Welcome to my 18th newsletter. It’s been almost a year since I wrote one and this is mainly due to the fact that I have been working full-time on my next book. As I am about to go on holiday I thought it would be a good moment to assess a very turbulent year and give an update on where things stand, in particular with Home Fires.

© ITV-Home FiresHome Fires Extinguished

The second series of the ITV drama series Home Fires aired in April and early May. It had fabulous reviews this time round and, as last time, had consolidated viewing figures of over six million in the UK alone. The drama has sold in 135 territories world-wide and it was an enormous success in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America, where it was broadcast on PBS Masterpiece.

In January of this year the Home Fires script-writing team met up in London. The Executive Producer, Catherine Oldfield, welcomed two new writers to the team and we sat through a long and happy day talking about the story lines for series 3. I was excited by the way the story was developing, taking us into the dangerous territory of the Blitz on Coventry, Liverpool and Manchester and ending, more or less, with ‘May Week’ when Liverpool was bombed night after night with huge loss of life and terrible damage. We explored the relationship between ‘beastly’ Bob and his wife, Pat. Their story ended in a flaming argument at the wedding of Teresa and Nick in series 2. We decided who would survive the disaster at the doctor’s surgery at the end of episode 6 and we knew what would happen to Joyce, Frances, Noah and Boris. Over the course of the spring I read the outlines for episodes 1 to 4 and was looking forward to reading the scripts in May. Then, on 12 May, at 12:08, I received a phone call from Catherine Oldfield. ‘I’m so very sorry to tell you that ITV has decided not to commission a third series of Home Fires.’ I was dumbstruck. It came absolutely out of the blue. None of us had suspected that the series would be pulled. The viewing figures had been fantastic and we had ‘won’ the 9pm slot on Sunday night every week against Undercover (BBC drama) except the first week. It just didn’t make sense. The excuse given was that the overnight viewing figures had been disappointing. And that was a half-hearted one at best. Everyone knows that viewing habits have changed out of all recognition. Witness the young and how they watch television. I don’t think any of my sons watch it live, except when they join us to watch Home Fires. Come to think of it, I seldom watch television live unless it is sport (wasn’t Murray magnificent at Wimbledon?).

The real reason Home Fires was cut was because of a changing of the guard at the top of television. ITV has a new team and, understandably, that is the moment to make a mark and bring in something new. We were simply a victim of that change. Collateral damage is how one editor described it. So, it is all over. Home Fires exists as a wonderful 12 episode drama that has been enjoyed by millions and will be missed by millions. That it was such a success is something that I will learn to celebrate, as will Simon Block, the show’s exceptional creator and writer. He should take great pride in his work, as should the magnificent cast and crew. In a way it is so good to have ended on a high rather than fizzle out like other dramas. It is just that we felt there was so much more story to tell…A World in Your Ear

Although Home Fires has gone, Jambusters is still very much with us. I continue to own all the rights in the book – film, theatre and audio. In September 2016 ChromeAudio will release an audio CD of the book read by two actresses from Home Fires, Samantha Bond and Fenella Woolgar. It is lovely to know that the world of 1940s women on the Home Front will be captured by these two wonderful voices. If you would like to pre-order a copy you can click here: jambustersaudio.co.uk.

Listen to excerpts from the audio CD:

Samantha Bond:

Fenella Woolgar & Samantha Bond:
Secrets

My new book, The Secret Life of Country Houses, is coming along well. I do not want to give too much away about it as it is still taking shape. It contains some extraordinary stories of people from all different walks of life, meeting and living in houses of sizes ranging from Blenheim Palace, which is so big that no one who works there knows how many windows it has, to a cottage in northern Scotland with no running water. I am due to finish the book in January and it will be published in early 2018. That seems a long way off but the deadline will come all too soon, I suspect.Fashion Goes North

Fashion on the Ration has been a lovely project. The exhibition ran at the Imperial War Museum from March to August 2015 and has now moved to IWM/North where it has been extended in their spacious exhibition galleries. If you have a chance to visit, I highly recommend it. Lady Mountbatten’s exquisite bra and cami-knickers, made out of an RAF silk map, are mounted on a mannequin this time. The display is bolder than in London because there is more space and the clothes look glorious. When I was told the book would get a new cover for the paperback I was sad as I loved the hardback image of Miss Parker in her tin hat and shades. I was wrong to be sad. The new cover is perfect for the smaller paperback and exactly sums up the verve of women in wartime who had something to say about what they wore and how they wore it. Congratulations to the design team at Profile.Pen Thoughts

I quite often write about archives and archivists in my newsletter and this time is no exception. Tiny details can make all the difference to a historical story and my new favourite is information in the Wilkinson Sword archive. The designer at WS had a visit in November 1940 from two ex-Shanghai policemen who wanted them to design and manufacture a stiletto knife for silent killing. It was known as the FS Fighting Knife, after the two policemen, Fairbairn and Sykes. What is so perfectly wonderful is that WS has notes from their meetings and early designs for the knife. The only thing I don’t know about that meeting is if they had biscuits with their tea. Thank heavens for archives.

Julie Summers

July 2016, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.uk

Welcome to my 17th newsletter. A new and exciting chapter is opening, as Penguin USA publishes my original book Jambusters under a new title Home Fires. The drama Home Fires, starring Samantha Bond and Francesca Annis, will be shown on PBS Masterpiece starting on Sunday 4 October 2015 at 9pm EST.Contents

© ITV-Home Fires© ITV-Home FiresJulie in a 1940 rayon dressAudley End HouseJambusters & Home Fires

Home Fires was broadcast in the UK in May/June and turned out to be an astounding success. So much so that ITV commissioned a second series in the run-up to the final two episodes. The audience figures had a consolidated rating of 6.2 million viewers and 24% of audience share for the Sunday evening slot. Their press release said: ‘Impressively, Home Fires is the best performing Sunday evening drama for ITV in 2014 and so far in 2015, after Downton Abbey.’

Who would have thought that a drama series about the WI in the Second World War, inspired by a non-fiction book, would have proved so popular? Steve November, Director of Drama at ITV, thinks he knows the answer: ‘Through Simon Block’s wonderfully observed scripts, and the characters he’s created, we’ve come to know real women who kept the home fires burning throughout the Second World War. Their war effort is an intriguing aspect of our national social history and we’re delighted the women will be reunited for a second series.’

When I spoke to Simon Block about the series he was equally convinced it was the fact that this is a women-led drama, about an aspect of the war that is rarely acknowledged, namely the perspective of the 50% of the population that was female. Most TV drama about the two world wars focuses on guns and bangs, trenches and tanks, Spitfires and Lancaster bombers. Yet the impact of war is felt miles away from the battlefield, in the homes of normal families who have to put up with unspeakable anxiety and tragedy, that continues for many years after the war is fought. That is where the drama succeeds, I think. Simon Block has managed to tease out some of the themes of my war books, such as the anxiety felt by women when their boys were conscripted or the terror of ‘the telegram’ saying a man was missing in action, and woven it into the drama to make it feel relevant today. The role of the WI is an additional layer in Home Fires that gives structure to the extraordinary work undertaken by ordinary women during the war.

Simon said to me: ‘Like most people, I think, I had no idea of the extent and importance of the role played by the WI during the Second World War. Not only in regard to its activities aimed at supporting the home front but also in terms of the support and friendship it offered to often isolated women who needed the companionship of other women like never before – even if for a few hours a month. The book opened my eyes to the great extent WI women mobilised to make such a huge contribution, generating a fantastic spirit of ‘community’.’

But for a drama writer the subject of women on the home front in the Second World War offered something more: ‘. . . a fantastic opportunity to write about a lot of women in their own right, and not merely as adjuncts to – or victims of – various men, which is so often how women are portrayed in television drama.’

So as we go to press with this newsletter, the nimble fingers of Simon Block and his co-scriptwriters are flying over their keyboards as they seek to fine-tune the six scripts of Series 2, while PBS limbers up in the USA to show Series 1 in October. How phenomenal that this has all resulted from a conversation I had with Simon back in September 2012 in a medieval house in Devon with no internet access or mobile phone signal. I am excited to see how the series goes down in the USA and eagerly await Series 2 in the UK next year.Fashion on the Ration

The exhibition closed on 31 August and has been deemed by the Imperial War Museum to have been a great success. The museum was particularly pleased to note that a new audience was attracted to the exhibition: young people interested in vintage fashion at one end of the spectrum and at the other, older people coming in to reminisce about their own wartime experiences. It has been a fascinating project to be involved in and the book seems to have attracted more press attention than almost all my other books combined. Perhaps it is the case that fashion is not just enjoyable as a subject but is a major part of our economy. My favourite fact about wartime fashion is that exports stood at about £98,000 before the war and by 1945 had increased to £502,000 per annum or about £20,000,000 in today’s money. And that at a time of severe austerity and rationing.

