by Mike Read
I was utterly speechless. They had no idea of my quest and were equally speechless when I told them the story. It transpired that Kern had married Eva Leale, the landlord’s daughter, at St Mary’s Church, Walton-on-Thames, sixty years before I was confirmed at the same altar. Who can possibly say what made me so obsessed and that there would be a double link between us? I was so delighted to be able to organise a blue plaque for the man who wrote such classics as ‘Old Man River’, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ and ‘I’ve Told Every Little Star’.
Among the regular guests at the Heritage Foundation’s post-plaque lunches were a number of Bomber Command veterans. They were clearly disappointed that their efforts, and more importantly those of the 55,500 Allied aircrew who perished keeping our country free from oppressors, had never been recognised. From the first-voiced thoughts at Foundation functions that something be done about the injustice, we initially raised small sums for a memorial that, like Topsy, ‘just growed’. As the wheels turned, the Daily Telegraph and later the Daily Express championed the cause and more people became involved, including Jim Dooley, formerly of the hit group The Dooleys, with Robin Gibb adding his profile and passion to the project as well as his time and energy. Architect Liam O’Connor was brought in and benefactors stepped up in the shape of Lord Ashcroft, John Caudwell and Richard Desmond. The scheme now had legs and began to take shape. Liam was responsible for the design of the memorial which he wanted to be in keeping with nearby monuments designed by his architectural hero, Aston Webb. Philip Jackson was responsible for the sculpture that provides the memorial’s focus, depicting a Bomber Command crew home from a mission. There was to be no triumph or jingoism in the seven 9-foot-high figures. They display fatigue and exhaustion, with eyes to the sky, praying that their pals make it home too.
The Ministry of Defence came in for some criticism for not assisting with funds, especially after many veterans exposed themselves financially by putting up their own money. Other veterans missed out on applying for tickets for the unveiling, but very movingly, many people returned theirs so that the airmen could attend in order to pay tribute to their mates. HM the Queen, flanked by many members of the royal family, unveiled the sculpture in Green Park on 28 June 2012, with an Avro Lancaster dropping red poppy petals over the park. Vanessa Brady and I sat in the sunshine, feeling very patriotic and knowing that justice had been done for the boys of Bomber Command. Robin would have been so proud, but at least his name is, quite rightly, carved on the monument.
I met Vanessa at one of Robin and Dwina’s garden parties. I say met, we were actually pushed together by Dot Most the wife of my first publisher, Dave Most. We began a gradual relationship that increased with time. It was only after a few weeks that she revealed that we’d almost met back in the mid ’80s. It seems that we were both at a function and our eyes met as she walked across the room. As she was with a group of friends I didn’t really have the bottle (or the glass) to go and talk to her. So being a useless bloke, I sent someone else to ask on my behalf. Wrong. Back came the answer, in the negative. By the time she decided to make another trip across the room, I’d gone … as they say in the song, ‘Who know where, who knows when.’ But we did meet again years later.
Three years ago I discovered that if I’d asked her myself she’d have agreed quite willingly to a glass of something from the Champagne region, with the implication that she would have been happy for the conversation to blossom as the prunus in May, from that point. I was swift to point out that I hadn’t arrogantly dispatched a Pony Express rider to do my dirty work, it was simply shyness. You know the score. Striding purposefully towards a table hidden round a corner and containing half a dozen girls to talk to just one of them, demands nerves of steel and several acres of confidence. Then there is the question of approach. The comedic? The smouldering? The domineering? It’s a tough call. That’s why I sent in the troops. Well … man at arms. After the passing of half an hour VB claims she noticed I’d gone, as she rounded the corner on her way to the ladies room. I claim she couldn’t restrain herself and just had to see whether I was still there. Maybe the truth lies somewhere between the two. Being a carpe diem kind of chap I should have seized the moment and also heeded Horace’s quantifying follow-up, Quam minimum credula postero, and not put my trust in tomorrow. This tomorrow was a long time coming and it was just after Robin and I had been on stage singing Massachusetts.
