In this article Thain tells us about his and his wife's friendship with Peter. He has also transcribed some of the Peter's letters. Much of the blog is in Peter's own words and covers the period of his life from 1963 to 1989 and life after retirement. Those of us who are older will remember many of the famous names mentioned in this article and we will remember, with a smile, many of the Radio programs mentioned, that we listened to in our youth.
I would like to thank Thain for all the work he has done producing this article for the blog and for being kind enough to share his memories with us. The article is wonderful, and it gives us an insight into Peter's life. Hearing Peter's story from someone who knew him adds so much and reading it in his own eloquent words is just magnificent.
Peter Dion Titheradge 18th September 1910 to 21st March
1989
I first met Peter Titheradge through my wife Pam. She and I met in 1963 at
King’s College, London University, a sprawling maze of premises next to
Somerset House. We were both involved in many activities including student
journalism, the drama society etc. Like all students then, we had grants to
live on during term-time, but needed to find temporary jobs to tide us over in
the vacations. That was very easy in those days. Pam found temporary work as a
clerk-typist through an employment agency, and one of her first postings in the
summer vacation of 1964 was with BBC Radio at Aeolian Hall, New Bond Street, to
cover staff holidays. At that time, Peter Titheradge was Light Entertainment
Organiser, and so her ultimate boss.
At the end of Pam’s vacation stint, Peter
invited her to lunch at a posh Bond Street restaurant, and asked me too. He
wanted me to be a stringer in his role as a talent scout. He had recruited
Humphrey Barclay and other members of the Cambridge Footlights crew who had
just returned from a tour in New Zealand and went on to Broadway in September
1964 – including Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, David Hatch
and Bill Oddie. All of them went on to distinguished careers in radio and
television. Peter had good Oxbridge contacts, and thought I could keep my ear
to the ground for comic talent across the forty-odd colleges of London
University. Some hope!
The German degree course Pam was following involved a
year of study abroad, so during the 1964-1965 academic year Peter took me under
his wing and set about expanding my cultural education. His hospitality and
generosity knew no bounds: he took me to venues like Covent Garden which I
could never afford, and to the theatre and cinema. He treated me to sumptuous
meals at expensive restaurants, or at his flat in Dorset House, Gloucester
Place – completely unfazed by my uncut hair and student garb of patched jeans,
lurid shirts and a sort of opera cloak I had adapted from a workman’s donkey
jacket. Our friendship never looked back from then.
In summer 1965 Pam
approached the BBC direct, and again in 1966, and did several spells of temping
at Aeolian Hall, finally working there permanently. From late 1967, she and I
lived in Hamburg, and in 1969 travelled overland to Australia. With work-stops
in Perth and Sydney, we drove extensively around Australia, before embarking on
a French cargo boat to return to Europe via the Panama Canal in March 1971.
We
kept in touch with Peter by letter, and back in England, we had brief contact
with him while we studied for a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education in
Bristol, before he retired and at last travelled to see his sister Meg and
nephew Adam in Masterton, New Zealand in March 1972. The following account of
his travels is edited from Peter’s letters to us, written in July 1973 while
(ironically) he was also returning to England by sea through the Panama Canal…
‘Early in 1968 I was forced by the resignation of Humphrey Barclay (who moved
to London Weekend Television) to take over the production of I’m Sorry I’ll
Read That Again while continuing to function as Light Entertainment Organiser
or LEO (under which guise Pam first knew me!).
‘By the end of 1968 I had begun,
after initial near-panic, to enjoy being a producer (a role I had refused
twenty years before and only finally accepted under protest!). But although I
was given an extra secretary, and David Hatch as co-producer, I found the
double task of producing and being LEO too taxing for my dwindling genius, so I
was allowed to give up the latter task and become a full-time producer. They
also, touchingly, extended my tenure beyond my official retirement date (18th
September 1970 – my sixtieth birthday) up to 1st April 1972 – so that, forsooth,
I could complete exactly a quarter of a century with the BBC which I had joined
on 1st April 1947. I gladly accepted of course – although my poor sister was
expecting me in NZ for Christmas 1970 and had already practically aired the
sheets!
‘From then on life was thoroughly pleasant, though at times stunningly
busy (far more so than when you first knew me). I was given the most amiable
programmes to produce – nothing mind-blowing or really intellectually taxing
(either to me or the public) – which included a cheery panel-game called Many A
Slip, a spy serial The Dark Island, set in the Outer Hebrides and sufficiently
successful to beget two sequels, a transference to radio of the old TV saga Dr
Finlay’s Casebook (of which I did, believe it or not, fifty-four!) and of
course the ever-continuing horror of I’m Sorry which had been responsible for
this new and final phase of my ‘career’. (The height of irony was attained when
I reached NZ, innocently thinking I’d escaped from it all, and bingo! Proceeded
to hear nearly every one of my programmes on the radio there!)…
‘But to resume
– you’re not bored, are you? – during the same period (roughly 1966 to 1972) I
contrived to have three major operations and three minor ones. I think I had
already acquired my gluten enteropathy (allergy to wheat flour) while we were
still in touch – it dates back to 1965. But don’t be alarmed… let it suffice to
say that I never felt better in my life and haven’t had so much as a head cold
the whole time I’ve been away. ‘
Then at last retirement loomed. I had produced
and edited all my programmes by the end of February 1972 – some of which, I may
say, were still being transmitted months after I left the country, so my name
was still ringing round the land – enough to make one almost believe in a life
after death!
