows her to lead a hidden life and I've  always loved hidden lives...

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook HarperCollins

My father's war: "They alone did not surrender."

“Little known but great in spirit are the men of Timor,” said Winston Churchill. “They alone did not surrender.”

My mother became a war widow in 1963 when Dad succumbed to a massive heart attack at the age of 42. His death was related to his experiences during the war, as certified by Dad's former commanding officer, Major Spence, and army medical officer, Dr Dunkley. They helped my mother to navigate the red tape and receive the war-widow's pension, which meant free medical and dental care for our family and free education for myself and my brothers. But we grew up without a father. And sometimes it was tough because of that.

My father died when I was four years old. I have few memories of him, but one that stands out is when he gave me a silver bangle in the shape of a snake. It must have been just before he died. The bangle was obviously hand-crafted and was a little big for me, which is probably why I lost it when I was playing one day at primary school when I was seven. My mother was distraught, and we asked the school to search for it, but it was never found.

I had been told that that the bangle had been given to my father by a Timorese native when Dad was "trapped on Timor in the war". It was a family story, but it didn't mean much to me at age seven. It was later that I realised the extent of my loss: the bangle had been such a tangible connection between me and my father when he was young and fit and fighting for Australia in a war that would eventually kill him, many years later.

I grew up hearing stories about my father's war experiences from my mother, who was enormously proud of him. 

My father was one of the 2nd Independent Company (later the 2/2 Commando Squadron), which was itself part of a small, hastily assembled force that Australia had rushed to defend Timor late in 1941. Although trapped and massively outnumbered when the Japanese invaded in February 1942, the men of the 2nd Independent Company continued to fight a guerrilla war, even when wholly cut off from supplies and support from Australia. It is an amazing story, and it was only when I began to write that I realised how influential my mother's stories and my own sense of loss at his early death had been on my writing. All my novels - six, with two more on the way - have been set in the Second World War.

The story of the 2/2nd begins in 1941 when about 270 officers and men, including my father, were trained at a secret army base at Wilsons Promontory, Victoria. It was intended that they would be sent on secret missions into enemy-occupied territory in Europe. Japan’s entry into the war in December 1941 changed all that.

Dad had had an interesting childhood, born in New South Wales on 1 September 1921, the third child (second son) in a family of eight children. His father was the sort of dreamer who embarked on get-rich quick schemes such as gold mines, hotels, gambling. My uncle tells me that one year they’d be in a fancy house with a governess, the next in a tent by the river bed. It taught the children to be tough and resilient and to depend on each other.

He joined the Army on 21 May 1941, when he was nineteen. He’d been working with his father and brothers on a gold mine out of Kalgoorlie, but was getting sick of the work. So he took off on his motorbike and headed to Perth, where he put up his age and enlisted.

In July 1941, when he was still in army training camp he was intrigued by a call for soldiers to join a secret group. He wrote in his diary:

It was voluntary to join and its secretness aroused my curiosity and I joined. We were not told anything other than we were to receive special training.

The selectors wanted men who were fit, tough and adaptable, who were used to living in hard terrain. Men with mining experience, like my father, were sought after, because they knew about explosives. The selectors didn’t mind a rebellious streak, but they preferred single men. My father fit all the criteria and was chosen.

The men were trained at the Guerrilla Warfare Camp in Victoria by a special mission of British officers who came from the newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE). They included the legendary adventurer and mountaineer, Freddie Spencer Chapman (whose son, Nick, is now - coincidentally - a friend of mine). His photograph is below.

Freddy Spencer Chapman

Exercises were undertaken in full battle dress with full packs, using live ammunition and simulating war conditions. Soldiers were taught to blow up buildings, bridges and communications facilities and army vehicles as well as use field radios and coordinate activities with air drops of food and ammunition. Camouflage, ambush, commando techniques and infiltration techniques were taught.

The training was in very isolated rugged conditions, often on deliberately low rations. Those who were not tough enough were gradually weeded out.