Robin and I were always keen to pursue plaques that were more historical than necessarily showbusiness. Sadly my old pal passed away in 2012, but I feel he’s very much a part of the British Plaque Trust, a registered charity that we set up in 2013. In October of that year, with my fellow trustees, Vanessa Brady, Ian Freeman and Major Ian Mattison, we erected a blue plaque at Wembley Stadium to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Football Association. Relatives of the Founding Fathers of football, who drew up the rules back in 1863, were flown in from the USA and New Zealand to join those closer to home. The former West Ham United and England player Sir Trevor Brooking made a speech and unveiled the plaque, assisted by one of the youngest descendants present. The FA historian and I both said a few words and a QR tag was later fixed to the plaque, meaning that future generations will be able to not only download the FA history directly from the plaque, but also watch a recording of the blue plaque ceremony. I was delighted that my friends Sir William and Lady McAlpine were able to attend, as the McAlpine family had built the original Wembley Stadium in 1923. This delightful couple live with herds of deer, a tribe of meercats, a full size railway line complete with engines and rolling stock, a family of capybaras, a railway museum, a fleet of dogs, a flock of alpacas and anything and anyone else that turns up.
Our next plaque commemorated Denmark Street, London, Britain’s Tin Pan Alley, which was the centre for the UK’s publishers and songwriters from the ’20s and where the likes of the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, the Kinks, Donovan and hundreds of others began their careers. The heartbeat of the small street, just off the north end of the Charing Cross Road, was the Giaconda café, where the musicians and writers would hang out, in the hope of getting a gig or picking up a publishing deal. The café is still there, (re-opening this summer) with the blue plaque letting the world know that this is where many of the most successful songwriters began a journey that resulted in phenomenal sales around the planet. Donovan flew in to unveil the plaque, performing a song that he’d written specially for the occasion, appropriately called ‘Tin Pan Alley’. I say unveiled, but the cord failed to pull the curtain away, so most of the unveiling shots were of my backside as I perched precariously on a ladder to remove the curtain by hand. Several of Tin Pan Alley’s most successful songwriters attended, including Don Black, Tony Hiller, Barry Mason, Bill Martin, Mitch Murray, Guy Fletcher and John Carter. Thanks to the efforts of our PR guru, Dan Kirkby, with whom I worked at Radio One, the event made all the main news bulletins on ITV and BBC as well as getting into more than 100 newspapers. Guy is terrific company and we’ve spent many a happy evening or weekend together along with his lovely wife Cherry. A source of wisdom and knowledge in the music industry, he commands great respect as the Chairman of PRS for Music. When I was lucky enough to receive the British Academy of Composers, Songwriters and Authors Gold Badge of Merit in 2011 it was Guy from whom I received it during the annual lunch at the Savoy Hotel.
My interest in history also involves diving off on a whim to various Civil War battle sites such as Edgehill or Naseby. I have been known to wander over Wars of the Roses sites too, like Barnet and Bosworth Field, in fact anywhere that has some fascinating historical attachment. Many people get excited at seeing a celebrity. I get excited about famous buildings, rivers, monuments and the like.
Family history is also a passion, starting with my father’s old football programmes and newspaper match reports, such as this write-up from an FA Amateur Cup match: ‘A dominating share in Walton’s performance was taken by their halves, of whom Read
, a keen tackler and thoughtful distributor of the ball, was outstanding.’ The old man’s fair play was also reported in another match: ‘There was a cry of “Hands, ref.,” when a shot from Bunce hit Read’s wrist on its way through the penalty area, but with Read making no attempt to play the ball with his hand, the incident was not deliberate or serious enough to warrant a penalty.’ Here, that fleeting moment in time, that cry from the crowd, that incident, is again committed to print, my father, the pre-war lad at centre-half, not knowing that he’d soon be playing in the chilling-sounding War League North. I have several cards from that period summoning him to Manchester United’s ground for training. Another newspaper cutting sees the young Read sitting proudly in the middle of the front row of the Guildford City team.
Prior to joining the Army at the outbreak of war my father was accepted for service in Division A of the Metropolitan Police War Reserve, stationed at Hyde Park. The acceptance letter is dated 26 April 1939, so they clearly knew that something was in the wind.