Every time I go to give a talk about the subject, whether at theatres or book festivals, I find a good portion of the audience dressed up in the style of the day, complete with Victory Rolls and utility dresses. The men, not to be outdone, sport waxed moustaches and slicked back hair. I do my bit in my 1940 rayon dress and matching hat but my make-up is nothing in comparison to the pillar box red lips and charcoal black eyebrows of the majority. I had hoped the exhibition would travel but it looks as though it will remain a one-off project, which is a shame. However, I am proud to have been associated with it and I look forward to the book coming out in paperback next spring.The Secret Life of Country Houses

I have been working on this book since the spring, with a few interruptions, I have to admit, but am now making good progress. Where I had thought I would find a partially linear narrative as the war progressed, in fact I have found the richest of strata that have sometimes led into one another, but have often veered off at complete tangents. From an Indian transport regiment whose mules were housed in a requisitioned cinema, to pregnant mothers of illegitimate babies who were separated from married mothers ‘so as not to offend the latters’ sensibilities’. An unexpected link to my grandfather in Northumberland was echoed by a similar link in Devon, the common denominator being Barings Bank. However, it is the detail in the houses’ histories that I find irresistible. For example, Audley End House housed Polish SOE volunteers during the war. They were trained in the art of ‘ungentlemanly warfare’ and took to the skills with gusto according to their historian. However, far, far back in the history of the house I found a detail that links the house to the twenty-first century that I found irresistible, if irrelevant. In 1542 Thomas Audley, for whom the current house is named, re-founded Magdalene College Cambridge, previously known as Buckingham College. One of the conditions of his large endowment, mostly gained from his involvement in the dissolution of the monasteries, was that ‘his heirs who lived at “the late monastery of Walden” should be visitors of the college in perpetuum and enjoy the exclusive right of nominating the master’. I was interested to know whether this right still existed. Of course it does not, that would be wholly inappropriate. The college statutes were amended to remove it. When? 2012. How I love history. This is proving to be a fascinating book to research but I shall have my work cut out to corral all the information and turn it into a fluent and engaging narrative.And Finally…

It would not be honest of me to finish this newsletter leaving you to assume that everyone in the world loves the drama series Home Fires. Not so, there have been some eagle-eyed armchair critics and a few sniffy reviews in the press. First, it seems that the male critics were disappointed, as Andy Ballingall put it, ‘that a panzer division hasn’t already torn through the village and destroyed everything after raping and pillaging the inhabitants.’ That is not what Home Fires is about, but there you go. Secondly, there were those who spotted that a flag had been incorrectly raised in the village hall, that the teacher had a suitcase that was clearly empty when she jumped off the bus, and – sin of sins – the blackout-shades on the bus’s headlights had been fitted with the 1942 and not the 1939 design. Aside from these oversights the view of Great Paxford is rosy and the beautiful Cheshire countryside close to where I grew up looks lovely on screen. That’s good enough for me. Now, where is that file on Audley End…?

Julie Summers

September 2015, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.uk

Welcome to my 17th newsletter. A new and exciting chapter is opening, as Penguin USA publishes my original book Jambusters under a new title Home Fires. The drama Home Fires, starring Samantha Bond and Francesca Annis, will be shown on PBS Masterpiece starting on Sunday 4 October 2015 at 9pm EST.Contents

• Jambusters & Home Fires
• Fashion on the Ration
• The Secret Life of Country Houses
• And Finally…

…Jambusters & Home Fires

Home Fires was broadcast in the UK in May/June and turned out to be an astounding success. So much so that ITV commissioned a second series in the run-up to the final two episodes. The audience figures had a consolidated rating of 6.2 million viewers and 24% of audience share for the Sunday evening slot. Their press release said: ‘Impressively, Home Fires is the best performing Sunday evening drama for ITV in 2014 and so far in 2015, after Downton Abbey.’

Who would have thought that a drama series about the WI in the Second World War, inspired by a non-fiction book, would have proved so popular? Steve November, Director of Drama at ITV, thinks he knows the answer: ‘Through Simon Block’s wonderfully observed scripts, and the characters he’s created, we’ve come to know real women who kept the home fires burning throughout the Second World War. Their war effort is an intriguing aspect of our national social history and we’re delighted the women will be reunited for a second series.’

When I spoke to Simon Block about the series he was equally convinced it was the fact that this is a women-led drama, about an aspect of the war that is rarely acknowledged, namely the perspective of the 50% of the population that was female. Most TV drama about the two world wars focuses on guns and bangs, trenches and tanks, Spitfires and Lancaster bombers. Yet the impact of war is felt miles away from the battlefield, in the homes of normal families who have to put up with unspeakable anxiety and tragedy, that continues for many years after the war is fought. That is where the drama succeeds, I think. Simon Block has managed to tease out some of the themes of my war books, such as the anxiety felt by women when their boys were conscripted or the terror of ‘the telegram’ saying a man was missing in action, and woven it into the drama to make it feel relevant today. The role of the WI is an additional layer in Home Fires that gives structure to the extraordinary work undertaken by ordinary women during the war.

Simon said to me: ‘Like most people, I think, I had no idea of the extent and importance of the role played by the WI during the Second World War. Not only in regard to its activities aimed at supporting the home front but also in terms of the support and friendship it offered to often isolated women who needed the companionship of other women like never before – even if for a few hours a month. The book opened my eyes to the great extent WI women mobilised to make such a huge contribution, generating a fantastic spirit of ‘community’.’

But for a drama writer the subject of women on the home front in the Second World War offered something more: ‘. . . a fantastic opportunity to write about a lot of women in their own right, and not merely as adjuncts to – or victims of – various men, which is so often how women are portrayed in television drama.’

So as we go to press with this newsletter, the nimble fingers of Simon Block and his co-scriptwriters are flying over their keyboards as they seek to fine-tune the six scripts of Series 2, while PBS limbers up in the USA to show Series 1 in October. How phenomenal that this has all resulted from a conversation I had with Simon back in September 2012 in a medieval house in Devon with no internet access or mobile phone signal. I am excited to see how the series goes down in the USA and eagerly await series 2 in the UK next year.Fashion on the Ration

The exhibition closed on 31 August and has been deemed by the Imperial War Museum to have been a great success. The museum was particularly pleased to note that a new audience was attracted to the exhibition: young people interested in vintage fashion at one end of the spectrum and at the other, older people coming in to reminisce about their own wartime experiences. It has been a fascinating project to be involved in and the book seems to have attracted more press attention than almost all my other books combined. Perhaps it is the case that fashion is not just enjoyable as a subject but is a major part of our economy. My favourite fact about wartime fashion is that exports stood at about £98,000 before the war and by 1945 had increased to £502,000 per annum or about £20,000,000 in today’s money. And that at a time of severe austerity and rationing.

Every time I go to give a talk about the subject, whether at theatres or book festivals, I find a good portion of the audience dressed up in the style of the day, complete with Victory Rolls and utility dresses. The men, not to be outdone, sport waxed moustaches and slicked back hair. I do my bit in my 1940 rayon dress and matching hat but my make-up is nothing in comparison to the pillar box red lips and charcoal black eyebrows of the majority. I had hoped the exhibition would travel but it looks as though it will remain a one-off project, which is a shame. However, I am proud to have been associated with it and I look forward to the book coming out in paperback next spring.The Secret Life of Country Houses

