Clio - spgs.org · lio The Magazine of the History and Politics Society 2016 •1 Clio The Magazine of the History and Politics Society We are excited to welcome you to this year’s

ClioThe Magazine of the History and Politics Society

Spring 2016

Family History

Clio: The Magazine of the History and Politics Society2016 •1

ClioThe Magazine of the History and Politics Society

We are excited to welcome you to this year’s edition of Clio. The annual magazine is a Paulina tradition and is named after the muse of history, daughter of Zeus and Ti-taness Mnemosyne. Clio, sometimes referred to as ‘the Proclaimer’, is often represented with an open scroll of parchment scroll or a set of tablets. The name is etymologically derived from the Greek root ‘κλέω’ or ‘κλείω’ (meaning ‘to recount,’ ‘to make famous,’ or ‘to celebrate’).

When deciding this year’s theme for Clio, we wanted to select something that would reflect this idea of celebration and recounting. We wanted to create a magazine that was not merely a random collection of articles, but instead something that reflected the Paulinas that wrote it. We therefore decided on the theme of ‘family history’ to inves-tigate the wealth of knowledge and history that Paulinas would have, and we were amazed by the diversity of personal accounts that came back to us. These range from the eighteenth century to the present, across different cultures and countries. No story in this magazine is the same and, maybe it will encourages you as readers to discuss or research your own family history – there’s guaranteed to be something special in there.

Olivia, Alice and Kiran

Breaking School Rules Can Save Your Life 2 Olivia Dodd

The Barker Brothers During the First World War 3 Ava Smithard Bailey

Escape From Singapore 4 Nathalie Edwardes-Ker The Fraser Family: Heroes and Villains 5 Emily Fraser

My Family: Pionners and Paulinas 6 Amelia Huntington

The Global Life of Mischa Wladimiroff 8 Juliana Beekenkamp

Letter from Jamaica 10 Rosie Robinson

The Invasion of Sicily and Admiral John Godrey 12 Tilly Walters Elizabeth Peacock – Scourge of the Tory Whips 13 Francesca Peacock

History of Figure Skating 15 Ruby Jackson

In Memoriam – Vikki Askew 15 Tim Askew

Features


Breaking School Rules Can Save Your Life

Olivia Dodd VII

My grandmother was Birte Dodd (née Qvøtrup), affectionately known to me by the Danish name for grandmother,

‘Farmor’. She was born in Copenhagen in 1932 and attended Jeanne d’Arc School, a private Catholic school run by nuns in the centre of the city. She was known for being boisterous and rebellious, hating the nuns who taught her and who frequently chas-tised her for behaviour.

The Germans invaded Denmark in 1940, occu-pying it until the end of the war in 1945. On 21 March 1945, the Brit-ish conducted Opera-tion Carthage. This was a targeted air raid on ‘Shellhus’, which was used as the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police) headquarters in the centre of Copenhagen. It was used for the storage of dossiers and the torture of Danish citizens during interrogations. The aim of the raid was to destroy the head-quarters to weaken Gestapo operations, as well as try to liberate as many prisoners as possible. As a result, the building was destroyed, 18 pris-oners were freed and anti-resistance Nazi activi-ties were disrupted.

The force left RAF Fersfield in the morning and it reached Copenhagen after 11.00 a.m.. The raid was carried out at rooftop level. The air raid alarms were sounded and Birte and her schoolmates were shepherded towards the basement air raid shelters of the school. How-ever, my grandmother, whilst queuing for the shelter, noticed a plane flying at street level out of the corner of her eye. The plane, a Mosqui-to, hit a lamppost and crashed into the school, which was 1.5 km away from the target of the

Shellhus. My grandmother at this point diso-beyed orders and ran straight into the air raid shelter rather than queuing. She claimed later that she looked at the pilot into the eye as he crashed only a few meters away from her. Trag-ically, the second and third wave of bombers as part of the raid mistook the Mosquito flying down towards the school, and seeing it now

burning, as the target of the operation. The bombers shelled the school, destroying one wing of it.

The bombs caused water pipes to burst, resulting in the un-derground air raid shelter to flood. This lead to the drown-ing of several more of my grandmoth-er’s schoolmates as they were unable

to escape from the flooding shelter. However, Birte was small in stature and was miraculously able to escape through the metal bars that lead to ground level of the shelter, before somehow gaining a lift back home to safety. Her mother, having heard the news of the raid, left work to come and look for her. She had to search the corpses of the girls at the school in order to find her daughter, but could not find her and so pre-sumed her to be dead. They were later reunited at home.