I’ve enjoyed poring through family history from a very young age and that interest has never waned. I have my great-grandmother’s vehicle registration card from 1928, which declares: ‘This council has been informed that a registered motor vehicle NC 2606 has been transferred to you.’ The car was a Calthorpe, made by a Birmingham manufacturer that produced some 5,000 high-quality cars after World War One but by the end of the ’20s had ceased production altogether. I read somewhere that fewer than ten have survived. I wonder if NC 2606 is one of them. Nestling next to the registration card is one of many speeches given by my grandmother, this one being dated October 1954:
Mr President, Madam Chairman, Mr Mayor, Mayoress, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my very great privilege to propose the final toast of today’s proceedings and that is to our guests. Looking back on the rallies we have had here in the Winter Gardens, Blackpool, must, I am sure, give all of us who’ve been associated with them a warm and homely feeling and to me they are becoming more like family re-unions. We have present our near relatives from Lancashire, Cheshire and north Wales and our more distant but nevertheless welcome relations from Yorkshire and the Midland counties…
Look, here’s a menu from a dinner-dance at the Grand Hotel in Manchester in November 1946, the evening being rounded off with the seasonal Pouding de Noel with Sauce Rhum. No etymological wrestling needed that night, even for the uneducated. I note that post-pud, my godfather proposed a toast to the King and the Royal family, followed by a few well-chosen words from my grandmother. Public speaking was a baton taken up by my mother, who declaimed at dozens and dozens of dinners, sometimes in rhyme, usually with wit, often with an edge and certainly with a full glass. She was definitely a character. She was much loved by my friends for her joie de vivre, sense of humour, intellect and eccentricity, and she had the ability to see through the vainglorious and denounce the charlatan, sometimes to the point of embarrassing bluntness. She could also be belligerent, dogmatic and dismissive. She was one of the ‘Oh get on with it, stop feeling sorry for yourself’ school, the ‘We don’t talk about things like that in public’ brigade and the ‘I’ll keep your feet firmly on the ground’ tribe.
My mother was also highly capable and unflappable in an emergency. There was a ghastly accident across the road from us when a lorry knocked down and killed a young girl who was cycling with her mother and sister. Taking charge, Mater was first on the scene, coping with a distraught mother, a panicking truck driver and an almost delirious sister. The lorry had virtually run over the girl’s head, but my mother was at the front, organising, keeping everyone calm and on a firm rein and dealing with the trauma, before the emergency services arrived. Exceptional. On the other hand she could be downright offensive. I was probably about fifteen and girls were beginning to filter into our crowd. One of them, not a girlfriend, came to call for me one day, and clearly didn’t meet with my mother’s approval, for as we were leaving, and within earshot, she flared her nostrils, raised her eyebrows and hissed, ‘I don’t think so, do you?’ Reminiscent of Lady Chetwode’s supposed comment about John Betjeman, her future son-in-law, ‘We invite people like that to tea, but we don’t marry them.’
Latterly she imagined scenarios. Here’s a typical example. The telephone rings. I run down the corridor to answer it. Pretty normal stuff. I’m possibly breathing slightly more heavily than usual. ‘Hello.’
It’s Mater. ‘We don’t say “Hello”, we give our number.’
I’ve had that one since I was four years old. I still haven’t learned. ‘OK.’ I’m still breathing deeply.
‘Oh, I’ve clearly interrupted something of a personal nature.’
I have to disappoint her. ‘If you really want to know, I’m playing table-tennis.’
‘Oh, it’s none of my business.’
‘Maybe not, but I’m still playing table-tennis.’
‘Hmph! And how do play table-tennis by yourself?’
‘It may come as a cataclysmic shock that I’m not proficient enough to play by myself.’
‘There’s no need to be rude, just because I’ve caught you out.’
‘Caught me out doing what?’
‘Whatever you were doing.’
‘I was playing table-tennis!’
‘Hmph, that’s what you call it, is it?’
‘Would you prefer ping-pong?’
‘There’s no need to be funny.’
‘I’m not. I’m playing table-tennis.’
‘What, with one hand, while you’re talking on the phone along the corridor?’
‘Well, clearly I’m not playing now because I’m talking to you.’
‘So who’s the girl you said you’re playing with?’
‘I’m not playing with a girl.’
‘Oh well, it’s clearly none of my business.’
‘If you really want to know I’m playing with some friends.’
‘You don’t get out of breath playing table-tennis.’
‘You do if you play properly. Anyway what did you call for?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter if you’re … “busy”.’ Click.