I have been working on this book since the spring, with a few interruptions, I have to admit, but am now making good progress. Where I had thought I would find a partially linear narrative as the war progressed, in fact I have found the richest of strata that have sometimes led into one another, but have often veered off at complete tangents. From an Indian transport regiment whose mules were housed in a requisitioned cinema, to pregnant mothers of illegitimate babies who were separated from married mothers ‘so as not to offend the latters’ sensibilities’. An unexpected link to my grandfather in Northumberland was echoed by a similar link in Devon, the common denominator being Barings Bank. However, it is the detail in the houses’ histories that I find irresistible. For example, Audley End House housed Polish SOE volunteers during the war. They were trained in the art of ‘ungentlemanly warfare’ and took to the skills with gusto according to their historian. However, far, far back in the history of the house I found a detail that links the house to the twenty-first century that I found irresistible, if irrelevant. In 1542 Thomas Audley, for whom the current house is named, re-founded Magdalene College Cambridge, previously known as Buckingham College. One of the conditions of his large endowment, mostly gained from his involvement in the dissolution of the monasteries, was that ‘his heirs who lived at ‘the late monastery of Walden’ should be visitors of the college in perpetuum and enjoy the exclusive right of nominating the master’. I was interested to know whether this right still existed. Of course it does not, that would be wholly inappropriate. The college statutes were amended to remove it. When? 2012. How I love history. This is proving to be a fascinating book to research but I shall have my work cut out to corral all the information and turn it into a fluent and engaging narrative.And Finally…

It would not be honest of me to finish this newsletter leaving you to assume that everyone in the world loves the drama series Home Fires. Not so, there have been some eagle-eyed armchair critics and a few sniffy reviews in the press. First, it seems that the male critics were disappointed, as Andy Ballingall put it, ‘that a panzer division hasn’t already torn through the village and destroyed everything after raping and pillaging the inhabitants.’ That is not what Home Fires is about, but there you go. Secondly, there were those who spotted that a flag had been incorrectly raised in the village hall, that the teacher had a suitcase that was clearly empty when she jumped off the bus, and – sin of sins – the blackout-shades on the bus’s headlights had been fitted with the 1942 and not the 1939 design. Aside from these oversights the view of Great Paxford is rosy and the beautiful Cheshire countryside close to where I grew up looks lovely on screen. That’s good enough for me. Now, where is that file on Audley End…?

Julie Summers

September 2015, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.uk

Welcome to my 16th newsletter. In my last letter I started by saying that I was looking forward to a quieter period of planning for the future. That spectacularly failed to happen and I have had the busiest spring of my career to date.Contents

• Jambusters & Home Fires
• The Arvon Link
• Fashion on the Ration
• And Finally…

Julie in her cameo-role costume after filming for six hours in September 2014. And yes, it is a grey curly wig.Jambusters & Home Fires

At last, at last, we have a transmission date. Home Fires, the drama series inspired by Jambusters, will commence on Sunday 3 May 2015 at 9pm on ITV and run for six weeks. It is quite the most exciting thing that has happened to me in my career and I am not yet sure what it is going to mean for the future. As my agent said to me recently: ‘Hold on to your hat’.

I first saw the trailer for the series in December 2014 and then had to wait patiently until mid- March to see episode one. It was one of those moments that will stay with me forever. I sat in my sitting-room, where script writer Simon Block, executive producer Catherine Oldfield and I had sat 27 months earlier, and watched the characters Simon had begun to create in December 2012 living, breathing and being. It was an extremely emotional experience and I could almost not think straight as I was watching it. The second time I saw it was in Bunbury (Cheshire) in early April, where the series was filmed the previous autumn. ITV had organised a private screening in the beautiful medieval church and we all sat transfixed, watching the village pop in and out of focus as the action took place in front of our eyes. It was a most surreal experience. Lots of people were whispering excitedly when they saw themselves, their houses, their cars, but by the third quarter of the episode there was silence: a sense that the drama was too important to interrupt and the church was almost completely quiet, except for the odd gasp or laugh in the relevant place. When the closing credits rolled there was a moment’s hesitation before the audience burst into loud applause. Afterwards, when some of the noise had subsided and people were able to move around, I overheard one man saying to another: ‘… absolutely fascinating. Never seen anything like it. Who’d have thought to put on a drama about the war from the women’s point of view?’ Bingo. That is exactly the reaction one wanted to hear. Let us just hope it is similarly positive when it comes to our screens for real. I hope you enjoy it.

The beautiful medieval church of St Boniface in Bunbury where we watched the first public screening of Home Fires on 9 AprilThe Arvon Link

Those of you who know me will remember that I love coincidences. The full story of the birth of Home Fires from my perspective is recounted in the new edition of Jambusters. The short version is that after I finished writing the book in the summer of 2012 I took myself off to Totleigh Barton, a beautiful 16th century manor house in an idyllic corner of Devon. It is run by the Arvon Foundation, a wonderful organisation set up in 1968 to run courses and offer retreats for writers of all levels of experience. I signed up to a script-writing course as a beginner. And a beginner I remain, though a much better informed one than I had been before the course. I am no television script-writer but I did have the immense good fortune to be tutored by two very talented ones: Brian Dooley, famous for The Smoking Room, amongst other comedies, and Simon Block, now the creator and writer of Home Fires.

I was having a tutorial with Simon on the very last day of the course and as we both knew it was pointless talking about script-writing, we got to chatting about my non-fiction work. I told him about Jambusters and showed him the jacket for the hardback on my phone. He seemed interested, which rather surprised me. I did not think the WI would necessarily grab the attention of a script-writer whose work had to date included writing for Lewis, Shetland and an award-winning drama The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall. Well, I was wrong and a month after the course ended Simon wrote to me and asked if I would like to meet his friend and TV Producer, Catherine Oldfield, who had worked on many programmes including Foyle’s War. That was recommendation enough and a few days later my agent, Francine Fletcher, and I turned up at a small restaurant in Covent Garden. By the end of lunch we had agreed I would send Catherine the proof of Jambusters and she in turn promised to read it and get back to me soonest. Which she did. Three days later she emailed, ‘Summers, you made me cry’. The next few months were a rollercoaster in so many ways. Nothing was certain but everything was possible. Then, nearly 18 months after we had first met, I received the phone call I had been longing for. ‘We are going to make a six part drama series.’ That was 18 March 2014. Script-writing happened at breakneck speed over the spring and filming commenced in September. The cast and production crew were fortunate to have only 2 days of bad weather. Cheshire was showing off to the maximum. Now the whole show has moved on and the drama is real. It exists and it is soon to become public. A unique experience for me and so far from anything I was thinking when I settled down in 2009 to write about the wartime WI.

The final piece in the puzzle for me came in April 2015. To my intense delight the news of the transmission date came through as I was driving from Oxford to Clun in Shropshire to speak to Arvon students doing a non-fiction course at The Hurst. The connection I had made in Totleigh Barton two and a half years earlier had come full circle on the exact day I was making my first visit to Arvon in Shropshire as a guest lecturer. As I said, I do love coincidences.Fashion on the Ration

Not to be overshadowed by the WI, the book and exhibition Fashion on the Ration at the Imperial War Museum have enjoyed lots of press and thousands of visitors. The museum is particularly thrilled that the exhibition is attracting younger visitors as well as people who enjoy reminiscing about living through clothes rationing and Make-Do and Mend. I am very pleased that one of the themes of the book and show is that wartime clothing, while limited in design, was not dull in terms of colour. This is reflected in the wardrobe chosen by Lucinda Wright for the clothes worn by the characters in Home Fires.

I just want to say a very warm thank you to all of you who have been with me on this journey in one way or another over the last few years. It has been great fun and as I look back over the newsletters that I first started writing in September 2009, quite a lot of water has passed under the bridge. My particular thanks to Andy Ballingall, who puts this newsletter together and is responsible for my website and to Graham Ives, who is a wonderful and generous editor.

Julie Summers

May 2015, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.uk

Welcome to my 15th newsletter. After an autumn of intense activity on all fronts I am looking forward to a quieter period of planning for the future.Contents

• Jambusters
• Fashion on the Ration
• Mountain Matters
• Hotel Majestic
• Pen Thoughts
• Future Events

Samantha Bond: to feature on the forthcoming Jambusters Audio CDJambusters

There is nothing to report on Jambusters the drama series, now re-titled Home Fires, as ITV wish to keep their powder dry until shortly before the series is aired in spring 2015. I will give a full update on this shortly before broadcast but please bear with me until then. A new edition of Jambusters the book, to coincide with the TV series, will be published with a preface telling the story of how it went from non-fiction to fiction in two years.