Overall in the attack, eighty-six schoolgirls and several nuns were killed. Out of Birte’s class, only she and one other girl, who wasn’t present on the day, survived the raid.


The Barker Brothers During the First World War

Ava Smithard Bailey MIV

My great great grandfather, Henry T. Barker, fought and died in the First World War. He died while fighting in

Armentières in northern France on 23 October 1914.

Henry Barker was the oldest of four children; he had two brothers, George and Arthur (who suffered from a lame leg), and a sister, Mary. While at school George was well known for being a good hockey player and was a bell-ring-er in church. The family led simple and carefree lives in their home at Collyers Oak Farm, War-wickshire.

On 4 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, thus marking the entrance of Britain into one of the most devastating wars in history. George was called up into the army and Henry joined in an effort to protect his brother. They both joined the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry and set off to Armentières, completely unaware of the horror that lay ahead of them. Only a few months after the being called up,

an attack on the German front lines caused the death of Henry Barker on 23 October 1914. Devastated, his brother George had to continue fighting alone. However, he died in action, less than an hour after his older brother’s death. Back at home, Henry’s wife had just given birth to their first child, a daughter whom Henry would never have the chance to meet. She was my great grandmother, Alice. She therefore never met her father who fought and died to keep her and his country safe. A telegram was sent to the brothers’ parents, Edward Barker and his wife, telling them that the elder brother, Henry, was missing in action and presumed dead. Later, a second telegram was sent to say that the younger brother, George, was also missing in action. They were confused and thought that there had been a terrible mistake involving the telegrams, and were desperate to know which son they had lost. Tragically, the realisation soon dawned on them that they had lost both of their sons to the war within only a few months.

Left: Newspaper clipping from George Barker’s obituary

Right: Henry T. Barker in unform


Escape from SingaporeNathalie Edwardes-Ker VI

My grandfather, Rolla Edwardes-Ker, was a lieutenant in the British Malay Regiment in Singapore. On 8 Febru-

ary 1941, Singapore was invaded unexpectedly from the west, while most of the Malay forces were defending the south. On 15 February, Rolla and his fellow officers were informed that their unconditional surrender had taken place. They were now prisoners-of-war, under orders to obey the command of the Japanese and make no attempt to escape. Rolla, a lawyer, pointed out to his commanding officer that the ‘King’s Regulations’ stipulat-ed that any officer becoming a prisoner of war had an ob-ligation to try to escape and informed him that he was going to take that obligation seriously.

Rolla and three other men then made their way to the harbour to find a boat with which to escape - knowing that the Japanese were stand-ing by to sink any vessel attempting to leave Singa-pore. They found a battered fifteen-foot sailing boat. Picking up another two men in the harbour, one of whom was a Dutchman named Van, the six took to the water at 1.15 a.m., praying that none of the British mines in the sea outside the harbour would reach their boat. At dawn they reached the Dutch island of Pulau Batam, where they pulled up their boat into the jungle to escape the Japanese. They hid there during the day before setting sail the following night to reach another island. By now, their boat was unusable. Luckily, Van managed to get them onto another boat to go west. The group suc-ceeded in crossing from East to West to reach

the city of Sumatra in Indonesia. By contrast, most of the other men who managed to escape from Singapore starved to death, died of thirst or succumbed to tropical disease.

Rolla and his party then met up with another fifty or so refugees. They travelled on trucks and buses to reach Padang. Rolla described the experience:

[The vehicles were] driven through the night on primi-tive mountain roads. We could not use the lights as we had to maintain a strict black-out. This was a most frightening journey as the road surface was very bad and there were many hair-pin bends.

At Padang two ships were preparing to evacuate the ref-ugees - one going to Ceylon, another to Java, which at that time was a Dutch colony. Rol-la’s party was scheduled for the Ceylon ship, but Van was asked to take the Java ship as he spoke Dutch. Van was seriously ill by this time, so Rolla chose to stay with him.

Both boats set off on 26 February. The Ceylon ship, with the rest of Rolla’s party, was sunk by the Japanese and only five of the 2,300 peo-ple on board survived. By chance the Java ship happened to pass through the Sunda Straits at dawn on 1 March, shortly after a major naval battle in the straits on 28 February. Rolla and a few others then transferred onto a larger vessel which eventually reached Western Australia. By the time they reached Australia, all the others had died and Van had to have both legs ampu-tated. Rolla survived unscathed.

