576 days ago
What links the picture on a Scottish beer, Russ Tamblyn (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), Back to the Future 2, Don Everly ( of the singing Brothers), Axl Rose of Guns n’ Roses, Anthony Perkins (psycho), the Sound of Music and me? The answer is Venetia Strevenson my father’s first cousin who died this week. I was with my father’s sister Aunt L on the day we learned that her cousin had passed away and while she was very sorry to hear the news, she noted that she and Venetia moved in rather different social circles.
1149 days ago
I described the other day my researches into, inter alia, the big mystery in my family – who was Edith Maude Winnifrith, my great grandmother? She was certainly illegitimate but who were are parents? Is her mother really Edith Wingfield Digby? I continue to go through the papers of her son, Sir John Winnifrith, and stumble across this photo marked up on the back, in Sir John’s writing, “my mother?”
1312 days ago
Maude Winnifrith was born in 1875 and was my great grandmother. Her children included my grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith and the actress Anna Lee – once known as the British Bombshell. But who was Maude? The mystery has intrigued the family for decades and this week I hope to solve it once and for all with the assistance of a retired vicar in Oxfordshire, my father and two DNA tests.
2212 days ago
My father knows why I am in New York rather than Shipston and approves so he has had to make do with a card (which has arrived) and a present (which has not). But he is aware of what it is, something that combines two of his great loves in life: Kent and cider. Fingers crossed it will arrive tomorrow.
2441 days ago
When the Brexit remoaners paper of choice, The Guardian, suffers an internet glitch there is always the lamentable Independent which serves up a daily diet of fake news on all matters European. Yesterday we learned that Southern Salads, a Kent firm, had gone bust and 250 ex workers could thank Brexit for it all. Well that is the Indy line, except that it is palpably false. It is just made up news. Fake news at every level.
2817 days ago
Luke Johnson penned a great piece in the Sunday Times this weekend making the point that public sector pay rises have not been justoified by any increase in productivity. For instance there are several million fewer kids in secondary schools today than there were in the 1970s. It would be hard to claim that output - in terms of skills in RR&R or other key subjects - has improved yet pay for teachers has gone through the roof.