After a long hard exercise when they struck the road about five or six miles from the camp, trucks would be waiting there. The men would be told, ‘If any fellow is a bit knocked up, hop on the truck, and we’ll take you back to camp.’ Any of those who hopped on the truck just stopped long enough at camp to pick up their pack, and were sent back for reposting.

The Prom was "ideally suited for training troops who might fight anywhere from the Libyan deserts to the jungles of New Guinea, the only drawback being that in winter … the climate was often more polar than tropical," as Spencer Chapman wrote later. Dad had come from the hot Western Australian desert; in his diary he wrote:

We were well clothed, but it was bitterly cold at that time of the year and try as one would you could not get warm.

Dad later told my mother about the forced marches, wading through swift rivers with full packs held above their heads, mountain climbing and training in unarmed combat, sharp-shooting and living off the land. All these skills later allowed him and his mates to survive against the odds.

When they marched out of “The Prom”, wearing their distinctive double-red diamond patch, they were known as the 2nd Independent Company. Later in the war they became the 2/2 Commando Squadron, but they were more often known as “the 2/2nd” or the "double-reds".

After training the company was transported north to Katherine, Northern Territory, where they were stationed until Japan entered the war following the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Malaya.

The following day, 7 December 1941, at camp in Katherine, they were got up at 0300 hours.

There was a mad rush for the parade ground. We were fallen in and given over to the major Albright. He said “You have been growling about inactivity! Right you will get action and get it now. Be ready to march of at 0800 hours”. As the major finished there was much cheering. The boys had got what they wanted, so we started off for parts unknown once again, at 0800 hours.

Timor lies only around 400 nautical miles from the Australian coast and was of great strategic importance to Australia. Amid fears of a Japanese advance towards mainland Australia, the 2/2nd was sent to Timor, as part of "Sparrow Force". My father's company were ordered to protect Dili airfield in east Timor (now Timor-Leste).

The 2/2nd commandos spent their time traversing the country with map and compass, recording every detail and reporting to HQ, working around the clock, sleeping out and getting local knowledge. But they had been so badly equipped that, after a short time, nine out of 10 came down with malaria.

By 23 December, Dad was becoming ill with the disease that would plague him until his death in 1963. 

On Christmas Day he still had aches and pains in every joint: "It certainly knocks you." On 30 December he wrote:

I have again had a touch of Malaria. One’s head seems that it will fall off any moment. By Lord, it hurts.

By the New Year almost the whole unit was struck down. As Dad wrote on 3 January 1942:

At present most of C Platoon is down with Malaria, but what could one expect from camping in a swamp.

There were some moments of pleasure however, such as bargaining in the Dilli markets and one night, on 3 February, he saw "a most beautiful sight":

The sight was probably something like this.

There were 3 trees and they were almost alive with fireflies and the light which was given off was green in colour. It looked first like a gigantic jewel, with a light played upon it. It was most beautiful. I am feeling ok again. Malaria has left me.

When the 2/2nd heard of the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, they grimly prepared for Japanese invasion. Stores of ammunition and other equipment were buried at secret dumps in the hills. The men walked barefoot to toughen their feet against the day their boots gave out.

They didn't wait long. The Japanese began their attack with the bombing of Darwin on the morning of 19 February 1942, killing an estimated 250 people. That evening, about 6,000 Japanese troops landed on east and west Timor.

Japanese paratroopers landing in Timor

On 20 February, Dad wrote:

This morning looking out to sea, we behold 4 ships. So far their identity is unknown.

Later there is the bald statement:

They were Japanese ships. 2 Destroyers and 2 transports.

At 1400 hours he wrote:

The Japs have taken Dilli. There are 5,000 Japs in Dilli, as the report states. Our section was the first to investigate this. This morning ... 14 men of 7 section and two others, went into Dilli in the utility truck. The worst is feared for these men, also Pinocchio, the motor bike mechanic [who] passed us bound for Dilli. He is gone I think. We are back in the mountains. We have learnt that Koepang is also occupied by the Japanese. The 2/40th is in the hills somewhere. We may meet up with them some time, I’m hoping. ... A Platoon is, or was, down on the aerodrome. I wonder what has become of them? There are some Japs in the hills looking for us. They will have a job getting us.