However, a really exciting project is underway to turn an abridged version of the book into an audio CD as we did for Stranger in the House and The Colonel of Tamarkan, read by Lesley Manville and Anton Lesser respectively. This time Chrome Audio is seeking crowd funding to get the project off the ground and the book will be read by the wonderful Samantha Bond. It is so thrilling that people are really interested in what women did on the home front in the countryside during the war. The audio book will appear in the spring if we can get pledges for 1,000 copies, so if you know anyone who might be interested, do please point them towards the webpage http://jambustersaudio.co.uk/.Fashion on the Ration

This book is due to be published at the end of February and the exhibition of the same title will open on 5 March at the Imperial War Museum, London. It will run until 31 August 2015 and there are rumours that it might travel abroad but at the time of writing nothing is fixed. The story of wartime clothing and fashion is a tale of two halves. On the one hand there was the vision of the fashion industry and the haute couture houses who designed Utility clothes for the home market and more luxurious designs for South Africa, America and Brazil, and on the other, the Make-Do and Mend worn by the man or woman on the street. What interested me was where the two met and overlapped. It seems almost impossible to imagine nowadays, but the fashion editor of Vogue advocated sewing brightly patterned or coloured pockets in contrasting shades to liven up a dull skirt or pinafore dress. Picture Post featured a showgirl from the Windmill Theatre who worked as a fully-trained air-raid warden. Other journalists, such as Anne Scott-James, deplored trousered women in West End restaurants and ’16 stone women in flannel bags … and similar incongruous sights.’ The War Office commissioned corsets for women in the services to have pockets for carrying loose change (bus money) as women in uniform were not allowed to carry handbags. Although there are plenty of amusing anecdotes, this is a serious look at a fascinating period when the government had such minute control over people’s lives that civil servants at the Board of Trade could dictate the length of men’s socks and the amount of material in women’s knickers.Mountain Matters

I retired from the chairmanship of the Mountain Heritage Trust in September after four years in post and almost a decade on the committee. It has been a wonderful time in so many ways and I have enjoyed working with the outstanding archivist, Maxine Willett, who has brought professionalism and dedication to the job and put the Trust on the map as a leading example of good practice in preserving and documenting collections. I shall miss the work but I needed to move on and let someone else take over.

K2 Showing the Abruzzi Spur
© Chris Bonington Picture Library

Actually, it is strictly speaking not quite over yet. On Wednesday 11 February I will be interviewing Chris Bonington at the Royal Geographical Society in London to mark his 80th birthday and some sixty years at the top of British climbing and mountaineering.

Chris celebrated his 80th birthday by climbing the Old Man of Hoy, proving, if proof ever were needed, that he richly deserves his place in the pantheon of great British climbers. Over six decades Chris has celebrated first ascents and extraordinary mountaineering leadership all over the world, from his ground-breaking ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger in 1962 to leading the 1975 Mount Everest expedition that successfully placed two Britons, Doug Scott and Dougal Haston on the summit.

Chris Bonington
© Chris Bonington Picture Library

We will be joined for this special event by climbing friends and family including Doug Scott, Charles Clarke, Mike Thompson, Jim Fotheringham, Paul Ross, John Porter and Rupert Bonington who together span Chris’s sixty-five years on rock, snow and ice, and have shared triumph and tragedy.

This is not the first time I have interviewed Chris but it is certainly the most high-profile event we have done together and I am enormously looking forward to it. Tickets are going like hot-cakes, so if you would like to join us, shout now as I really do believe it is one not to be missed.Hotel Majestic

Many years ago I remember being told about my great-grandfather, Harry Summers, who spent the last few years of his life as a lonely old man living in a hotel in Harrogate. It had always struck me as a somewhat sad end to a long and distinguished life but now I know that was not the case. I mean, the life was long and distinguished alright but he did not die a lonely old man. He had a companion with whom he travelled to Egypt for three months every winter and who was a regular visitor at the Majestic where he lived. During the war the RAF took over the main part of the hotel and the long-term residents were moved to a smaller wing. When I discovered this I found myself wondering what had happened to other houses, hotels and premises that were requisitioned after 1939. I decided that there was a story to be told and my agent agreed that it could possibly be a topic for a new book. I went off to see what information could be uncovered. A few months into the research I can assure you that there are some fascinating stories to be told. I am not interested in the country houses and castles, whose stories are already well documented, but the smaller properties whose inhabitants were told unceremoniously that they must give up their house, home or farm ‘for the war effort’ and sometimes did not move back in for six years. This feels like a very wonderful project and sits well with my passion for art and architecture as well as nosing around social history. At the time of writing I am waiting to sign the contract and it will be great to have something solid on the calendar for 2015-16.Pen Thoughts

I cannot get away from paper diaries. Try as I might, I have not succeeded. Every December I am lucky enough to receive the gift of a dark blue leather bound Letts diary which is just the right size for my handbag. Apparently this ‘original’ diary dates from 1812 and I find it rather satisfying to think that Mr Letts’ design that would have been good enough for my great-great-great-great grandfather – had he not been an illiterate cobbler in Bolton – is good enough for me today. Being a history-minded person I like the fact that some things stand the test of time.

Julie Summers

December 2014, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.ukFuture Events

• The Kirkgate, Cockermouth
  Tuesday 6 January 2015
  8pm Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine
  The Keswick Mountaineering Club
• Ellis Brigham, 3-11 Southampton St, London WC2E 7HA
  Wednesday 28 January 2015
  7:30pm Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine (double bill with climber Sandy Allen)
  www.ellis-brigham.com
• The Kings Arms, 168 Whiteladies Rd, Bristol, BS8 2XZ
  Thursday 29 January 2015
  7:30pm Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine (double bill with climber Sandy Allen)
  Kings Arms Bristol
• Ellis Brigham Mountain Sports, Castlefied Manchester, M3 4NF
  Tuesday 3 February 2015
  7:30pm Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine (double bill with climber Sandy Allen)
  www.ellis-brigham.com

• Royal Geographical Society, London
  Wednesday 11 February 2015
  7pm Chris Bonington: My Climbing Life
  Tickets are priced at £25 and can be bought from www.worldexpeditions.com or via cheque from Mountain Heritage Trust.

• Words by the Water Festival, Keswick
  Tuesday 10 March 2015
  11am Fashion on the Ration
  Click for details

Welcome to my 14th newsletter and the first one for almost a year. The reason for this gap is that I was waiting to be allowed to announce the news that ITV has commissioned a six-part drama series inspired by Jambusters. This is definitely the most exciting development in my writing career to date.Contents

• Jambusters are Go
• Fashion on the Ration
• Mountain Matters
• Pen Thoughts
• Forthcoming Events

the official CC41 clothing label that had to be sewn or stuck onto every utility garment or item made, including furniture.left to right: Chris Bonington, 28 hours after having a toe amputated, Julie Summers, Melvyn Bragg and Leo HouldingRichard Steele, BA.Jambusters are Go

It would be a long story to describe how we got to where we are now, and I will not bore you with that here, but four scripts have been written, and director, producer and script editor have all been appointed. The wonderful thing from my perspective is that the Executive Producer, Catherine Oldfield, has involved me in the story-lining and I consult on the scripts for historical accuracy. It is a fascinating process and one that I find immensely creative. It is essential for authenticity that facts are correct and in particular that the detail of WI procedure is followed to the letter.

I have always felt strongly that it should represent a true picture of what women living in a village would have seen or experienced, not another series in Blitzed-out London. The location is the north-west, which was full of airfields, plus Ellesmere Port with the huge oil refinery and of course the great cities of Liverpool and Manchester. The backdrop to the war was the Battle for the Atlantic, which went on for the whole six years. There are three writers working on the drama. Simon Block, the main writer and the show’s creator, is fantastically generous in letting me see early drafts of scripts. When I attended a three day story-lining meeting in April there were a lot of questions about what would have happened at particular moments during the war, what incidents we could introduce to make good drama. I was on hand to answer questions about the introduction of food rationing, national registration, requisitioning and so forth.

At one point Simon decided he had a question to which I would not know the answer. He asked me what date it started snowing in 1940. To my embarrassment I did know. There had been a big WI meeting scheduled for 31 January but it had to be cancelled because it had started snowing heavily in the south east on 27 January. I had read about it the previous day when I was checking through Home & Country at the WI’s Denman College. I felt a complete anorak.

I want to put on record here that I feel confident and comfortable with what the writers and producers are developing. Simon’s world feels authentic and believable. It is full of strong women with personality, energy and verve, coupled with human frailty. He is a brilliant writer and although he will be embarrassed to hear me say that, I can’t imagine anybody better to write this drama. Francis Hopkinson, the head of ITV Studios, described Simon’s script as ‘brilliant’ and he’s right.

The drama will be screened sometime in 2015. There is more information here. It will be filmed in Cheshire, which is where it is set.

