Last month we posted the story of Frederick Cowling, an aeronautical engineer. Archives volunteers Jim and Margaret Garrod are back again to tell us about a few more interesting people they have come across while indexing the National Registration Records of Paddington:
“On 15 August 1915 everyone between the ages of 15 and 65 in Britain was required to fill in a form giving their name, age, nationality, marital status and occupation. The purpose was to deal with a national labour crisis in essential industries due to large numbers of young men having volunteered for War Service. It was also used again in 1916 for conscription of those fit to serve.
After it was discontinued, most of the forms were destroyed, but those for Paddington were retained and now live at Westminster Archives, where a team of volunteers are indexing them. Most who appear in the records are of people in regular jobs, but a few stand out.
Robert Waley Cohen, for instance was a director of the Anglo Saxon Petroleum Company and the Asiatic Petroleum Company. He had played a part in amalgamating the Shell Company and the Royal Dutch Oil Co. He was awarded a KBE for his services as Oil Advisor to the Army Council. His son Bernard Waley Cohen was Lord Mayor of London in 1960/61 and his Great Grandson is Sam Waley Cohen the amateur National Hunt jockey.
National Registration record of Robert Waley Cohen, Westminster Archives
Two men, Sam Peters and Walter Tree Keeble had been living in Germany at the outbreak of war and had been interned in the Ruhlebin internment camp near Berlin. They had been exchanged for Germans living in Britain.
National Registration record of Walter Tree Keeble, Westminster Archives
Leopold George Kearton had changed his name from Kirschstein although his father had been a Danish citizen and had been naturalised.
Another interesting man we have come across was Thomas Belhaven Henry Cochrane. The son of the Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Thomas John Cochrane, he had joined the Navy at the age of 14. He left the Navy after 14 years and subsequently married Adela Rous, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Stradbroke. She became a Lady in Waiting to Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter. This connection no doubt led to various posts for Thomas on the Isle of Wight where Beatrice was Governor. However, all did not go well for Thomas and he lost his position when he and Adela divorced in 1911. He subsequently married Beatrice Knight and they had two children, one before the marriage.
National Registration record of Thomas Cochrane, Westminster Archives
In May 1915 Thomas was gazetted as a temporary Captain in the Army under “Special Appointments” and on his registration form he gives his occupation as “HM Censor, Post Office SML” Unfortunately it has not been possible to find out what his duties were and at what level.
National Registration was discontinued after the war but resurrected again in 1939.”
In the 1915 National Registration records of Paddington, held at Westminster Archives, is the form of Reginald Frederick Cowling. Aged just 16, he describes himself as an ‘Aeronautical Junior Draughtsman’ working for Whitehead Aircraft Ltd. of Townsend Terrace, Richmond, London.
National Registration form of Reginald Cowling. Westminster Archives.
Having served my National Service in the RAF and having worked, for a couple of years on the fringes of the Aircraft industry, I was intrigued. I had never heard of the Whitehead company. Research was required!
John Alexander Whitehead was a serial entrepreneur and bankrupt. He had spent time in the USA but returned to Britain in 1914. He joined the Royal Navy Air Service in August 1914 but was discharged a month later.
Despite having no experience of aircraft manufacture he obtained a contract to build six BE2b aircraft and together with a man called Edward Heaps who had premises in Richmond, he succeeded. Next, he obtained an order for a hundred Maurice Farman “Shorthorns”. A contract to build Sopwith Scouts (nicknamed the Pup) followed and he insisted on calling them Whitehead Scouts. What Tommy Sopwith thought about that is not known. Eventually they built over 800 Pups.
Whitehead acquired an estate in Feltham for a factory and airfield although he had to culvert the Longford river to create a long enough runway. The Whitehead company went through several re-organisations in order to raise money but all went reasonably well until the end of the War when orders dried up. Whitehead had dreams of entering civil aviation after the war as did many others but the world was not ready for that. Eventually his father bailed him out and he emigrated to Canada.