That last sentence was quite the understatement.

The Australians in A Platoon who were guarding the airfield engaged in heroic action to hold off the Japanese advance. Pte Poynton won the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the Dutch Bronze Cross. In 1943 his actions were portrayed in a comic strip:

Later, Dad described what he was told about the battle for the aerodrome:

There were 20 Australians on the drome, when the Japs landed They blew the drome with success, and so far there has been 11 men returned. The stories they tell are “we never knew anything till the ship search light lit up the drome bright as day and then they started shelling us. Then we started fighting the Japs. They came down the road through the bush in droves. They say that they would estimate the Jap losses at 200 or over. It was a great piece of work. 20 men against 2,000 Japs, fighting, they held them off for over an hour and then had to run for it. Out of the 11 men there wasn’t one wounded. Very good.

He was right to fear for the men on the utility truck, and Pinocchio was never seen again. Dad wrote some days later:

The 16 men who went into Dilli by truck were tied up and machine gunned. 2 escaped. One is nearly dead and the other wounded but OK.

The one who was 'nearly dead' was Private Keith Hayes, who had just turned 21. He survived the massacre because the Japanese assumed he was dead; he had suffered a bullet wound to one side of his neck and a bayonet wound to the other. Badly wounded, he was found by two Timorese native boys. At great risk to themselves, they carried him to their village where their mother, Berta Martins, cleaned his wounds and dressed them with paste of local herbs wrapped in banana leaves. Not one of his wounds became infected. Later, again at great risk to the villagers, he was reunited with his comrades. When the 2/2nd's doctor saw the way Berta had treated Haye's wounds, he said he could not have done a better job.

One other soldier, Peter Alexander, was taken to Dilli as a prisoner for interrogation. He survived both Changi Prison and the Burma Railway .

The massacre of the men on the utility truck was one reason why the 2/2nd never considered surrender. (At subsequent war crime trials two Japanese were sentenced to death for their part in the massacre. Two received life imprisonment and another was given fifteen years imprisonment.)

In Dutch West Timor, the 2/40th Battalion had fought bravely, but was running low on ammunition, exhausted, and carrying many men with serious wounds. 

Their commanding officer accepted a Japanese invitation to surrender at Usua. The Battalion had suffered 84 killed and 132 wounded in the fighting; more than twice that number would die as prisoners during the next two-and-a-half years.

My father Jefferson (Rocky) Williams is on guard at the far left.

The 2/2nd met up with some of the 2/40th who had not surrendered, which meant that around 300 Australians on Portuguese Timor faced a force of 6,000 Japanese. Morale was high and because of the policy of carefully distributing ammunition to hiding places, they had a large reserve of ammunition. 

But in order to survive they had to hold territory, and that meant aggressively patrolling and attacking, whatever the odds. Two or three raids against the Japanese were launched every week, often small in themselves but with a huge cumulative effect.

On 13 March David Ross, the British Consul General came to the commandos with a Japanese surrender demand. It said that if the remainder of Sparrow Force did not surrender they would be treated as brigands and executed. Their commanding officer, Major Spence responded: "Surrender? Surrender be f****d!" Ross was told to tell the Japanese:

We were still a unit. We were Australians. Australia was still fighting and so would we.

Their guerrilla campaign was amazingly successful in tying up Japanese men and resources. The Japanese sent seven battalions, together with tanks, artillery and search units, to deal with 300 (later 700 when reinforcements came in) Australian commandos. There were around 10,000 Japanese troops on Timor in 1942 and by the end of the war Japanese officers put their numbers on Timor at 20,000. These were men and resources that would otherwise have been available for the Japanese invasion of New Guinea, or to fight the Americans at Guadalcanal, America's first victory in the Pacific.

Australian commandos in Timor 1942

For almost three months Australia believed that the 2/2nd had been captured along with the 2/40th Battalion. The unit was officially listed as missing by the Australian Army when no word came from the Company.

On patrol. My father is the last on the left, bringing up the rear.