I am hoping to go and watch the filming for a day or two and I have been told I may be an extra, which will be great fun. I look forward to dressing up in a late 1930s outfit.Fashion on the Ration

This book is due to be published at the beginning of March so I am writing it at the moment and am about to start editing the third draft. I describe my first drafts as butterfly soup – it was an expression Philip Pullman used, I think. Anyway, it is an accurate picture of what the book looks like at the moment and I just have to draw the butterfly out of the soup and spread fairy dust on its wings. The facts about clothes rationing and how people coped in wartime are fabulous and there are some very amusing anecdotes. In one exchange of letters the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, wrote to the President of the Board of Trade, Hugh Dalton, bemoaning the fact that his clergy were finding it almost impossible to get new cassocks made, as the amount of material available to the Church’s tailors had been reduced by two-thirds. Dalton promised he would look into the matter if the Archbishop would make an announcement that it was acceptable for women to attend church hatless and without stockings. Temple agreed. More material was provided for cassocks and women were given official permission to attend church without stockings or hats.

There is a lot more to come and I am working closely with the Imperial War Museum, London, who will be mounting a major exhibition on the same subject next spring.

There will be quite a lot going on in 2015.

Update: Fashion on the Ration now published by profile books.Mountain Matters

On 23 May we opened our mountaineering gallery in the newly refurbished Keswick Museum & Art Gallery. It is so good to have a space at last where we can mount exhibitions and show off some of the fabulous archive material held by the Mountain Heritage Trust. The first exhibition revolves around the first ascent of Central Buttress on Great Gable in April 1914 by Siegfried Herford. He was probably the greatest and most talented climber of his generation but tragically he was killed in 1916. Shockingly, almost a third of the membership of the Climbers Club died in the First World War and we have included a role of honour in the exhibition.

The museum has been really well designed and it has an outstanding café, so if you are in Keswick, it is well worth a visit for food as well as the exhibitions.

On Friday 6 June I was in Cumbria for a charity version of In Our Time, hosted by Melvyn Bragg. It happened to be the 90th anniversary of the last sighting of Mallory and Sandy Irvine, so quite an auspicious day to be speaking about them. The panel consisted of Chris Bonington, me and Leo Houlding. Chris’s credentials are impeccable, of course and Leo is an outstanding climber and had the fun (and honour) of playing Sandy Irvine in the docu-drama The Wildest Dream which I also had a tiny role in as a talking head. We had a fabulous discussion and Lord Bragg kept us more or less under control, though I think he was slightly taken aback when some of the facts about climbing on Everest came out. Particularly the quantity of Montebello champagne and quails in foie gras that the 1924 expedition took along. Well, after all, it was an Empire expedition. What would you expect?Pen Thoughts

Janet Street Porter wrote an opinion piece the other day about the joy of receiving hand-written letters. I agree. It is always a treat to see hand-writing on an envelope when it glides through my letter box. I have recently begun sorting through my collection of special letters that I have kept, starting with one from my father extolling the joys of life at university, which he wrote to me when I was living in Munich in 1980. I discovered that I have over 1,000. I wonder, will we keep special emails in the future?

On a personal note, Chris and I had the greatest of fun going to see our middle ‘baby’ graduate. Here is photographic proof that he is actually no longer a baby but a rather large BA.

Julie Summers

July 2014, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.ukForthcoming Events

• Retford Town Hall
  Friday 29th August 2014
  7pm: Julie Summers in conversation with Paul Trickett about her three Home Front war books
• Ladies Literary Luncheon
  1st September 2014
  Lainston House Hotel, Winchester
  Jambusters

Welcome to my 14th newsletter and the first one for almost a year. The reason for this gap is that I was waiting to be allowed to announce the news that ITV has commissioned a six-part drama series based on Jambusters. This is definitely the most exciting development in my writing career to date.Contents

• Jambusters are Go
• Fashion on the Ration
• Mountain Matters
• Pen Thoughts
• Forthcoming Events

Scartho Road Cemetery, Grismby, war plot with the newly installed panel on the left © CWGCKilchoman Military Cemetery on the Isle of Islay © CWGCThe Boyle headstone, Glasgow Lambhill Cemetery
© The Scottish War Graves ProjectDoug Scott and Chris Bonington (left) crawling down the Ogre ©Doug ScottJambusters are Go

It would be a long story to describe how we got to where we are now, and I will not bore you with that here, but four scripts have been written, and director, producer and script editor have all been appointed. The wonderful thing from my perspective is that the Executive Producer wants me to be involved in the story-lining and to consult on the scripts for historical accuracy. It is a fascinating process and one that I find immensely creative. It is critical for authenticity that facts are correct, and in particular that the detail of WI procedure is followed to the letter. Any slip-ups there and the programme will lose credibility with a very large percentage of the WI, which we do not want.

There are three writers working on the drama. Simon Block, the main writer and the show’s creator, is fantastically generous in letting me see early drafts of scripts so that I can check for infelicities and make sure the tone of the language is right. We have had some very amusing email exchanges and he frequently pulls my leg. When I attended a three day story-lining meeting in April there were a lot of questions about what would have happened at particular moments during the war, what incidents we could introduce to make good drama and so forth. I felt strongly that it should represent a true picture of what women living in a village would have seen or experienced. So no Blitz or bombing in the first series, which goes up to June 1940. The location is Cheshire, which was full of airfields, close to Ellesmere Port with the huge oil refinery, within a few miles of Chester and close enough to Liverpool to be associated with that great city. The war in Cheshire would have been the Battle for the Atlantic, which went on for the whole six years of the war. So I had to be on hand to answer questions about the introduction of food rationing, national registration, requisitioning and so forth.

It was an immensely creative process and great fun. On one occasion Simon decided he had a question to which I would not know the answer. He asked me what date it started snowing in 1940. To my embarrassment I did know. There had been a big WI meeting scheduled for 31 January but it had to be cancelled because it had started snowing heavily on 27 January. I had read about it the previous day when I was checking through Home & Country at the WI’s Denman College. I felt a complete anorak.

The drama is provisionally titled JAMBUSTERS and will be screened sometime early next summer. We probably won’t know the exact slot or date until closer to the time but the team hope it will be 9pm on Sunday nights. To date we have scripts for the first four episodes, two by Simon Block, one by Mark Burt and the other by Tina Pepler. Simon will be writing 5 and 6 over the next couple of months and filming starts at the end of August. There is more information on the cast and production team here [ITV press release]Fashion on the Ration

This book is due to be published at the beginning of March so I am writing it at the moment and am about to start editing the first draft. I describe my first drafts as butterfly soup – it was an expression Philip Pullman used, I think. Anyway, it is an accurate picture of what the book looks like at the moment and I just have to draw the butterfly out of the soup and spread fairy dust on its wings. The facts about clothes rationing and how people coped in wartime are fabulous and there are some very amusing anecdotes. In one exchange of letters the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, wrote to the President of the Board of Trade, Hugh Dalton, bemoaning the fact that his clergy were finding it almost impossible to get new cassocks made, as the amount of material available to the Church’s tailors had been reduced by two-thirds. Dalton promised he would look into the matter if the Archbishop would make an announcement that it was acceptable for women to attend church hatless and without stockings. Fisher agreed. More material was provided for cassocks and women were given official permission to attend church without stockings or hats.

There is a lot more to come and I am working closely with the Imperial War Museum, London, who will be mounting a major exhibition on the same subject next spring.

There will be quite a lot going on in 2015.Mountain Matters

On 23 May we opened our mountaineering gallery in the newly refurbished Keswick Museum & Art Gallery. It is so good to have a space at last where we can mount exhibitions and show off some of the fabulous archive material held by the Mountain Heritage Trust. The first exhibition revolves around the first ascent of Central Buttress on Great Gable in April 1914 by Siegfried Herford. He was probably the greatest and most talented climber of his generation but tragically he was killed in 1916. Shockingly, almost a third of the membership of the Climbers Club died in the First World War and we have included a role of honour in the exhibition.

The museum has been really well designed and it has an outstanding café, so if you are in Keswick, it is well worth a visit for food as well as the exhibitions.Pen Thoughts

Janet Street Porter wrote an opinion piece the other day about the joy of receiving hand-written letters. I agree. It is always a treat to see hand-writing on an envelope when it glides through my letter box. I have recently begun sorting through my collection of special letters that I have kept, starting with one from my father extolling the joys of life at university, which he wrote to me when I was living in Munich in 1980. I discovered that I have over 1,000. I wonder, will we keep special emails in the future?