A photo of Rolla Edwardes-Ker skiing in Australia


The Fraser Heroes and VillainsEmily Fraser UIV

I am related to two men who are connected with two of the iconic images of the 20th century – one heroic and the other, villain-

ous.

The first is Shimi Lovat, or to give him his full name, Brigadier Simon Fraser, 17th Lord Lovat and 24th Chief of Clan Fraser. He was a first cousin of my grandfather, Rory Fraser. My father used to see Shimi frequently in Scotland, up until his death in 1995. Shimi’s moment of fame was in 1944, when he led the Commandos at Sword Beach in the D-Day landings. These were the landing opera-tions on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. It was the larg-est seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front. Shimi is one of the main characters in the film about D-Day, The Longest Day, in which he is played by the actor Patrick Lawford. The movie portrays him in several scenes: briefing his troops on board ship before the landings, leading his men onto the beach wearing a white jumper (false!), and being followed by his per-sonal piper Bill Millin (true!). The film goes on to show him relieving the glider-borne troops under Major John Howard, who had seized the bridges over the Orne River in Normandy in the early hours of D-Day, while the Germans

were heavily attacking them. Winston Churchill later described Shimi as ‘the handsomest man to cut a throat’.

The image of Shimi charging across the D-Day beach was actually invoked by David Cameron in a speech defending the Union between Eng-land and Scotland in the run-up to the Scottish referendum in 2014. David Cameron referred to Shimi’s exploits as an example of something ‘Scottish’ that was shared by all British people.

There is another twist to the Shimi story: he was a friend of Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond books. Ian Flem-ing is said to have based the character of Bond on an amalgam of three of his friends; Shimi Lovat, Fitzroy Maclean and David Stirling. All three men had exceptional war records involving spying, intelligence and Special Forces work (Shimi’s work is described in his autobiography, ‘March Past’, and Fitzroy’s in his autobiography East-ern Approaches). David

Stirling founded the SAS in North Africa during the

Second World War. Shimi was not my only re-lation among these men; Fitzroy was married to Shimi’s sister Veronica Fraser, and David Stir-ling was another first cousin of my grandfather, Shimi and Veronica.

My mother and father went to the unveiling of David Stirling’s statue in Perthshire in 2002, and I went with them to the unveiling of Shi-mi’s statue on Sword Beach in May 2014, a few months before I came to St Paul’s.

Shimi Lovat in Newhaven after the 1942 raid on Dieppe


If D-Day, Shimi Lovat and James Bond are images of courage and triumph in the twenti-eth century, there are also people and events that are symbolic of disaster. One of these is the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, whose story is told famously in the movies Titanic and A Night to Remember, amongst others.

Insofar as a movie about a natural disaster can have a villain, that villain is invariably Bruce Ismay (my great-great-great uncle) the chairman of the White Star Line, the company that owned the Titanic. Bruce is shown as an arrogant bully who forces the reluctant cap-tain to take a more northerly (and dangerous) course to enable the Titanic to regain the cov-eted Blue Riband prize for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic for White Star Line. He also got into one of the last remaining lifeboats, when hundreds of other passengers were left to succumb to their fate.

Needless to say, the family’s account of what happened differs somewhat from that of the films. Uncle Bruce always denied having any discussion whatsoever with Captain Smith about routes or navigation. He was also absolutely clear that he had been helping people get into lifeboats for a good hour before the deck was clear, and that the last boat going down half-empty, when a seaman suggested he get in. This decision was to be his downfall.

After the disaster, he was forced to leave his native Liverpool – children would follow him around chanting ‘women and children first’. He died many years later in exile in a remote lodge in Gal-way in Ireland, a broken man and viewed as a villain by society for what he did on 14 April 1912.

Bruce Ismay as President of the White Star Line

My Family: Pioneers and PaulinasAmelia Huntington MIV

You may have noticed, while walking through school, a silhou-ette picture of Gustav Holst and his senior orchestra from 1926, which hangs in the music department. One of the girls in the

picture, playing the viola, is my great grandmother, Ann Fletcher. She was a pupil at St Paul’s Girls’ School from 1922 to 1927.

Her father was called Walter Morely Fletcher, who was knighted in 1918 for his services to medicine having been the first secretary to the Medical Research Council, which he had helped to set up. Her mother was called Maisie. Anne was one of only two children. Her younger brother Charles was at a prep school in Horsham and then later went


to Eton and then Cambridge. He too became a doctor, like his father, and in 1941 Charles was the first doctor to inject penicillin into a patient. Her early years were spent at a boarding school run by ‘Miss Frost’ somewhere in the North of England.