The problem was that the 2/2nd had no working wireless with which to contact Australia. But these men were ingenious. They cobbled together a wireless transmitter nicknamed Winnie the War Winner on the back of a four-gallon kerosene tin, using parts from several failed radio sets. Some parts were obtained via night raids into occupied enemy territory.

Winnie the War Winner

Using Winnie to radio Australia

On 19 April 1942 they managed to radio Darwin. The first communication between Sparrow Force and Northern Force Headquarters in Darwin was:

• Sparrow Force: "Sparrow Force Timor calling Northern Force Headquarters Darwin. Anyone there, over?"
• Northern Force Headquarters: "Who are you?"
• Sparrow Force: "Jack Sargeant."
• Northern Force Headquarters: "Do you know George Parker?"
• Sparrow Force: "Yes, he is with us."
• Northern Force Headquarters: "What is his rank? Answer immediately."
• Sparrow Force: "Captain."
• Northern Force Headquarters: "Is he there? Bring him to the transmitter.
• (Pause.) What is the street number of your house?"
• Sparrow Force: "94."
• Northern Force Headquarters: "What is your wife’s name, Jack?
• Sparrow Force: "Kathleen."
• Northern Force Headquarters: "This is Northern Force Headquarters.Sparrow Force, what is your situation?"
• Sparrow Force: "Force intact. Still fighting. Badly need boots, quinine, money, and Tommy-gun ammunition."

The news that the 2/2 was still waging guerrilla warfare against the Japanese was stunning for Australia. It arrived at the country’s darkest hour, after the capture of more than 22,000 men in Asia from Japanese victories in Malaya, the Philippines, Rabaul and the Dutch East Indies. The news that one band of men was still fighting proved to be tremendously valuable both in strategic terms and in terms of morale.

Damian Parrer, the Oscar-winning Australian filmmaker, spent time with the 2/2nd in November 1942 and said:

Damien Parer

These men of Timor are unique in that they remained an organised fighting body all through the lightning Jap successes. … These lads are fighting an epic of guerrilla warfare.

Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin, wrote:

PM John Curtin

Our guerrilla forces in Timor have been doing bold and courageous work. Though the spotlight has been more on New Guinea because of the larger forces engaged, the people of Australia should not overlook the importance of Timor as a base for operations against the north-west of Australia.

For this reason, MacArthur refused to allow the ill and war-weary men to be withdrawn, but ordered them to continue the campaign of ‘harassment and sabotage’ against the Japanese.

The commandos became legendary in Australia, and even comic strip characters reinforced their toughness.

But food was no laughing matter on Timor. The men had starved for months and in addition to battle-wounds, they suffered malaria, beri beri, dystentery and all the other tropical ailments.

Things improved when supplies were air-dropped and later brought in by sea and Dad wrote in his diary for 11 May 1942:

Today we were issued with the first lot of comforts which are very few, but very nice. I received 1 tooth brush, cake soap, handkerchief, 1 ounce tobacco, 1 pkt papers, and some shaving soap. As we were out of everything I also received a pair of boots. All these things were dropped by parachute.

The first Navy men to make contact with them did not recognise the gaunt, haggard, bearded men dressed in rags as Australian soldiers and assumed them to be local mountain tribesmen. Most of the men grew beards because of the lack of shaving gear and also as a means of camouflage in the jungle.

The Japanese on Timor were becoming desperate. From the end of April scattered and largely unorganised patrols of commandos began hitting the enemy every two or three days. Most attacks were carried out by only a few men. They’d hit hard and then pulled out before the enemy could bring superior forces and firepower to bear. It was effective and the Japanese morale was suffering. 

In May they began striking the Japanese in the camps and outposts, taking advantage of poor security at the perimeters. C Platoon (Dad's platoon) was attacking them in the hills to the south-west of Dilli:

The natives around Dilli say we are Lubic (Gods) and we come up out of the ground, kill Japs and then disappear back into the ground. It must seem like that, as in the last 6 raids, not one Jap has seen an Australian. The natives say that the Japs are pretty scared of the Australians.

The skill and calibre of the men in the second-second was obvious, but it was the support of the Timorese that enabled this small force to be so successful, and lose only ten men in combat.