Julie Summers

June 2014, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.ukForthcoming Events

• A charity In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg
  Friday 6th June 2014, 7pm
  Hutton-in-the-Forest, Cumbria
  To mark the 90th anniversary of the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine
  Chris Bonington, Leo Houlding and Julie Summers sold out
• Retford Town Hall
  Friday 29th August 2014
  7pm: Julie Summers in conversation with Paul Trickett about her three Home Front war books
• Ladies Literary Luncheon
  1st September 2014
  Lainston House Hotel, Winchester
  Jambusters

Welcome to my 13th newsletter. I’m shocked to see that I have not sent a letter out since January of this year, although I have been using www.facebook.com/Jambusters1 to mention the odd thing that is going on with the book. This book came out on 28 February 2013 and has been studiously ignored by Radio 4, all the mainstream press and the Daily Mail, who bought the serial rights but never ran it. However, the sales have been more than healthy thanks to the grapevine and the WI, who have embraced the book wholeheartedly. So thank you to everyone who has been so supportive.

Despite quiet on the review front, I have never been asked to do so many talks and events. I have spent at least one, and often two or three, days a week going out and about, lecturing about Jambusters and other projects, so I have not been slothful. However, the main part of my written work since the book came out has been for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission project.Contents

• A Grave Matter
• Mountain Matters
• Beauty on Duty
• Pen Thoughts
• Forthcoming Events

Scartho Road Cemetery, Grismby, war plot with the newly installed panel on the left © CWGCKilchoman Military Cemetery on the Isle of Islay © CWGCThe Boyle headstone, Glasgow Lambhill Cemetery
© The Scottish War Graves ProjectDoug Scott and Chris Bonington (left) crawling down the Ogre ©Doug ScottA Grave Matter

A year ago the Commission (CWGC) asked me to write Visitor Information Panels for 100 of their UK cemeteries. I know I have mentioned this extraordinary fact in previous newsletters but it bears repeating. There are 23,000 CWGC cemeteries and memorials in 153 countries worldwide. Half of all those sites are in the UK and the only country in the world that has more burials is France. Some 170,000 servicemen and women are buried in the UK. Why, you might ask? Well, it has been my job to find out and tell people, and the reasons have been far more interesting and diverse than I would have thought possible. Some died of wounds sustained on the Western Front, at Gallipoli or further afield. Others died of disease or in training accidents. Many Second World War burials are Air Force or Navy, both Merchant and Royal.

I am constantly amazed, as I take on new cemeteries for research, just how much of the social history of an area is caught up in the stories of the servicemen and women who died and are buried in war graves. The First World War, in particular, changed the history of towns and villages throughout the United Kingdom. Take Grimsby for example. There is a stunning war plot in Scartho Road, a huge municipal cemetery in the centre of the town, with 200 Second World War burials but the 281 First World War burials dispersed throughout the cemetery. Why are they scattered? They are the graves of men who died and were buried in family plots at the request of their relatives. The majority of them are local men who were part of the fishing fleet that became the first auxiliary patrol, hunting for mines and submarines off the East coast. There were 880 vessels and 9,000 men from the Humberside fishing trade patrolling the waters. A large proportion of the fleet was lost.

Then, on 18 August 1915 the E13 submarine was blown up by a German destroyer in Danish waters. Fifteen men died in the incident and their remains brought back to Hull 10 days later to be transported to their home towns the following day. One observer wrote: “The scene of the fifteen coffins, draped in the Union Jacks, each with its own hearse and drawn by black horses passing through Hull city centre, while thousands thronged the route to Paragon Station, was described as one of the most moving of the war. One was that of a local man, Herbert Staples, who was laid to rest here at Scartho Road.”

On the Isle of Islay there is a cemetery called Kilchoman with 73 graves in the corner of a large plot. It turns out that the cemetery originally contained the remains of 300 American soldiers as well as the 73 British sailors. These soldiers had been on their way to the Western Front in February 1918 when their ship, the Otranto, was involved in a collision in dense fog and more than 400 drowned. After the First World War, the soldiers were all moved either to the US or to the US cemetery at Brookwood. Only the graves of the sailors remain.

I can cope with the big stories and the social history. Where I come unstuck is when I find a family story that is particularly heartbreaking. While I was researching Glasgow Lambhill Cemetery I came across a headstone with the names and dates of death of four men from the same family. Private Robert Boyle, the youngest, is buried in Lambhill, having died of wounds in hospital in July 1916. He was 28 and I guess he was injured on the Somme. His three brothers are all named on the headstone but died elsewhere. Samuel Boyle died in October 1914 and is commemorated by name on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres, so he must have been involved in First Ypres and his body never recovered. The next brother, Alexander Boyle, is commemorated on the Helles Memorial on Gallipoli. He died in June 1915 and similarly, his remains were never identified. And then the oldest brother, David Boyle, died in August 1915 when his ship was torpedoed. He was a member of the Mercantile Marine and was 49 years old. His name is on the Tower Hill Memorial in London. How does any mother recover from that kind of horror?

It sounds, perhaps, a bit of a miserable job to write about these cemeteries but it is not. It is hugely uplifting to think that their graves are still so beautifully cared for almost 100 years after they died. The Commission is an impressive and caring organisation and I feel very lucky to be working with them. 48 completed, 52 to go.Mountain Matters

The Mountain Heritage Trust, of which I have now been chairman for three years, has begun to flourish. For the last six or seven years it has been dogged by financial worries and underfunding. However, a growing relationship between Mountain Heritage and the National Trust is changing people’s perception of what we can achieve. We hope it will lead to MHT exhibitions and displays in a small number of NT properties in climbing areas such as Llanberis, the Peak District and the South West. Mountaineering and climbing has some of the most spectacular imagery and a good number of captivating stories to tell, so we are delighted to be able to have a larger platform to bring these to the attention of the public.

Meantime, this autumn I am organising a fundraising dinner in London called A Night on the Ogre with two of Britain’s most famous climbers – Chris Bonington and Doug Scott. On 13 July 1977, just after dusk, Chris and Doug reached the summit of the Ogre, in Pakistan. It stands 7,285 metres, a height where the amount of oxygen in the air is just half of that breathed at sea level. Recognised as the hardest rock climbed at that altitude at the time, it was a monumental achievement and it was twenty-four years before it was climbed again.

After the sun had set Doug was making the first abseil off the summit and slipped on verglas and broke both his legs near the ankles. Four days later, during another abseil, Chris smashed two ribs. Altogether the descent took eight days, with Chris and Doug fighting for survival. Crawling off the Ogre in a blizzard with just two fellow climbers, Mo Antoine and Clive Rowland, to assist them, and no food for five days, resulted in an epic tale of strength and determination against all the odds.

This escape has taken its place amongst the legends of mountaineering history and I believe it will be a terrific evening in October. MHT keeps me on my toes and takes up far more of my time than it really should, but with stories like this to be told, I cannot really complain.Beauty on Duty

Utility Underwear from a wartime collection belonging to Eve DaviesI am never completely happy when I haven’t got a good book project on the go, so I was genuinely excited and thrilled to be asked to write a book on the history of wartime fashion for Profile Books. It will be published in time for an exhibition on the same subject at the Imperial War Museum in Spring 2015. The IWM will be closely involved in the project and I hope their historians will help me to avoid clangers about seams, stitching and styles. Those of you who know me well will smile at the idea of me writing about fashion. I am definitely not fashionable. But I have been brought in to look at the social history side of wartime clothing, hair styles and the like, so it should be a great fun project and I cannot wait to get my teeth into it.Pen ThoughtsBill Drower at the old Toosey family home in Birkenhead for the launch of The Colonel of Tamarkan in 2005Mattie (left) and Tiggy, my constant companions in my office. They have a wine box each and show no interest in my writing whatsoever.

Next month my literary agency, Felicity Bryan, celebrates 25 years in the business. It is a fabulous achievement. So when I was on a recent cycling holiday in Devon, I took the time to write to my agent to offer my congratulations and thanks for a very creative partnership that has lasted nearly a dozen years. I wrote by hand, as I always try to do with personal letters, and she told me she received the letter with trepidation. A hand-written envelope is often a harbinger of bad news. That got me thinking, because in my line of work, a hand-written envelope invariably means someone of the older generation writing to me with comments or, if I’m very lucky, a story.