My family doesn’t know much about Ann’s time at St Paul’s, yet from letters to her parents that my great aunt has found, we know she wasn’t very keen on sport or academics, though she was very musical. As mentioned before, she was in the senior orchestra. Her entire family was very musical. Maisie had studied at the Royal College and was a very competent pianist and viola player.

After she left St Paul’s, Ann went to Paris to study French, singing and dressmaking. After that, she decided that she wanted to have a career as an opera singer and went to Webber Douglas School after which she did further study in Vienna. Then, she returned to England to sing with the Chanticleer Company, which sang operas often in schools, before she also joined the Sadlers Well opera company. Her best role was as Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Magic Flute at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

She married on 31 December 1935 to the Rever-end Alfred Stephen Hopkinson, a curate at Put-ney Parish Church at the time, which brought an end to her singing career. Two of her four daughters (my Great Aunts Jenny and Selina) followed in her footsteps and went to St Paul’s, but their stories will have to be left to another time.

My great-great grandfather, Alfred Kirby Hun-tington, was a British professor of metallurgy (the study of metals) at King’s College as well as an author of multiple scientific books and one of Britain’s earliest aviation pioneers. He originally flew balloons and later an aircraft of his own design.

Alfred Kirby Huntington was born on 18 Jan-uary 1852 in Ipswich, Suffolk. Alfred was a founding and active committee member of the Royal Areo Club. He originally was a keen bal-loonist and took part in the first Aero Club race, which took place at the Ranelagh Club on 7 July 1906. His balloon, Zenith, was one of the seven balloons to ascend that day, the first time in England that seven balloons had ascended from one single spot. He also competed in the first Gordon-Bennett Cup race (the world’s oldest balloon race) in 1906.

He then moved on from balloons to aero-planes and flew a plane of his own design, the Dunne-Huntington triplane (a plane with three wings). It was kept and flown on the Isle of Sheppy. Huntington is named on The Avia-tion Memorial in the town of Eastchurch on the island (even though it is spelt wrong!)Originally designed by John William Dunne between 1907 and 1908, the layout of the plane was passed to Alfred who completed the de-tailed drawings. The machine was built by Short Brothers and was flying by April 1910.


The Global Life of Mischa Wladimiroff Juliana Beekenkamp VI

My great grandfather, Mischa Wladimiroff, has led an extremely precarious life. He was born in Rus-

sia in 1910 as an aristocrat, which turned out to not work in his favour at all as the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917. The Revolution led to the abdication of the Tsar and allowed the Communists to rise to power - putting my great-grandfather’s family and other aristo-crats at grave danger. From that point on, his life became one of erratic change and constant reestablishments.

Mischa has been forced to move to fifteen dif-ferent places in his life, staying at longest a year in one place. He has lived in Finland, America, Mongolia and Japan, to name a few. He and his family have had to start their whole lives over again fifteen times; they have had to find new jobs, schools, learn new languages and make new friends.

It was only in 1921 that Mischa’s family was fi-nally able to settle in Surabaya on the island on Java, in Indonesia for a decent amount of time. His father was a ship engineer, so there was a lot of work for him here. They also managed to set up a very successful sugar plantation.

Indonesia was then a part of the Dutch colonies, so Mischa and his brother were taught Dutch in school and were later sent to the Netherlands to study in 1936. In the Netherlands, Mischa fell in love with a Dutch girl called Elly Fabr. He married her and they had three children - the youngest of whom is my grandfather. Although he was now married to a Dutch person, he had formed a little Russian clique in the Neth-erlands, with whom he spoke Russian and celebrated Russian holidays. This, combined with his hatred for the Communists for kicking his family out, fuelled his desire to return to his motherland. Even though he had not been

there since he was a young boy, was stateless for the vast majority of his life and now by pure chance had a Dutch nationality, he still desper-ately wanted to return to his motherland. So when the Nazis offered him a fully paid trip to Ukraine to see if it could be suitable for Aryan colonization, he immediately obliged. He saw this as a perfect opportunity to see whether it could be suitable for his own family. It was dur-ing this trip that he made these terribly nostal-gic photos.

Mischa was appalled by the way the Ukrainian people were treated by the Germans, so wrote a critical report back to the Nazis. He also wrote a comprehensive report for the Dutch secret ser-vice about the dire state of Russia and Ukraine. This saved him from being severely punished after the Second World War, as he had coop-erated with the Nazis. He only got into a lot of trouble with Elly’s family, as he left her alone with three small children in the Dutch Famine winter of 1944, but that’s another story.