Because the commandos lacked supplies and local knowledge they relied heavily on support from the ‘Criados’ - young East Timor men and boys who volunteered to help at great peril to themselves and their villages.




Mostly aged between nine and 15, the Criados carried packs, shared food and shelter, educated the Australians about the landscape and acted as their eyes and ears, reporting on the Japanese movements and attacks. But the Timorese paid a heavy price for their loyalty. The Japanese carried out a series of reprisals against the civilian population of east Timor in order to reduce their support for the Australians, and things became worse after the Australians left. Between 40,000 and 60,000 Timorese perished during the Japanese occupation.

On 5 June 1942 Dad wrote:

We now have prices on our heads. A private is worth $50, 2IC $500 , Major Spence and the Colonel $5,000. $1.00 is worth 1/8, so we are pretty valuable. The Japanese are offering this to the Timor natives for each Australian they capture, dead or alive.

During August, the Japanese launched a major offensive against the guerrillas and carried out a series of reprisals against the civilian population of east Timor in order to reduce their support for the Australians. By late-November 1942, it was clear that the Australians could not sustain their campaign because of the extreme ill-health amongst all the men, the ever-increasing number of Japanese reinforcements and reduced food supplies. At last the 2/2nd could come home,

At the end of the war, the 2/2nd  Commando Squadron had been in contact with the enemy longer than any other unit in the Australian Army.

The second-second became famous again when the renowned documentary film maker, Damian Parer filmed “Men of Timor”in November1942. In Parer’s filming notes he reported being told by my father, whose nickname was "Rocky":

There’s no doubt we’ve got the pick of Australia in this bunch. It’s not just because I’m one of them myself.

When I showed that to my mother, she replied dryly:

That’s just the sort of thing your father would have said.

Mum and Dad, engaged, in 1948

The writer, the spies and leaf-mould memories by Deborah Burrows

I first visited the museum at Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, UK in 2014, and went again last month. 

It is a fascinating museum, in many ways representing the triumph of eccentricity over evil. At Bletchley a group of dedicated men and women – many of them amateurs with a gift for crosswords or mathematics – managed to decrypt German secret service messages sent over the German secret coding ‘Enigma’ machines. They did so by building their own ‘Ultra’ code-breaking machine.

The official historian of the Second World War British Intelligence, Harry Hinsley, believes that the information obtained by the code-breakers at Bletchley Park shortened the war in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Europe by not less than two years and probably by four years. 
[Harry Hinsley, The Influence of ULTRA in the Second World War, retrieved 10 September 2017] http://www.cix.co.uk/~klockstone/hinsley.htm

The reason for this was that once the Enigma code was broken Britain was able to read all the top secret communications of the German Military Intelligence, the Abwehr. This included communications relating to the arrival of German spies into the United Kingdom. Every spy who entered the country was captured as a result. Most of these were turned into double agents under the British Double-Cross Operation. From then on, all intelligence information received by the Abwehr was false intelligence and MI5 knew exactly what the Abwehr did with it.

Obviously it was crucial that the enemy remained wholly unaware of the breaking of the Enigma codes at Bletchley Park. 

One of the most important men at Bletchley Park was MI5's Chief Cryptographer, Alfred Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox, a British Classics scholar and papyrologist at Kings College, Cambridge. He was a key figure in the breaking of the Enigma code in October 1941. He was also a close friend of Agatha Christie. 

At the very time the Bletchley Park code-breakers were working so hard to break the German Enigma code, Agatha Christie was writing her first spy thriller. “N or M” was published in 1941, simultaneously in the UK and the US. In the book, the daring detective pair, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, are recruited by Military Intelligence to find an evil fifth columnist or German spy hiding in a seaside resort.

The blurb for N or M reads:

“The final words of a dying man ... the code names of Hitler’s most dangerous agents ... the elusive clue that sends that elegant detective team, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, to a fashionable seaside resort on a mission of wartime intelligence. But not as husband and wife. As strangers, meeting by chance, setting an elaborate trap for an elusive killer.”

One of the main characters in the book is an annoying retired Indian army major who professes to have inside knowledge of the war. His name? Major Bletchley. 