Born in the East End of London in 1875, Cowling died near Farnham in 1949.
We live in a time of international terrorism. London is seen as a prime target and is on high alert for such an attack. There have been attacks and bombings in London before of course, especially during the IRA ‘Troubles’.
But it was one hundred years ago on Friday 19 January 1917 when occurred London’s largest ever loss of life through explosion. However, this was not due to enemy action, even though it took place during a World War – it was home grown and totally avoidable.
One of the main industries in Silvertown at the time was the Brunner Mond chemical factory, which produced soda crystals and caustic soda. However the caustic soda plant had been closed down in 1912 and was standing idle. In 1915, this was “practically requisitioned” by the Government agency, the Explosives Supply Department who wanted to use it to purify the explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT) for use in ammunition. This was despite the fact that the plant was located in a heavily populated area, which also had other volatile chemical and refining industries, a point stressed by the Brunner Mond directors who were opposed to the plans. The government thought that the production of TNT was safe as long as the purification process (to be undertaken here) was kept separate from the manufacture of raw TNT. Consequently the processes did not have to comply with the regulations of the 1875 Explosives Act.
Production started in September 1915 on a 24-hour basis, employing three shifts. The protracted battles of trench warfare were consuming vast quantities of ammunition (and lives), while making little tactical advance.
The memorial to the Silvertown explosion. This is located below the Docklands Light Railway near Pontoon Dock station.
On the night of 19 January 1917, the inevitable happened and there was an explosion at 6.52 pm. It is believed that this was caused by a fire in the melt pot room. The reason for the fire breaking out was not established, as the witnesses who raised the alarm were killed in the explosion. It should not have been unexpected though. Only in the previous month, the plant had been visited by a government inspector, whose report stated that
“It is perfectly clear that the management at Silvertown did not pay sufficient attention to the explosion risk attached to the handling of TNT.”
In particular he reported that there were no precautions in place against friction sparks. The explosion was so severe that it destroyed the factory, other local factories, the local fire station (which was opposite the factory and had only opened in 1914) and damaged thousands of homes. The explosion could be heard 100 miles away. Sixty-nine people were killed in the explosion with four more subsequently dying from their injuries. Another ninety-eight people were seriously injured and more than nine hundred suffered minor injuries.
A plaque in Postman’s Park in the City of London commemorates a policeman who was on duty outside the factory when the fire broke out. He stayed at his post to warn people of the dangers of explosion, but later lost his life in hospital from the injuries he received.
The loss of life in the Silvertown disaster would be treated as a major scandal today, but unfortunately then it was just another statistic among the countless lives lost already in the Great War and those still to die before peace came in 1918. With no radio, television, internet or social media in those days, it was far easier for the government to conceal bad news. There was postal and press censorship, designed to prevent contact with the enemy and to ensure that the conflict was presented to the public in a pro-Allied light.
This censorship is illustrated by using the usual research routes. To see how news was reported at the time of an event, one can search newspaper archives such as the Times Digital Archive (log in with your library card number). However, searching for Silvertown explosion or Silvertown disaster brings no results. Neither does a similar search in The Illustrated London News. Even searching Gale News Vaultfor Silvertown 1917 only brings up an article in The Times from 1925, appealing for funds to rebuild St. Barnabas Church which had been destroyed in the explosion.
Searching the Times Digital Archive by date, on 20 February there is only a brief one line report that
“there had been an explosion in a munitions factory near London, and that considerable loss of life and damage to property were feared.”
A fuller report is given on Monday 22 February (on page 9) but again it refers to ‘The explosion near London’ and does not state the actual location or name of the factory concerned. There are no illustrations. It is interesting to note though, that while there is some ‘positive spin’ in the reporting the paper does make some critical comments about the slack enforcement of safety regulations by the authorities.
The dearth of contemporary reports, while interesting from an historical point of view, means that we have to look elsewhere for more information. One book that contains quite a bit about the explosion isLondon’s Disasters: from Boudicca to the banking crisis, by John Withington (pictured above), available from your library.