The Wladimiroff Photo Archive

Clio is extremely proud to have the priv-ilege of publishing a selection of Mischa Wladimiroff’s photographs from Ukraine during the early 1940s. This is the first time these extraordinary images have ap-peared in print. The editors wish to thank the Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff family, and hope that the rest of the images go on to receive the wide exposure that they so richy deserve among historians.



Letter from JamaicaRosie Robinson V

Letter from John Symes to his mistress, Betsy

Kingston, 15th March 1766

My last to you by the two Men of War who sail’d on the 25th Febry also I (interalia)acquainted you of new situation in this town with a genteel salary. At that time I had it not in my power to send you Bill other than on Woodbridge - I hope he’ll pay it. Two days ago I received yours and your brother’s by the Antelope Breighton, - as they were directed to the Spanish Town, they laid there almost 3 weeks before I got ‘em. The Man of War that conveys this sails from hence today and I have hardly time to write before her bag goes onboard. By the first opportunity that offers (which will be in a few days) I will send you a good Bill - I cannot get one now; the people here are much distres’d. I hope now soon to see you and

Although I may not look it, I am in fact Jamaican. At least, one-512th part of me is. In the eighteenth century, my great-

great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather owned a plantation in Jamaica, and some letters which were found recently indicate a relationship between him and a woman called Betsy, a ‘quadroon’ whom he had met on the island. A quadroon was the word used at the time to describe a person who was one-quarter black - one of her grandparents was therefore black, and presumably had been brought from West Africa to Jamaica as a slave to work on a plantation. It is thought (although not con-firmed) that one of Betsy’s grandfathers - my great-great -great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather - was a plantation owner somewhere in Jamaica, like John Symes, and that one of Betsy’s grandmothers - my great (x11) grandmother - was a slave on this planta-tion. The slave owner took a fancy to her, and they ended up getting married, when the slave, Betsy’s grandmother, was already pregnant with Betsy’s mother or father. This relationship would have caused quite a scandal at the time,

and it would have been frowned upon for a couple to be mixed race - this would have been crossing both social and racial boundaries. The letters that we have are from John Symes to Bet-sy among other people. His letters to Betsy are affectionate, if not exactly love letters, in which he calls her ‘my dear girl’ and writes that he has ‘the utmost love and regard for her’. However, John Symes also seems to have children who are not Betsy’s, and John and Betsy seem to be parted, with John Symes in England, and Betsy in Kingston, Jamaica. It would also have been shocking for an Englishman to be in a relation-ship with a quadroon, and their relationship seems to be clandestine. The letters themselves are amazing, especially when compared with the way that people communicate and speak nowadays. This is an example of one of his let-ters, and is almost incomprehensible.

Below: detail from the original letter


my little girl, for when you receive money sufficient, you must come - I can no longer live without you and as I am in a genteel way, we shall be respected. A few years my Dear Girl we will (if God permits) see our friends again in England. If your brother (or any other) couldconveniently send you money, you might come immediately, for as I shall make my Bill payable to him, he would be repaid soon - but I suspect his ability so to do, or (I hope) you need not have parted with your [unintelligible]? If Jerry will risk his fortune, with this father’s consent, I will do him such service as Jean and he may come with you. He may do well here and when I leave the country (if I live so to do) it may be much more to his advan-tage. I write very incoherent for want of time. Leave my Dear Boy with his uncle Jem. When you can come, you may perhaps settle with the Captain you sail with to receive his passage money here, for I will pay it and Jerry’s; and take good heed of your behaviour on board for captains and others often brag here of their influence with the women passengers - I had an instance of it in the ship I came. I doubt not of your conduct, but that it does and will merit my utmost love and regard. Remember me to all - Adieu my Dear Girl

A colloquial rendition by Dr Newton

The sense of the letter is actually rather straightforward, once the specialised vocabulary of the British Atlantic world and conventions of eighteenth-century correspondence are accounted for. I have had to make a few interpretive guesses about the circumstances of John Symes, Betsy and her family.