My all time favourite hand-written letter came from Bill Drower, who had been in a prisoner of war with my grandfather in the Far East. Towards the very end of the war he had fallen foul of the psychopathic camp commander, Noguchi, and had ended up being imprisoned in a hole in the ground for 77 days. Oxford educated, a gentleman to the core, Bill never held a grudge against the Japanese for his torment and his letter to me opened thus:

“My dear Miss Summers, My name is Captain William Mortimer Drower and your grandfather was kind to me when I got into a spot of bother in the camp gaol…”

After that initial contact in 2003 I got to know Bill quite well and I count it as one of the great privileges of my life to have met and spent time with this remarkable man. The last time I saw him he was short of breath but still full of vim. I had my youngest son with me and Bill challenged Sandy to a game of chess. They played on a board that had been dropped into his prison camp by the RAF in 1945. Sandy was a good chess player but Bill beat him soundly. Three weeks later he had a fall and died. When I told his daughter, Sarah, the story of the chess match she said she was amazed. He had not played chess since 1945, although he had kept that board as a memento of his time in the POW camps.

I have kept all 23 of his hand-written letters in their hand-written envelopes. To me they are anything but bad news.

Julie Summers

August 2013, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.uk

Welcome to my 12th newsletter – the first of 2013. Happy New Year to you all. It is six months since I last wrote but there was little to report as I was in the final editing phase of my WI book and busy working on a long-term project with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. However, 2013 is going to be an exciting year. Jambusters, three years in the making, is due to be published next month and very thrilling it will be too. I don’t think I have ever worked and reworked a book so thoroughly and I know that none to date has produced as much interest and comment in advance of publication as this one has. Rather than tell the story of the book I thought I would devote part of this newsletter to an appreciation of archives, such a vital part of the book’s genesis. Archives crop up in older newsletters as an afterthought but a few things have happened recently that make me want to set this up centre stage.Contents

• Heritage Matters
• Jam Tomorrow
• Pen Thoughts
• And Finally…
• Forthcoming Events

Heritage MattersSiegfried Herford on a traverse, 1911

Archivists are the custodians of our national memory. Without them, precious material that makes up this memory would be lost. And believe me, much has already been lost. I set up the Sandy Irvine archive in 1999 and took advice from conservationists about handling fragile material such as old letters, original photographs and engineering drawings. However, I’m no professional, so handed the whole thing over to Sandy’s old College, Merton, in 2007 and it was a great relief. A few organisations – not just Oxbridge colleges – are lucky enough to have a professional archivist and this is an advantage beyond most people’s understanding. Many of the archives I use when researching my books are run by amateurs. Some are good, some less so and a few are excellent. Let me tell you the story, briefly, of an archive I am associated with and why it works where others do not.

Oxygen mask and regulator used by
Dougal Haston on the Mount Everest
expedition 1975
Mountain Heritage Trust Collection
© James BettneyOne of my roles is Chairman of the Mountain Heritage Trust, based in Cumbria. The trust, or MHT as it is known, cares for the vast legacy of British mountaineering and climbing which stretches back almost 200 years. It is run by Maxine Willett, the only employee of the trust, and her post is part- funded by the British Mountaineering Council. Apart from collecting material for the MHT archive, Maxine’s main role is to record where material is lodged in other collections, private or public. Mountaineering and climbing clubs now routinely give Maxine information about what they have, they ask her for advice on how to deal with their archive material and they benefit hugely from her expertise. As the database of information grows, so her knowledge has expanded and she is now one of the best informed people on the history and heritage of British Alpinism and climbing. So, if a researcher, historian or author wishes to know, for example, about the development of oxygen sets for high altitude mountaineering, they can start at MHT, which holds Dougal Haston’s set from his and Doug Scott’s 1975 Mount Everest ascent. They can learn that the 1950s sets are at the Royal Geographical Society and that the 1920s sets are . . . Oh, where are they? Well, there is an oxygen cylinder at the Alpine Club, a re-formed set at the RGS but, unfortunately, a tidy-minded curator in the 1970s threw away Sandy Irvine’s prototype set because it was old, dusty and taking up too much room. Along with a whole lot of other material in a certain collection. What a shame.

The greatest danger to an archive and its contents is when the company that owns it or the overseeing body goes through a restructuring process. A very well-respected organisation, that I work with regularly, redefined itself about 35 years ago and destroyed all personal records because they were of no interest to the new entity in its new guise. This has since proven to be one of the great losses to historians interested in the First World War and, search though one will, there is nothing left from this unique area of history. When archival material is destroyed, the national memory loses out.

A well-maintained and documented archive can do more than supply information to specialist researchers. It can provide material for wide-reaching projects that are cross-curricular. We at MHT are going to open a dedicated mountaineering and climbing exhibition gallery in the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery in 12 months’ time. 2014 is the anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War and through our collections we have succeeded, effortlessly, to put together an exhibition that will tie climbing and climbers into the anniversary. One of the smaller archives we have acquired is that of Siegfried Herford. He was, before his untimely death in January 1916 at the age of 24, one of the most brilliant rock-climbers of his generation. Before the war he took part in a series of climbs which were filmed by the Abraham Brothers, pioneers in climbing and mountaineering photography, and a major collection of their material has been given to MHT on long-term loan. Thus we can draw, in one exhibition, on climbing, photography, film-making, equipment, personalities and the tragedy of the Great War. And that is just from MHT’s own collections.Jam Tomorrow

Coming back to my work on Jambusters, there is no way that I could have written that book without the well-preserved archive material in the WI’s national, county and institute collections. ‘Collections’ is grandly put: some of these treasures, such as record books and photograph albums, are passed from secretary to secretary, president to president, and reside in boxes under beds, in cupboards or in attics. But they are vital. They tell a story that is fading from the national memory as the generation of women who lived and worked through the Second World War are reaching their nineties. The National Federation of Women’s Institutes ran a campaign in 2012 to encourage institutes to look at their old material with a view to archiving it or handing it over to county federations for safekeeping. It elicited a lot of responses. But most precious material remains in private collections and is dependent on the whim of family members responsible for clearing out attics and cupboards, often at a time of considerable distress.

One of the most useful personal collections for me was in the correspondence of Mrs Denys Blewitt from Essex, who was President of her local WI and a prolific letter writer to her son and daughter, both of whom were in uniform in the Middle East throughout the war. Her daughter returned her letters to her mother for safekeeping and Mrs Blewitt was sure that, being filled with ‘such very parochial matters’, the correspondence would probably ‘share the fate of most old letters of going into the paper-basket, considerably dusty and yellowed some years hence without further reading’. How wrong she was, and how fortunate for researchers that her daughter placed them with the Department of Documents at the Imperial War Museum so that they can still be read and enjoyed. They offer a fascinating window into the world of an Essex housewife in the mid-twentieth century and I have used them in Jambusters.

So, archives matter, heritage matters. Whatever you have in your attic, however irrelevant it might seem, don’t throw it away until you have at least asked an expert’s opinion. There is bound to be an archive somewhere that will be happy to take it off your hands and to look after it for future generations.Pen Thoughts

As I work my way through the research I am undertaking for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, let me leave you with one thought. There are 23,000 CWGC cemeteries, memorials and burial sites throughout the world. The ones we all think of are those on the Western Front or perhaps Gallipoli, but what if I were to tell you that over half, yes half, of those sites are in the UK? No other country has more Commonwealth war burials apart from France. Not even Belgium. There are over 12,800 sites in Britain with 177,000 war burials and over 133,000 missing men and women of the forces commemorated by name on memorials such as the great naval ones at Chatham, Plymouth and Liverpool, or the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede. Behind every name there is a person, a family, a story. Now – there is a national memory we cannot forget.And Finally…

Jambusters is released on 28th February 2013 with a launch in London followed by an open lecture at the Imperial War Museum North on Sunday 3rd March at 1pm. It would be lovely to see anyone who can make it at the IWM North.

Julie Summers

January 2013, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.ukForthcoming Events

• Jambusters book launch and lecture
  3rd March 2013, 1pm
  Imperial War Museum, North
  Free entry www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-north
• Jambusters: Stories of the WI in the Second World War
  22nd March 2013, 10am
  Oxford Literary Festival
  Tickets and further information
• Children of the Atlantic War (lecture based on When The Children Came Home)
  23-24 May 2013 Battle for the Atlantic Conference, Liverpool
  Naval Regional Headquarters, Liverpool
  www.globalwarstudies.com
• Jambusters: Stories of the WI in the Second World War
  9th May 2013, 12 noon
  The Gateway Theatre, Shrewsbury
• Jambusters: Stories of the WI in the Second World War
  15th June 2013, 3pm
  The Ball Room, the Bear Hotel, Devizes
  www.devizesfestival.co.uk/

Welcome to my 11th newsletter. There is only one story to tell this quarter so I hope you will forgive me.