There’s an ancient Chinese curse or proverb: “May you live in interesting times…”
Well, there isn’t actually (it dates all the way back to the politician Austen Chamberlain in 1936) but I think we can all agree that 2016 has been… interesting!
Most of us would probably wish that 2017 is a little less so.
While Westminster Libraries can’t promise world peace or political stability, we can promise you some interesting anniversaries and the resources for interested people to carry out further research.
January
The year kicks off in January with the 75th anniversary of Desert Island Discs, which was first broadcast on 29 January 1942. It continues to this day with guests (rather tweely known as ‘castaways’) being asked to discuss the eight pieces of music they would take to a desert island. Later on, guests were allowed to choose a book and a luxury too. The first castaway was the ‘comedian, lightning club manipulator, violinist and comedy trick cyclist’, Vic Oliver. Oliver was not only a major star on the radio but also the son-in-law of Winston Churchill (something Churchill wasn’t too thrilled about, though Oliver never traded on the relationship). Though this episode doesn’t survive in the BBC archives, many hundreds of others do and are available to listen online or download as podcasts. The earliest surviving episode has the actress Margaret Lockwood as a guest and other castaways include seven prime ministers, dozens of Oscar winners, a bunch of Olympic medallists, a few Royals and several criminals.
February
19 February brings the 300th anniversary of the birth of the actor, playwright and theatre manager David Garrick. Though he was a native of Lichfield (and former pupil of another Lichfield resident-turned-London-devotee, Samuel Johnson) by the age of 23, Garrick was acclaimed as the greatest actor on the English stage. He was a noted playwright but most famous for his Shakespearean roles – though he was not averse to ‘improving’ on the text – his adaptations included a Hamlet without the funeral of Ophelia and the need for the gravediggers, a ‘King Lear’ without the Fool and a Cordelia who lives on, an interpolated dying speech for Macbeth and a scene between the two lovers in the tomb before they die in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Be honest – who wouldn’t want to see those? He ran the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for nearly 30 years and he is now commemorated by a theatre and a pub (with Charing Cross Library neatly sandwiched in between).
March
1717 wasn’t just a significant year in the history of ‘legitimate’ theatre. 2 March that year saw the first performance (at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane) of The Loves of Mars and Venus by John Weaver, generally regarded as the first ballet performed in Britain. While there had been English masques and French ballets before this, Weaver was the first person to tell a story through the medium of dance without the need for songs or dialogue. Weaver was the son of the dancing master at Shrewsbury School (public school curricula must have been rather different in the 1600s).
In 1703 he had staged (at Drury Lane) a performance called The Tavern Bilkers, usually regarded as the first English pantomime (he described it as “the first entertainment that appeared on the English Stage, where the Representation and Story was carried on by Dancing Action and Motion only”) but it was The Loves of Mars and Venus (the choreography of which survives) which established Weaver as the major figure in English dance until the twentieth century. Venus was played by Hester Santlow (shown dressed as a harlequin), one of the leading ballerinas of the day, who created many roles for Weaver.
April
Readers of a certain age will remember adverts for Memorex tapes (other brands are available) in which a singer shattered a glass with a high note and the trick was repeated when the tape was played back. Depending on exactly how certain your age is, you may have identified the singer as the great Ella Fitzgeraldwhose centenary is commemorated on 25 April 2017.
Growing up in a poor district of New York and orphaned in her early teens, Ella spent time in a reformatory but soon escaped and began to enter show business via talent competitions and amateur nights, becoming an established band singer. At the age of 21 she recorded a version of the children’s nursery rhyme A Tisket A Tasket which went on to sell over a million copies. She went on to become one of the greatest of all jazz singers, developing her own idiosyncratic style of ‘scat singing’. All through her career she fought prejudice, refusing to accept any discrimination in hotels and concert venues even when such treatment was standard in the Southern USA.