I sent my last letter to you by the two Royal Navy ships that sailed on 25 February. In that letter, among other things, I told you about my new job in Kingston with a very good salary. At that time, I wasn’t able to send you money except by sending a bill to Mr Woodbridge – I hope he’ll pay you. Two days ago, I got your last letter and your brother's letter. They came on the ship Antelope, commanded by Captain Breighton. The ship went to Spanish Town, Jamaica [some distance away], so it took three weeks before I received the letters. The Royal Navy ship that’s taking the letter I’m writing to you now is sailing today, and I have almost no time to write it before the mail bag is sent on board. By the first opportunity I have – hopefully in a few days – I will send you some more money. I can’t do it right now, as the merchants here are under financial pressures, so issuing a bill would be difficult. I hope to see you soon, and my little girl. When you get enough money, you must come to Kingston. I can no longer live without you, and as I have a good job and salary, we will be respected. In a few years, if God permits, we might be able to see our friends again in England. If your brother, or anyone else, could conveniently send you money, you should come to King-ston straight away. I will issue him a bill and he can be repaid quickly, but I doubt if he has enough ready cash. If Jerry is able to put up the money, with his father’s permission, I will do everything I can to help him out. I could set him up in business here in Kingston once I leave the country (if I survive, that is!), which could be very profitable indeed. I’m sorry my letter is so rushed and incoherent – I’m running out of time before the navy ship departs with the mail. Leave my son with his uncle Jem. When you come, perhaps the captain of the ship you take would agree to be paid for your passage on arrival, rather than on departure, as I’ll be on hand to pay for you and Jerry. Mind your behavior on board the ship, for cap-tains and others are always bragging here about their ‘influence’ with the women passen-gers – I saw an instance of this harassment myself. I’m sure you will handle yourself well.

(I hope Jem will excuse me for not writing to him, but I have no time, as the mail bag is go-ing on the ship right now and I was only told within the last hour)


The Invasion of Sicily and Admiral John Godfrey

Tilly Walters VI

Operation Mincemeat was a plan con-ceived by the Allies in 1943 which many historians believe partly contributed to

the beginning of the end of the Second World War due to its masking of the invasion of Sici-ly. The inspiration for this plan came from my great grandfather, the Director of Naval Intelli-gence, Admiral John Godfrey.

He served on the HMS Eurayles during the First World War in the Dardanelles and then served as Deputy Director at the Royal Naval Staff College in the inter-war period. After 1931 he commanded two ships: the HMS Suffolk and the HMS Kent. From 1936 to 1939 he then com-manded the battleship the HMS Repulse and after these three years he became Director of Naval Intelligence in 1939.

Perhaps one of the most well known novel series came out of his leadership during this period as Director. Under his command as his assistant during the Second World War was a then little known writer, Ian Fleming. Fleming based much of the plot in the Bond books on the operations they contributed to during the war; even going as far as to base the character of ‘M’ on his commanding officer – my great grandfather. This didn’t go down too well with him commenting that Fleming had ‘turned me into that unsavoury character, M’.

The inspiration for Operation Mincemeat came from the Trout Memo which was a document written by him in which he compared the ways in which fly fishing bore the similarities of deceiving an enemy. It described ways in which trout, like the enemy, could be tricked or lured into an action. One of these fifty-one ways was taken from a novel by a former Chief of Scotland and mused over how a dead body could be used to plant and smuggle informa-tion without enemy suspicion. This idea was

taken up by Charles Cholmondeley, part of the Twenty (XX or Double Cross) Committee. This idea was later used to successfully trick the German high command that the Allies in 1943 were going to attack Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily. They planted documents on a corpse that had been given a full identity and made the corpse wash up near a German friendly Spanish naval base near Palos de la Frontera. The plan was successful without any suspicion and even after the Allies invaded Sicily, the Germans were convinced it was a ruse for more than two weeks.

After the end of the Second World War, Ad-miral Godfrey moved to India and was Flag Officer of the Royal Indian Navy, most notably during the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny. Consid-ered one of the unsung heroes of the Second World War, he received the Order of the Nile in Egypt, the French Legion d’Honneur and was made a Companion of the Order of Bath.


Elizabeth Peacock – Scourge of the Party Whips

Francesca Peacock VI

Rebel Yorkshire Tory MP sacked for sup-porting miners’ was the BBC headline following a hotly contested vote on the

future of British coal pits. That ‘rebel’ MP, oth-erwise known as ‘a disgrace to the Conservative Party’ and ‘the scourge of the party whips’, was Elizabeth Peacock - my grandmother.

A vote in the House of Commons and her subse-quent firing from a Par-liamentary position were the unhappy culmination of weeks of hectic protest and media activity for my grandmother. Following the Government’s rash announcement in October 1992 to close thirty-one deep coal pits (at the expense of 30,000 miners’ jobs), Elizabeth decided that she could not sup-port the Government and would have to launch a campaign against her own party. However, this decision to start a protest was not an easy one as Elizabeth held a lot of respect for Michael Heseltine (who had announced the proposal) and he had visited her constituency - Batley and Spen - a number of times. It was because my grandmother represented and lived in a Yorkshire constituency, somewhere which had already suffered under the miners' strikes in 1984 and 1985, that she felt she had a duty to stop this ill thought out and rushed re-structur-ing of the coal industry. My grandmother felt a great deal of sympathy for the miners’ plight and so, as soon as the proposal was made pub-lic, set about ‘making friends in the mining in-dustry and enemies in the Conservative Party’.