Chillingly, the plot of ‘N or M’ deals with unmasking German agents who had been sent to Britain. By the time it was published, Knox’s work in breaking the Enigma code meant that all German agents sent to Britain could be unmasked. Was Christie sending a message to the Abwehr? Or was it a strange coincidence?

MI5 was concerned about the naming its top secret installation in a popular novel, but it was loath to send agents or the police to interrogate Christie about her choice of character name, as this might bring damaging publicity. They did question Knox, who was dismissive of the idea that Christie knew anything at all about what was going on at Bletchley. However, he agreed to talk to her. 

Over tea and scones at his home in Buckinghamshire, he asked Christie how she came to name her characters. Major Bletchley, for instance. Christie's reply was that she had been stuck at Bletchley Station on her way by train from Oxford to London and took revenge by "giving the name to one of my least lovable characters." [Richard Norton-Taylor (4 February 2013), Agatha Christie was investigated by MI5 over Bletchley Park mystery, The Guardian, retrieved 10 September 2017] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/04/agatha-christie-mi5-bletchley

MI5 were apparently reassured by this explanation. I am less so. In the 1940s the "Varsity Line" went between Oxford and Cambridge through Bletchley, but it seems to me a most peculiar route to go through Bletchley from Oxford to London when there was a direct Oxford-London line. However, I accept that the UK railway service was in a parlous state during the war because of the bombings. Diversions and long delays for non-military transport were common and very irksome to travellers. Perhaps Christie's explanation for the name of the character is indeed the simple truth.

Christie took character names from all sorts of places. In a letter to a fan who had asked her the origin of Miss Marple's name, she wrote that it lay in a visit to Marple Hall in Cheshire, where Christie had once bought two Jacobean Oak chairs. The children's author, Beatrix Potter, lived close to Brompton Cemetary from 1863 to 1918. Apparently she used to wander around cemetery for inspiration, and it is telling that in the graveyard are tombstones engraved with the names of Peter Rabbett, Jeremiah Fisher, Mr Nutkins, Mr Brock and Mr McGregor. The Beatles discovered Eleanor Rigby on a tombstone in a Liverpool cemetery close to Strawberry Fields.

There is another, very interesting but probably not sinister, facet to the story behind the writing of "N or M". During the Second World War, Christie lived at the Isokon building in Lawn Road, Hampstead. An avant-garde building in which reinforced concrete was used in British domestic architecture for the first time, it attracted as tenants those who wanted a minimalist lifestyle, with few possessions. It is now accepted that the building was a haunt of Soviet Russian spies. It is estimated that between the mid-1930s and mid-1940s, around twenty-five Soviet spies came to live next to each other in the Isokon. 

One of Christie's neighbours was Arnold Deutsch, a university lecturer who was the controller of the infamous group, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald McLean and Anthony Blunt. All four turned against Britain during the Second World War. [Alex Bellotti (3 April 2014) How Agatha Christie secretly lived amongst Soviet spies in Hampstead. Retrieved 10 September 2017] http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/etcetera/books/how-agatha-christie-secretly-lived-amongst-soviet-spies-in-hampstead-1-3520592

It is in that building, among those people, that Christie first tried her hand at a spy novel, so far removed from a murder in a vicarage. 
The Isokon is not a large building and Christie must have come to know her neighbours. Is it mere coincidence that she should write her first spy novel when she was living cheek by jowl with real spies? Is it coincidence that she should give a character in that novel the name of the top secret establishment where British code-breakers led by her close friend were hard at work trying to decipher Nazi messages, including those relating to German spies in Britain?

J.R.R Tolkien is quoted as saying that a story:

 “grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.” [Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (Harper Collins, 2011)]

Had Christie overheard something in the Isokon Flats that provided the seed for a story about spies? Had Dilly Knox let slip that he was popping off regularly to Bletchley Park? Or was it simply a strange coincidence that the name “Bletchley” allied to the idea of German spies slipped into the leaf-mould of her mind and took root?