You can listen to some of her greatest recordings via the Naxos Music Library and learn more about her career in Oxford Music Online(log in to each with your Westminster library card number).
May
May Day has long been a festival associated with dancing and celebration and more recently with political demonstrations. But 1 May 1517 has become known as Evil May Day. Tensions between native Londoners and foreigners lead one John Lincoln to persuade Dr Bell, the vicar of St Mary’s, Spitalfields to preach against incomers and to call upon “Englishmen to cherish and defend themselves, and to hurt and grieve aliens for the common weal.”. Even though the Under-Sherriff of London (none other than Sir Thomas More) patrolled the streets, a riot broke out when they tried to arrest an apprentice for breaking the curfew. Soon afterwards, a crowd of young men began to attack foreigners and burn their houses. The rioting continued throughout May Day – fortunately, while some houses were burned down there were no fatalities. More than a thousand soldiers were needed to put down the riot. Lincoln and the other leaders were executed, but most were spared at the instigation of Cardinal Wolsey, who according to Edward Hall
‘fell on his knees and begged the king to show compassion while the prisoners themselves called out “Mercy, Mercy!” Eventually the king relented and granted them pardon. At which point they cast off their halters and “jumped for joy”.’
Sadly this was not the last outburst of anti-foreign feeling in London’s history but such incidents are thankfully rare.
June
A happier event took place on 30 June 1997 with the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling. It’s hard to remember a time when we didn’t all wish we’d received our letter to Hogwarts instead of going to a boring Muggle school.
But we all know about Harry so let’s move on.
July
To 12 July and first documented ride, in 1817, of the ‘dandy horse’ or ‘running machine’ or, to you and me, a bicycle without chains or pedals. This was the first means of transport to make use of the two-wheel principle and the creator was Baron Karl Drais , perhaps the most successful inventor you’ve never heard of, and he managed an impressive 10 miles in an hour. While it looks pretty clunky by today’s standards, Drais was inspired by the Year without a Summer of 1816 when crops failed and there weren’t enough oats to feed horses.
Readers of Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances may remember thar Jessamy in Frederica was very proud of his skill with the ‘pedestrian curricle’. The Observer newspaper was enthralled by the invention of ‘the velocipede or swift walker’ claiming in 1819 that, on a descent, ‘it equalled a horse at full-speed’ and suggesting that
‘on the pavements of the Metropolis it might be impelled with great velocity, but this is forbidden. One conviction, under Mr Taylor’s Paving Act, took place on Tuesday. The individual was fined 2/-.’
Most of us can probably remember what we were doing on 31 August 1997 when we heard of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and she will be on many people’s minds as the 20th anniversary of this event approaches.
A slightly more auspicious event took place on 17 August 1917, when the two war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met at the Craiglockhart War Hospital, an event written about by Pat Barker in her novel Regeneration,as well as Stephen Macdonald’s play Not about Heroes. Owen wrote two of his most beloved poems – Dulce Et Decorum Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth while he was in hospital (he also edited The Hydra, the patients’ magazine) and was tragically killed the following year at the very end of the war. Sassoon survived the war and wrote about his hospital experiences in the autobiographical novel Sherston’s Progress. You can read more about the lives of Owen, Sassoon and the other war poets in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log in with your library card).
September
Another literary anniversary is upon us on 21 September, when we note the publication of one of the bestselling fantasy books of all time – The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, about a small, shy creature who becomes involved in a quest for a dragon’s hoard. It was offered first to the publisher Stanley Unwin who asked his 10 year old son Raynor to review it for him,
“Bilbo Baggins was a Hobbit who lived in his Hobbit hole and never went for adventures, at last Gandalf the wizard and his Dwarves persuaded him to go. He had a very exiting (sic) time fighting goblins and wargs. At last they get to the lonely mountain; Smaug, the dragon who guards it is killed and after a terrific battle with the goblins he returned home – rich!
This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9.”