I have to admit that when I received an email on Sunday 3 June at 11:08 with the subject ‘Invitation to private audience with the Dalai Lama, London, 20 June. The British in Tibet’, I did not take it seriously. In fact, I ignored it. I was about to consign it to my Junk E-mail box when I saw the postscript at the bottom of this relatively brief email: the name of someone I knew well, which made me look again. On reading the email properly I realised that it was a genuine invitation and it was meant for me . . . and 59 others.Sandy Irvine in Tibet on the first day of the trek across the plateau.
The Dalai Lama immediately recognised this as Western Tibet.Sandy’s photograph of the interior of the Holy of Holies at Shekar Dzong, destroyed during the 1950s.This photograph was taken by Captain John Noel at Shekar Dzong.
Sandy is holding up the Mark V oxygen apparatus.
© Sandra Noel (not to be published without written permission of Sandra Noel)Sandy took this photograph of Shekar Dzong when the expedition spent a night there in April 1924.
He, Norton and Mallory tested his Mark V oxygen apparatus on the rocks below the Dzong.
The Dalai Lama was fascinated by this picture and kept scrutinising it.

His Holiness was undertaking a 10-day tour of the UK, and it had been suggested that in London he might like to meet members of families whose relatives had been in Tibet prior to 1950. Apparently this was something he had done before, and this time the organiser, Roger Croston, had decided to invite members of the families of the 1920s Mount Everest expeditions. So, on the appointed day at the appointed time – 10am – Julia Irvine, son Simon and I met outside the Dean’s gate at Westminster Abbey and were duly shown through the fabulous medieval complex of buildings, past the dining room where Julia’s son, Alexander, has dinner (he’s at Westminster School) and into a lobby that led into a suite of rooms that ended in the Jerusalem Chamber, which is not open to the public. Simon and I were dressed in scruffy clothes as I did not want to travel in my cream skirt and silk jacket and Simon did not have a suit in London. We managed to get changed into our finery and joined Julia in the magnificent, historic chamber.

The Jerusalem Chamber is probably best described as super-domestic scale, in that it is intimate but there is plenty of room for a good crowd of sixty to seventy. The walls are decorated with magnificent tapestries and the ceiling, we were informed by the Dean who welcomed us, is original, i.e. 14th century. As this was my period in architectural history I was very excited to be in such a beautiful and important part of the Abbey complex. Someone whispered in Julia’s ear that Henry III had died in front of the fire while warming himself but the Dean corrected that and told us that Henry IV had died in the chamber. My great friend Graham Ives, who is the best informed person on the architectural and general history of London that I know, filled in the details. In 1413 Henry IV was planning to go to the Holy Land but when praying at St Edward’s Shrine in the Abbey he suffered one of his frequent blackouts, akin to an epileptic fit, thought to have been caused by kidney disease. He was brought to the Abbot’s house and laid by the fire where he recovered consciousness. The King asked where he was and was told ‘Jerusalem’. It had been prophesied that he would die in Jerusalem and so now that he was ‘there’ he could die in peace, which he did.

The crowd that had gathered for the audience was a mixture of Everest families and others whose relatives had been in Tibet. I was particularly pleased to meet two great-nephews of one Charles “Bunny” Searle, who was a doctor in Tibet in 1940. He had been a rower and had been coached by the greatest of coaches of all time, Steve Fairbairn, at Jesus College, Cambridge in the 1920s. Fairbairn used to criticise him for shunting forward with his bottom. Long after Serle had left Jesus he was sculling on the Thames near Putney, minding his own business when he heard a booming voice: ‘Stop shunting!’ He knew immediately who this was. Great coaches never forget their rowers and their idiosyncrasies.

Another very exciting meeting for us was with Christopher Norton, whose grandfather led the 1924 Mount Everest expedition. He produced photographs of sketches done by his grandfather of the expedition members and we saw, for the first time, a lovely caricature of Sandy Irvine. It was a good thing we had all this fascinating history to think about as we had over an hour and a half to wait for His Holiness.

Eventually, ten minutes later than billed, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, walked into the room. There was an audible gasp and then applause broke out. He beamed and made straight for the nearest person to him and shook him warmly by the hand, only to be grabbed by the Dean’s minder and ushered behind a podium in front of the fireplace. He seemed amused by the protocol. There were to be speeches first, he was told. He laughed, which made us all laugh and relax. Clearly, organising an audience with the Dalai Lama is a great deal more difficult than with, say, a member of the royal household, as he likes to do his own thing. The Dean gave a short welcoming speech, alluding to the long and distinguished history of the chamber. Then a man called Giles Ford, whose father Robert had been asked to give a short welcome by his friend, the Dalai Lama, but who was indisposed due to a bad cold, stood up to read out his father’s message. [Robert Ford worked as a radio operator in Tibet from 1945-50 when he was captured on the border by the invading Chinese army. He spent five years as a prisoner and wrote a book called ‘Captured in Tibet’.] During this speech the Dalai Lama noticed a little boy in the audience the great grandson of Captain Thornburgh, who was one of the four British (and the only Westerners ever), who were present at the enthronement of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa in 1940 . He had seen him when he walked into the room and had nodded and waved to him, but now he indicated to an aide that he wanted his bag – a sort of sack in the deep red of his robes. Smiling all the while and looking around the room, and nodding encouragingly at Giles, he delved into the bag with his left hand and produced a sweet which he took over to the little boy and, kneeling before him, offered it on his outstretched hand. It was enchanting and everyone relaxed just a little bit more.

Then he spoke. He talked about the value of democracy and how it was possible to have a figurehead and a democracy, citing the Queen as head of state. He spoke about Tibet and how it had been savaged by the Chinese, but he also mentioned our own dodgy past with reference to the mission to Lhasa before the First World War. Then, he said, the soldiers had shown restraint and only used force where necessary. Later the Chinese were indiscriminate and brutal and undisciplined. Hard-hitting stuff but he had an unquestioning audience. Commonsense and compassion would always win over the gun, he claimed. He said that his experience showed that the Chinese political leaders had lost that part of their brains where commonsense is usually housed. ‘I told Obama,’ he said, grinning as we applauded his spectacular name drop, ‘I told President Obama to bring some commonsense to the Chinese.’ He concluded by asking us to keep the history of his country alive but not to be starry-eyed about it. Not everything prior to 1950 had been as perfect as often painted, nor is everything as bad as critics of the current status quo would have everyone believe. It was a strong message and whether you believe in it or not, he is compelling to listen to on the subject.

Next up we had our moment of glory, which was really special. The crowd had been divided into groups of 12 based on the dates when their relatives had been in Tibet. The Irvines (and Mallorys, Moresheads, Noels, Odells and Bruces) were in group C so we got an early slot. Simon, Julia and I were pushed forward to shake his hand and to show him photographs of Sandy in Tibet which we had taken with us. I had chosen a photograph taken by Sandy in the temple of the Holy of Holies at Shekar Dzong, an important monastery about a day’s walk from Everest base camp, which was destroyed in the 1950s. The Dalai Lama was fascinated by the image and pointed to the temple and then the photograph of the great Buddha with real enthusiasm. He grabbed Julia’s hand and held my arm while we had our photographs taken. Simon reckoned we had over a minute with him. I don’t know as it felt somehow timeless. After that others had their turn and we could stand back and enjoy their pleasure. At one stage he met an old lady the daughter of the botanist, Francis Kingdon-Ward, who had explored Tibet. She was tiny – about 4’5″ – and he bent down and touched her forehead with his in a most passionate gesture. It quite took my breath away. We never did learn why he was late but we were very happy that he spent over 40 minutes with us rather than the scheduled 15.

So, what was he like? It is hard to describe him without resorting to clichés. He is every bit as impressive as you would expect but the two things that struck me most strongly were his force of inner life and his constant movement. He was never still, not for one second. If it had been a child or another person you might have said he was fidgeting but it was not that at all. It was as if a powerful, inner energy was bursting to get out and it manifested itself in his perpetual but very graceful motion, sometimes in large gestures, often in small. That is what I will take away from our audience with the 14th Dalai Lama, that inner energy and that remarkable strength.

There is no room for any more in this newsletter and, indeed, how would I follow that life-changing experience? Rather than look forward I am happy (unusually) to enjoy the moment.

Julie Summers

June 2012, Oxford

julie@juilesummers.co.uk