[all photographs taken by me, other than the book cover which is from http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=16728778815]

Ravilious: War Artist by Lydia Syson

On 31st of this month, a wonderful and rare Ravilious exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery comes to an end.  Since this summer is also the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, I hope nobody will mind that I'm revisiting a post which first appeared on my own website early last year. 

Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) was probably the best known of the three British Official War Artists who were killed during the Second World War, despite the unofficial hope on the part of Kenneth Clark, who created the scheme, that it would serve to preserve the lives of Britain’s best artists. (Thomas Hennell disappeared in Java in 1945; Albert Richards, who fought as well as painted, was blown up by an enemy mine in Belgium in March the same year.)

© IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 284)

This picture, HMS Ark Royal in Action, 1940, is a watercolour made on June 9th from the deck of HMS Highlander and it shows the ship’s anti-aircraft guns at full-blast in the last moments of the Allied withdrawal from Narvik after the fall of France. 

In July 1940, the National Gallery mounted its first exhibition of war art, and Ravilious was embarrassed by quite how many of the paintings were by him. He’d taken up the invitation to become an Official War Artist as soon as he was offered it in December 1939, after an autumn spent volunteering with the Observer Corps, watching for enemy aircraft from a post on the top of Sudbury Hill, near his home: “We wear lifeboatmen’s outfits against the weather and tin hats for show. It is like a Boy’s Own Paper story, what with spies and passwords and all manner of nonsense.” (p. 8)

This sense of unreality – the idea almost of playing at soldiers – was remarkably widespread in Britain in that first year of the war, and something I tried hard to capture in That Burning Summer.  Equally strong was a sense of growing threat to a particular, pastoral kind of Englishness, a vision of England which Ravilious arguably helped to create.  It comes across strongly in the book he illustrated for the Curwen Press book,The Story of the High Street.

In a painting called ‘Observers’ Post’ Ravilious conveys the incongruity of sandbags, duckboards and telephone wires appearing suddenly beside rustic wooden fences and reassuring hedgerows, and under blue skies. His sandbags have a plumped up, pillow-like feel to them, and glow quietly in the last rays of the sun.  Another watercolour of 1940, showing Barrage Balloons Outside a British Port is darker, greyer, and the two lone figures at the end of a quay are leaning forward with a greater sense of urgency, but there is a similar tension between the bravely comic whale-shaped monsters (whose accidental escapes Ravilious had frequently sighted from his Observers’ Post) and the reassuringly straight lines of harbour buildings and railings.  Meanwhile, the extravagant curve of the quay in the foreground suggests that the land itself is on the verge of becoming as stormy as the sea and sky beyond.

Balloons, ships and aircraft are often given as much, if not more, character than the few people depicted in Ravilious’ war pictures. They come across as plucky creatures.  Here, in HMS Glorious in the Arctic, 1940, Hawker Hurricanes and Gloster Gladiators circle the aircraft carrier as they prepare to land on her deck, before leaving Norway.

© IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 283)

In the course of his posting to the Royal Navy, Ravilious discovered his fascination with flight.  At the Royal Naval Air Station in Dundee he was enthralled by the eccentricities of a lumbering amphibious biplane called a Supermarine Walrus, which could be launched by catapult from a warship, and became very effective in air-sea rescue operations.  ’I spend my time drawing seaplanes and now and again they take me up…I do very much enjoy drawing these queer flying machines…what I like about them is that they are comic things with a strong personality like a duck…You put your head out of the window and it is no more windy than a train.’ (p.36)

© IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 1712)

He soon graduated from the co-pilot’s seat to the rear-gunner’s position, which offered a much better view – along with some slightly alarming duties involving hatches and such: ‘How trusting they are!’