The book was an instant success thanks to glowing newspaper reviews (The Manchester Guardian wrote ‘The quest of the dragon’s treasure – rightfully the dwarves treasure – makes an exciting epic of travel, magical adventures, and – working up to a devastating climax, war. Not a story for pacifist children. Or is it?’) and has never been out of print. While embarking on the sequel, The Lord of the Rings, is a pretty daunting task, The Hobbit is still funny and exciting and highly recommended to that clichéd group – children of all ages.
October
The audience at Warner’s Theatre in New York on 6 October 1927 knew they were going to see an exciting new movie, but none of them could have predicted that motion pictures would never be the same again. The Jazz Singer was the first feature film with synchronised singing – no dialogue had been planned but the star, Al Jolson, couldn’t resist adlibbing on set and his ‘Wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothing yet’(in fact, his stage catchphrase) has electrified audiences ever since.
The film was a huge hit making over $2,000,000 (having cost only $400,000) and Jolson became an international star. The movies didn’t look back and within three years, silent film was a thing of the past.
To be honest, seen now, the film (about a Jewish boy who defies his father to sing jazz) is slow, sentimental and creaky, and the less said about Al Jolson’s penchant for blackface the better, but it’s worth checking out his performance to see the sort of charisma that sold out Broadway theatres for 20 years.
You can also see how fan magazines reported it at the time by checking out the Lantern site – a fantastic archive of Hollywood magazines that will keep film buffs busy for days…
November
As of 2015 there were 5640 female clergy in the Church of England (with 14,820 men) and it’s predicted that women will make up 43% of the clergy by 2035. Yet the General Synod only voted to allow women priests (against fierce opposition from conservatives) on 25 November 1992. Now they are central to the life of the Church of England and most of their opponents have been won over. Some of this can, of course, be attributed to The Vicar of Dibley with Dawn French as the eponymous lady priest, but they’re now so much part of the landscape that even Ambridge, home of the Archers has had a woman vicar.
December
3 December will be the 50th anniversary of the first heart transplant operation, performed by the South African surgeon Christian Barnard. The first patient, Lewis Washkansky, died 18 days after the operation (though he was able to walk and talk after the transplant). The second patient to receive a heart was a baby who sadly didn’t survive the operation, but the third patient, Philip Blaiberglived for another nineteen months. Six months later, in May 1968, the first British heart transplant took place at the National Heart Hospital in Westmoreland Street, Marylebone. Now about 3,500 heart transplants take place each year and 50% of patients live for at least 10 years. So while none of us want one, it’s good to know they’re available.
You can find out more about these events and many more in our 24/7 library and of course the in the libraries themselves. Happy 2017!
Last Friday, in the Long Room of Lords Cricket Ground, the Westminster Cathedral School held a special assembly in commemoration of the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. Years 3, 4, 5, and 6 sat attentively ahead of an audience including parents, staff from Lords and Westminster City Council, Chelsea pensioners and other invited guests.
The day, curated by the Archives’ Education Officer Peter Daniel, started with a visit from the ghost of a soldier from Pimlico – Ernest Richard Boots (now aged 133 years). In a flurry of historical hats and playful repartee with the children, this charismatic apparition explained the features of his army uniform and how each was suited to the international arena of the First World War. Two modern-day soldiers from the 7 Rifles, the Army Reserve Battalion in Westminster, then explained how the uniforms had changed in accordance with technological developments.
The main attraction of the day followed, when the Year 5 class of the Westminster Cathedral School performed a play about Major Booth for their colleagues. The play told the story of Major Booth, who died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and was a player for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and Second Lieutenant in the British Army. The play had previously been performed by the MOD Theatre group.
Booth’s biography intersected with various key moments in 20th century history. The story included encounters with the Suffragettes and Mahatma Ghandi. Booth’s path to success as a cricketer and his role in the army showed how the world had been unfair before the war and how after the war, through the equality of sacrifice of all the soldiers and those involved in the war effort at home, British society came to adopt the determination to pursue a fairer, better and more inclusive structure.