Mingling with the Calthorpe motor, the speeches, the football write-ups et al. is my great-grandfather’s Gospel According to St John, Active Service 1914–1915. This small book of some seventy pages also carries the words ‘Please carry this in your pocket and read it every day’. It has a personal message from Lord Roberts dated August 1914 urging my great-grandfather, and others, to ‘put your trust in God’. There are eight hymns at the back, including ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’, ‘Rock of Ages’ and ‘Abide with Me’. The final page is a ‘Decision Form’, a declaration to be signed with both name and address, the confession beginning, ‘Being convinced that I am a sinner…’
I could fill a book with historical accumulations from the family. As for photographs, our lot were queuing up as soon as Fox-Talbot exclaimed, ‘I’ve just had a negative thought.’ Shots of my great-great-grandparents and some of their peers, looking fairly sombre, in keeping with the period, various cars that would now be worth a fortune, unidentifiable folk, my grandfather dressed in whatever daft garb he thought would look hilarious for the camera. In his finest comedic moment in a ballroom somewhere, he takes Elvis literally, as you may recall from Chapter 2, and is the only one on the dance-floor waltzing with a wooden chair. My grandmother’s fox fur can be seen draped round his neck in this rather splendid snap. Also caught on camera are a procession of family dogs resignedly adorned with hats, necklaces and sunglasses, my mother and my grandmother in full flow at some of the aforementioned speeches, my great-grandparents standing upright and proud for the camera, my great-grandfather sporting his waxed moustache, my father the boy chorister looking cherubic outside a church, youthful cricket teams now almost a century old, for whom the Great Umpire’s finger was raised long ago, snaps of pipes, firmly clenched in white teeth, boating parties on the Thames, ancestors taking off across heathland with a pack of upright-tailed beagles, A
rmy boys in khaki shorts, a headless relative on a carousel, another playing a banjo in camp, friends lifting the casing of Bluebird, which held the Land Speed Record, back onto its wheels. Why? I have no idea. I wish I’d discovered a lot of these photographs when there were folk around to answer questions. There are photos of weddings, dinner parties and a thousand other events captured and frozen in time, that pose more questions than they give answers.
I have fairly complete histories of the two main houses I’ve owned. The Aldermoor at Holmbury St Mary had been built in the early 1860s for Henry Tanworth Wells RA, whose best-known paintings include Victoria Regina, depicting Victoria being informed that she was now the monarch and Volunteers at the Firing Point. Wells’s circle included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, John Ruskin and William Frederick Yeames. He also hosted the fifth Earl Spencer, and William Gladstone was a not infrequent guest while Prime Minister. Wells’s closest confidant was the Gothic revivalist architect George Edmund Street, who designed the law courts and who almost certainly had a major hand in designing the house. The Wells and Steet families also intermarried. In the ’20s and ’30s, the famous Harrison sisters, Beatrice, May and Margaret, performed regularly in the drawing room, around the time Beatrice was enticing some poor unsuspecting nightingale to sing along to her cello in her garden at Oxted, for a clutch of patient BBC sound engineers. It was a privilege to walk in the footsteps of these people who’d contributed much to our country. In ‘Elizabethan Dragonflies’ I wrote, ‘The Jekyll-haunted gardens now are mine, I walk at will down long, untrodden tracks.’ The house’s 23 acres and twenty-two rooms were full of history, with the oldest tree, a yew, being dated at something like 600 years old. Makes one wonder what was on the spot at the time. The property was 850 feet above sea level and, despite being some 25 miles from the coast, from the top windows, when the conditions were right, one could see the Channel glistening through the Shoreham Gap. There were a few cracking parties at the house that may well have rivalled those of Victorian and Edwardian incumbents. How often do you see Rick Parfitt from Status Quo and David Cassidy wiping the spinach and gruyère quiche from their mouths to join Beatles tribute band, Cavern to knock out a few favourites? Or David Grant and his girlfriend Carrie disappearing for an hour or two into the azaleas only to re-emerge as an engaged couple, eventually marry and live happily ever after. Or the guy who did the catering spending fifteen minutes warning his staff of the dangers of walking into the plate glass doors in the conservatory only to do it himself five minutes later and break his nose? Or the Marquess of Worcester and Lord Johnson Somerset with a mouth full of vol-au-vents singing along to the Tremeloes playing live by the rhododendrons? Those were fun days and I wish I’d kept the house and not listened to my ‘advisers’. Years after I sold it for £550,000 it went for something like £4.5 million. Any ‘sight’ would have been good; foresight, hindsight, second sight, insight.