When Ravilious began his next War Artist contract, it was with the RAF. ‘These planes and pilots are the best things I have come across since this job began.  They are sweet and have no nonsense (naval traditional nonsense and animal pride).’ (p38)  The luminosity of Ravilious’ watercolour technique was perfectly suited to conveying the peculiar joys of simply being airborne.  Over the course of the summer of 1942, he flew regularly in Tiger Moths from a modest airbase in Hertfordshire, at Sawbridgeworth, where the runway was made of coconut matting and living conditions were equally basic. Yet, as it wrote home:  ”It was more lovely than words can say flying over the moors and the coast today in an open plane, just floating on great curly clouds and perfectly still and cool . . .” (p. 44)

© IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 2123)

One of my favourite pictures in this book took me back to some of my early research for That Burning Summer.  From a long and fascinating conversation with Edward Carpenter, local historian and author of Romney Marsh at War, I confess I stole his story of rescuing a lost homing pigeon, for which – if I remember rightly – he was given a medal.  During World War Two, thirty-two pigeons were awarded medals themselves, as James Russell writes in the short essay accompanying this atmospheric watercolour of Corporal Stediford’s Mobile Pigeon Loft.  Thousands of lives were saved by birds flying home bearing the co-ordinates of a crash site, and every bomber crew carried one.  The pigeons here are full of life and character, with their bright red eyes and distinctive markings. By contrast, the distant group of soldiers who can just be seen through the open doorway are barely there at all. Like the ghostly figures in the painting Morning on the Tarmac, in which sailors or airmen who aren’t even given the solidity of the reflections granted to the aircraft, these men seem on the point of vanishing altogether.  Ravilious disappeared himself in Norway on 2nd September.  His own plane never returned from a mission to search for survivors after a previous aircraft had gone missing.

From ‘Ravilious in Pictures: The War Paintings’ by James Russell.

(N.B. If you want to see more Ravilious, and are anywhere near Eastbourne, I thoroughly recommend the Towner Gallery's 'behind the scenes' private tours.)

THE AMERICAN CEMETERY in CAMBRIDGE by Adèle Geras

Back in 1962, when I was 18 years old, I was madly in love with an undergraduate at Pembroke College, Cambridge. On a couple of occasions, we went to the Eagle pub and the tales of young American airmen, stationed round Cambridge during World War 2, made a huge impression on me. Their names are there, and the pub nowadays makes a big deal, quite rightly, of the historical connection.

In 2010, when we moved to Cambridge after many years in Manchester, the American Cemetery was high on the list of places that my husband and I wanted to visit. His last illness and his death meant that he never saw this place, but the other day our friends Bob Borsley and Ewa Jaworska took me there and I wanted to write about it on this blog as a kind of tribute, both to those who are buried there and also as a kind of stand-in for my husband, Norman Geras, who would definitely have written about the visit on his blog, normblog  if he could have done.

The sun was shining on the day we were there. There are nearly 4000 individual markers,  each with a name, a rank and home state cut into the stone. The date of each death is there, but the dates of birth have been omitted. Most of the dead were in their twenties. 

On a long wall that stretches for yards, the names of the missing are inscribed. These are the people whose bodies were never recovered. 



There is a very interesting and well-organised exhibition in the visitors' centre, and I'm sure Cambridge schools visit it regularly. Around the Centre, a small area of the garden has been left to grow wild. The man we spoke to behind the desk told us that the gardeners in charge of the rest of the cemetery were a bit sniffy about this exception to the apple - pie order which prevails in the rest of this place 

Because that's the overriding impression. The lawns are beautiful: mown to absolute perfection. Every single memorial, every one that we saw, looks as though it went up yesterday: gleaming stone in a pristine state of shining whiteness. Not one single piece of litter, not one bird dropping, not one cigarette stub mars the landscape. We saw a man travelling between the graves on a motorised mower, but it must take many people all their time to keep the cemetery in this remarkable state.



It seemed to me that this clean and tidy and beautiful way of remembering the fallen was a loud and vigorous "ya boo sucks" to Death; a contrast to the blood and dirt and darkness of war. The tidiness of the cemetery is a counterbalance to the chaos of those years and it's clear that today's custodians feel a duty to maintain this and that's admirable. It's very hard to walk round without tears coming into your eyes. It's also worth remembering, alongside thinking about the dead, that many wars are still being waged. Sacrifices are still being made, and there are still freedoms that are worth fighting for.  This post goes up on the 10th  anniversary of the July 7th, 2005 terrorist atrocity in London and our thoughts should also be with those who died  that day and  those who mourn them.