Each of the roles in the play was shared with different children taking it in turn to act each part and the Year 5s joined in chorus to sing an ensemble of wartime songs. The songs which had been used as a mnemonic tool to teach the children about history, now staggered the performance beautifully.
The show ended with England’s cricket anthem Jerusalem and a minute of silence led by Chelsea Pensioner John Gallagher with live accompaniment.
A central message came through, questioning the ‘whys’ behind inequality and discrimination of class, gender, and race:
Voice 1: I was a have
Voice 2: I was a have not
All: What hadst thou given that I gave not?
If you’d like to know more about this project, try the following:
Last Thursday, Westminster Music Library marked one hundred years of women in transport with a commemorative First World War-themed sing-along.
In partnership with London Transport Museum and their Battle Bus project we sang our way through a variety of songs from the Great War era, setting the scene for a fascinating insight into women’s roles during The First World War.
London Transport Museum’s A Driving Force: 100 Years of Women in Transport is an engaging exhibition exploring the one hundred year history of women in public transport, and Westminster Music Library has been proud to host it for the past two weeks. Standing at the library’s entrance, it was a draw for many of our customers, who, like us, found these seldom-told tales of drivers, instructors, and the fondly-named ‘clippies’ to be an intriguing topic. Steering its way from 1915 (the date of the first female omnibus conductor) right up to the present day, the exhibition includes interviews, stories and anecdotes from female bus workers past and present.
Our WW1 sing-along to mark the anniversary was interspersed with accounts of women ‘on the buses’:
“On the buses the skirt question occasionally arose, with objections to conductresses going on the top deck; however, this seems to have been combined with the pre-war convention that ‘ladies rode inside’ and therefore things were a bit rowdier upstairs. The buses were crowded at all times – the small number of private motorists, combined with a shortage of petrol, meant that bus and tube travel was democratized. The prevalence of shift-work, the curtailed shop opening hours and the number of soldiers passing through London on leave disrupted the more rigid patterns of travel before the war: ladies who had the leisure to shop mid-mornings found themselves squashed alongside factory girls and troops. Several conductresses found themselves getting a hard time from such ladies, and agreed among themselves that they were getting a dose of resentment from women who had lost their maids!”
It was a privilege to hear such fascinating reports from a time so far removed from our own.
Our event was organised by Ruth Walters, Music Services Co-ordinator, who not only brought these stories to life through her engaging reading, but also expertly led all the singing.
Westminster Music Library drew an enthusiastic crowd with their vocal chords at the ready, and it was a pleasure to welcome back pianist Hélène Favre-Bulle, whose playing perfectly complemented the singing. Friends of Westminster Music Library will recognise Hélène as the accompanist for our Joint Force Singers choral project. Also ‘aboard’ on backing vocals were Miriam, Andrew and Jon, all members of the Music Library team, and we were delighted to welcome London Transport Museum’s Battle Bus Learning Officer Kathryn Palmer-Skillings. Her extensive knowledge was much appreciated as she answered our audience’s questions and gave further information on the topic during our tea break.
We’ve really enjoyed hosting this fascinating exhibition and running the event at the Music Library, and we are especially grateful to London Transport Museum for the loan and their time spent ensuring that both were successful. Our audience loved it, too, with comments particularly highlighting the uniqueness of the theme. Coincidentally our event was held on National Poetry Day, and Ruth couldn’t miss an opportunity to mark it with a few lines of very appropriate verse:
War girls, by Jessie Pope
There’s the girl who clips your ticket for the train,
And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor,
There’s the girl who does a milk-round in the rain,
And a girl who calls for orders at your door.
Strong, sensible, and fit,
They’re out to show their grit,
And tackle jobs with energy and knack,
No longer caged and penned up,
They’re going to keep their end up,
Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.