One of her first moves in the campaign was to join forces with Winston Churchill Jnr and to visit Silverhill Colliery to support Roy Lynk, the leader of the Union of Democratic Mine Workers, who was undertaking a hunger strike for the cause. There they met with miners to

discuss the problems and were interviewed for the press and tele-vision, which allowed their campaign to gain exposure and support from all over the country. Elizabeth became the face and voice of the pro-test, talking to both the miners’ unions and the Government whilst con-stantly attempting to get the proposal modified or scrapped completely. As the spokesperson for the campaign, she had almost daily conversations and negotiations with Down-ing Street about the plan. A voice from London would start the conver-

sation with ‘Number 10 here, Mr Heseltine wants to speak to Elizabeth’ and my grandfather, by this point bored with the TV crews outside the house and incessant calls for my grandmother, would answer with a dead-pan ‘Number 10 where?’ which was always met with a humourless reaction.

Ultimately, Elizabeth’s campaign did not suc-ceed and the plan to close the mines was passed in the House of Commons on the 21st October 1992. Many Conservative MPs who had sup-ported the campaign ended up voting with the party as they believed the Government had

Cartoon of Elizabeth Peacock


reviewed energy policy sufficiently for the plan to be viable. The Government won with a major-ity of thirteen votes and with only six MPs voting with the opposition. Perhaps the biggest shock came when Churchill, who had been actively involved in the protest, voted with the Government. My grandmother was incredibly disappointed and felt that Churchill was a ‘turncoat!’, yet they still remained friends until his death.

Although she was unsuccessful and was fired from her post within Government (she claims she was about to resign), Elizabeth received the admiration and support of people up and down the country. She was particularly touched by the letters of support from people who traditionally dis-agreed with the Conservatives but appreciated the effort she was making on behalf of the miners.

During her campaign Elizabeth was asked repeatedly: ‘why are you as a Tory MP supporting the miners?’. For my grandmother, this was and still is an easy question to answer. She firmly believes that it is an MP’s duty to campaign for the wishes of their constituents instead of blindly following the party’s orders, and besides, on this occasion ‘the Government was wrong!’.

Left: Letter from John Major to Elizabeth Peacock

Right: Peacock with miners in Yorkshire


The History of Figure SkatingRuby Jackson MIV

Modern figure skating has evolved over thousands of years to become what it is today: not only a fun form of exer-

cise but a competitive sport.

Skating began over 3,000 years ago, in southern Finland. However, some people did not consid-er it to be proper skating, as modern skaters cut through the ice rather than glide over it, as early skaters would have done. Also, modern figure skates have two edges, an inside and an out-side. These were added in the 13th or 14th cen-tury by the Dutch. They also introduced steel blades as an alternative to bone. This new blade also meant that skaters no longer needed sticks to propel themselves and skating became much easier. Construction of modern skates is much the same, although skates now are attached to a boot instead of simply strapped to the foot.

Although skates themselves have not been altered much since then, the sport itself is con-stantly changing. At first it was just a fun means of transport, but in 1742, the first skating club was formed and 30 years later, the first instruc-tional book on figure skating was published, describing basic skating moves such as figure eights. Although this was written solely for men, as women did not skate at this time. How-

ever, later, public skating ponds were opened for both sexes; the first rinks.

A century later, Jackson Haines became the first skater to incorporate dance movements into his skating, as opposed to just tracing patterns on the ice. He also introduced skates attached to a boot. Even when he died, his students set up the International Skating Union. In 1891, the first European championships were held in Germany and in 1896, the first World champi-onships in St Petersburg, Russia.

Figure skating went Olympic in 1908, the first winter sport to be introduced. However, women still skated in long skirts and bulky clothes. Sonja Henie changed this by wearing a knee-length skirt in her programs. She also changed the style of skating, using more fluid movements, and is seen to be one of the greatest pioneers of womens’ figure skating ever.

Ice skating has since evolved into its three different forms: figure skating, ice hockey and speed skating. It is a constantly changing sport and by the time you have read this article, an-other jump will probably have been invented, or another spin tried out.