There’s the motor girl who drives a heavy van,
There’s the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat,
There’s the girl who cries ‘all fares please!’ like a man,
And the girl who whistles taxis down the street,
Beneath each uniform,
Beats a heart that’s soft and warm,
Though of canny mother-wit they show no lack;
But a solemn statement this is,
They’ve no time for love and kisses
‘Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.
Although Westminster Music Library’s hosting of the mobile exhibition has now ‘reached the end of the line’, if you missed it and would like to catch it, its next temporary home is Westbourne Park Bus Garage.
Westminster Music Library enjoys sharing all things interesting and we love adding a musical twist, we’re delighted that our partnership with London Transport Museum made this possible.
As the dust finally settled on our Arts Council funded project Behind the Lines (a year long programme of music workshops featuring the music and composers of the First World War), I was pondering during the depths of winter 2014 over what we in Westminster Music Library could do next…
Some might argue that being the award-winning Westminster Music Library – one of the largest public music libraries in the UK – ought to be enough. All those fabulous books and scores, staff with amazing music knowledge, interesting events for everyone from toddlers to senior citizens… but the problem is – well it’s not a problem exactly, it’s just that we do love a challenge.
Last November I discovered that The Army were offering funding for projects that would ultimately raise awareness of the British Armed Forces in civvy street, surely we could come up with something for such a worthy cause? Hadn’t we already worked with a bunch of musicians who were based just a step away in Wellington Barracks, all those brilliant recitals with members of the Welsh Guards Band? So that just left the “civvies”, how on earth could we join the two up and still involve Westminster Music Library?
Some scratching of heads and drumming of fingers later the light bulb came on, and we had it – a choir! But not just any old choir, one that would be made up of both army personnel and civilians, accompanied by musicians from the Corps of Army Music, and to add a bit of an extra challenge, grand finale concerts held in the Guard’s Chapel at Wellington Barracks.
So (apart from asking for the money) how would this involve Westminster Music Library? That’s the easy bit: you want something for your choir to sing? Doubtless we’ll have it, and if we don’t, we will pull out all the stops to get it for you. You want somewhere to rehearse? Our newly refurbished Library has just enough space for a choir, and of course there’s a rather nice piano here too.
Now all we needed was a bit of cash to get it up and running – would our military friends like the idea? You bet they would, so move over Gareth Malone, let battle commence!
During the past year we have been focusing on books about the First World War. The centenary of the war’s commencement has seen a surge in authors writing about the war and its aftermath and we have highlighted many of these in our WW1 reading lists. There has also been a renewed interest in some of the contemporary authors who were influenced by the conflict. One of these, John Buchan, has been consistently popular, with his eve-of war thriller The Thirty-nine Steps having had a number of film adaptations as well as spawning a current West End musical.
However, there are other authors, once household names, but now largely forgotten. Their tomes gather dust in library stores like old soldiers awaiting a recall to arms…
Take for instance Percy F Westerman (1876-1959). He wrote his first book for boys in 1908, giving up an Admiralty appointment to write full-time in 1911. During World War 1 he was initially employed on coastal duties by the Royal Navy, but in 1918 he was commissioned by the Royal Flying Corps as an instructor of navigation. In the 1930s he was voted the most popular author of books for boys. Most of his books were adventures with a military or naval theme. He continued writing until his death, publishing at least 174 titles. Amongst these are With Beatty off Jutland and A Sub and a Submarine.
A similar author was Captain WE Johns (1893-1968). William Earle Johns first enlisted in the Territorial Army in 1913. He was sent overseas in 1915, serving at Gallipoli, and later in Egypt and Greece. In September 1917 he was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps. He was shot down in Germany in September 1918 while on a mission to bomb Mannheim and remained a prisoner of war until the end of hostilities. He continued an RAF career until 1931. He started writing in 1922, creating his most famous character, the ace pilot ‘Biggles’ in 1932, who was then to feature in some 100+ stories until the author’s death in 1968.
The Biggles books were the staple diet of boys’ reading material in the 1950s. The ‘Captain’ was self-awarded – his final RAF rank was Flying Officer (equivalent to an Army Lieutenant).
Sir Henry John Newbolt (1862-1938) graduated from Oxford and at first practised law before becoming a poet, historian and novelist. At the start of the War, Newbolt along with over 20 other leading British writers was brought into the War Propaganda Bureau which had been formed to promote Britain’s interests and maintain public opinion. He later became Controller of Telecommunications at the Foreign Office, being knighted in 1915. His written works include The Naval History of the Great War and Submarine and Anti-Submarine (1919) He is probably best remembered now for his cricketing poem Vitai Lampada which includes the line: “Play up! Play up! And play the game!
Bernard Newman (1897-1968) was a great nephew of the author George Eliot. He initially served in the trenches in World War 1, lying about his age to enlist, but because of his fluency in French his French liaison officer used him to go undercover in Paris. Accompanied by a female French agent they investigated loose talk by Allied soldiers about troop movements. He developed an interest in espionage on which he became an authority, writing fictional and non-fiction books on this subject. He was to write more than 100 books in total raging from politics to travel, mystery novels, science fiction and children’s books. The Cavalry Went Through (1930) is a novel about the Dardanelles campaign
HG Wells can hardly be described as a forgotten author! His novels The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine are still widely read and seen as classic works of early Science Fiction. However, there are some other works which are less well-known and largely unread now. During the early 20th century he wrote a number of ‘fantasies of possibility’ based on his futurological writings. Most of these prophesied a future world war and include The War in the Air (1908). This was written only five years after the Wright Brothers pioneer heavier-than-air powered manned flight, and a year before Louis Bleriot made the first cross-channel flight. However, such was the rate of technical development that aerial warfare became a reality in World War 1.
The British Government actually established the Royal Flying Corps (the forerunner of the Royal Air Force) in 1912. He also wrote The World Set Free (1914) which foretold of an atomic bomb. A short story The Land Ironclads (1903) was acknowledged by Winston Churchill as originating the idea of the tank. In 1914 he wrote The War that will End War which set out his case for supporting the allies. A novel Mr Britling Sees it Through (1916) was an account of war on the Home Front.
In 1918 he was recruited by Lord Northcliffe’s Ministry of Propaganda to work on a statement of war aims, which included the setting up of the League of Nations. After the end of hostilities, Wells viewed the war as an inevitable result of the rivalries between nation states, fuelled by a nationalistic teaching of history. He envisaged a new kind of history textbook, and assembling a team of specialist advisors wrote his ‘Plain History of Life and Mankiind’ – The Outline of History (1920) which became an international best-seller.
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was an American author, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1921 (the first woman to win this award), and nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature on three occasions. She is probably best known for her Pulitzer Prize winning book The Age of Innocence and for Ethan Frome. But another of her works was A Son at the Front (1923)
Many of the books listed above have long been out of print, but some can be found in the stock of Westminster Libraries (click on the links in the text), whilst those not in stock might be obtainable through the interlending service.
More information about the authors featured here, including complete lists of their works, can be found in Contemporary Authors, and in some cases through the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(log in to both with your library card number).
A selection of novels set in the prelude to, during and in the aftermath of the Great War, plus a selection of non-fiction works about the war and its aftermath can be found on our ‘book lists’ page:
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![Army and Navy Co-operative Society Limited, abridged list of officers' equipment and necessaries for home and foreign service [1916-1918] . Image property of Westminster City Archives](https://wcclibraries.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/a14a7567.jpg?w=392)
![Army and Navy Co-operative Society Limited, abridged list of officers' equipment and necessaries for home and foreign service [1916-1918] . Image property of Westminster City Archives](https://wcclibraries.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/a14a7567.jpg)
Now all we needed was a bit of cash to get it up and running – would our military friends like the idea? You bet they would, so move over Gareth Malone, let battle commence!
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HG Wells
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