In Memoriam: Vikki Askew (1957–2016)

Tim AskewVikki’s unique character emerged from her Jewish background and was forged in adversity. Her father, John, placed high value on culture and education and Vikki was aware of her own place in Jewish his-tory. She was born and raised in Leeds. Her mother taught her to speak Ladino. Her father escaped the Nazis and the Iron Guard by fleeing Romania and the importance of seizing every moment was con-firmed at the age of eight, when Vikki lost her older brother in a tragic road accident. Vikki’s ensuing life became a mitzvah - a sacred duty to make up for her brother’s loss and to serve the world and the sym-bol she always wore next to her mother’s Star of David was a 'chai', a standing for 'life' with its origins in medieval Spain.


Vikki gained a first class degree at Edinburgh in the days when only 3 were awarded. She was appointed Head of History in four schools: St Edward’s Oxford, Guildford High School, Christ’s Hospital (where she also helped to run a new girls’ boarding house and met her husband Tim) and Leeds Grammar School (where she ran the Jewish assemblies).

Vikki’s passion for history made her an inspiring teacher. She had remarkable knowledge and was fiercely but patiently intellectual. Her specialism was the Spanish Convivencia – an age where three different religions engaged with each other amid cultural fluidity. But she taught everything, including Charlemagne, the Crusades, the French Revolution, 17th Century England and the European Reforma-tion. Her knowledge of Jewish history was extensive. She lectured at the Spiro Institute and co-wrote 'The Holocaust explained' on the London Jewish Cultural Centre’s education website. The Pre-U exam board looked to her expertise to write their new specification and she was an expert on university en-trance, having written on education for the Sunday Times.

Vikki loved teaching at her last school, James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich, where she was originally appointed Deputy Head, and following a couple of year’s in Leeds, reappointed as Head of Sixth Form. Her many university contacts made her a bridge between school and Higher Education. According to one parent, she expected her girls to have 'grown up brains'. Vikki had high standards which gave students the opportunity to reach new heights. Vikki knew her girls well and led a sixth form where girls felt independent but supported and loved. She viewed pastoral care as top priority in her quest to educate the whole person and enable them to become better, wiser and hungry for lifelong education.

Vikki sustained a dedicated hands-on commitment to community action throughout her life, building successful rapports with both adults and children with learning difficulties. She was Chair of the Inde-pendent Schools Council working party on Community Action and worked dynamically with the gov-ernment in setting up and supporting the 'Step up to Serve' [#iwill] initiative to extend volunteering in state schools. She loved running the JAGS Saturday Literacy Scheme for local primary school children, gave her time freely and joyously to the Leonard Cheshire home and most importantly to her, the Ro-mania project, visiting Romania every summer for 19 years and expanding the project to other schools. Vikki felt the post-communist Romanians needed help - not an obvious decision for her, since they had robbed her paternal family of its home and business and attempted to kill her relatives – but Vikki’s way was one of healing, international cooperation and rediscovering her roots. Her view was that all races and religions should stand hand in hand against barbarism.

The project was a collaborative international exercise, aiming not just to provide fun and learning for orphans and handicapped children, but to nurture community action among fellow Romanian volun-teers and to embed the volunteering culture into post-communist society. The work was demanding, yet Vikki inspired many to go back for more. The project inspired the Romanian government to be the first country to have a National Strategy for Community Action and 105,000 Romanian students now regu-larly volunteer, from a starting base of zero.

Vikki was a citizen of the world. She spoke Russian, Spanish, Catalan, Ladino, French, Romanian and Hebrew, in addition to her classical Greek and Latin. Through her work with Euroclio, she spread the practice of good history teaching internationally and she was looking forward to gaining Spanish citi-zenship after the offer of the Spanish government to the descendants of those expelled in 1492.

Vikki bestowed an early love of reading on her two sons, to whom she also taught Latin, the elder pro-ceeding himself to Christ’s Hospital to become Head of Classics. Her Jewish identity was very important to her and she attended Bromley Reform Synagogue. As the archetypal Jewish mother, she saw the meal table as the key to family life, offered constant advice and support and was justly proud that one son went to Oxford and the other to Cambridge.

Vikki loved Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Milos and Mozart. She was known for her trademark colourful jackets, the twinkle in her eye, a razor sharp wit and a gentle humour rooted in the joy of relationships. Vikki is survived by her husband Tim and sons Edward and Daniel.

EditorsOlivia Dodd

Alice MarbachKiran Khanom

Staff EditorJoshua Newton

PrintingSue Jeffreys

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