‘Having virtually finished all work in February, I had a clear
month to sweep away the accumulated silt of twenty-five years in my office,
pack to go to NZ (a five-week journey by every form of transport except mule!),
and say my farewells. The latter seemed to wear on for an entire week, for I
was given official luncheons, official teas (Pam will remember such functions
in the Aeolian canteen!), and a cocktail party in Broadcasting House, and made
three speeches of enviable wit and fire – they all had to be different too,
because some of the same people were present on all three occasions.
‘The
festivities (or wakes according to the way you look at it) concluded with a
champagne party of my own given to 130 guests in a large conference room in The
Langham on Wednesday 29th March, and literally within twelve hours of shaking
the last valedictory hand I was on the Golden Arrow for Paris on the first leg
of my trek to New Zealand. (April 1st, my statutory ‘last’ day, happened to fall
at Easter, so they let me leave two days early!) Reason for my precipitate
departure wasn’t fear of the police but simply so I shouldn’t wake up the
following Monday morning and think ‘My God, I’ve nowhere to go – I’ve RETIRED!’
– subtle psychological stuff! As a result I never have felt retired.’
Another
letter, written later in July 1973 from the same ship, en route for the Azores,
continued thus: ‘Having written from Panama, and done my duty by others to the
extent of 75 cards, I find myself with still a week to go of this unexampled
leisure. Shipboard leisure is unlike any other – so little liable to
interruption – no telephone, no-one calling to read the meter, no need to pop
down to the corner shop for a packet of fags. Of course there’s always the
chance of a typhoon, I suppose. Still, before that happens, I might as well get
you and Pam up to date with my life-story – so stifle your yawns and sit up
straight.
‘I brought you to the point, I think, where on the very morning of my
retirement I departed for Paris by train, boat, and train. It was Easter
weekend, and the limes and chestnuts were at their delicate best. Indeed I’ve
rarely known Paris so lovely – or so crowded! I escaped for one whole afternoon
to the Père Lachaise cemetery and paced about, practically the only one alive,
among the illustrious dead. I was much amused by Chopin’s grave – a small
obelisk with his profile in bas relief and, underneath, the simple words ‘Ã
Fréd. Chopin’. I shall always think of him now as good old Fred!
‘From Paris I
moved on to Amsterdam for a few days – my first visit, certainly not my last.
Thence (via an afternoon at The Hague and the most exquisite Vermeer in the
world) to Rotterdam, there to embark on a Rhine steamer. I enjoyed a leisurely
four-day cruise upstream, inert and grossly over-fed. Oddly enough, the place
that stayed most vividly in mind is not Cologne, not Coblenz, but Düsseldorf,
although a side-trip to Heidelberg was interesting. I disembarked at Strasbourg
for a couple of nights; then by train to Munich, where I visited one of
Ludwig’s castles in the Bavarian Alps, and went to the exquisite opera-house
twice. I liked Munich – hadn’t expected to, considering what it spawned.
‘Then
followed the highlight of my journey – eight days in a Europabus from Munich to
Teheran. I wrote an account of it for my travel agent – he very kindly made
some copies – I’ll send you one when I get home. Not because it is a model of
English prose – far from it, I wrote it with a set purpose, and he had never
booked anyone on the Europabus before – but it’ll save me writing it all over
again here!
‘Briefly, the route lay through Austria, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria,
Istanbul (where we had two nights, and I fell in love with the place), and of
course mainland Turkey. While at Teheran (which I hated) I flew down to Isfahan
for one night. After that I took to the air for the rest of the way, touching
down for a couple of days each at Delhi, Calcutta, and Bangkok. It was a sad
mistake to revisit India; and I saw nothing at Bangkok except Americans. Then
to Sydney for a week with friends in St Ives, during which we saw the
Australian ballet (very good, I thought), and I found my grandfather’s grave. I
was conceived in Sydney, so I always feel at home there! Finally, one afternoon,
I flew across the Tasman to Wellington and the welcoming arms of the family.
‘I
must now pause to confess something I have not yet told anyone at home – which
is that, on retirement, I had long planned to settle permanently in New
Zealand. My sister had welcomed the plan, which was first formulated way back
in 1965. It really did seem the obvious move – I was without ties in England, I
had liked New Zealand on my first visit there in 1958-59, and Meg and Adam (my
nephew – now 19) are my nearest and dearest. Economically it was practical too
– my BBC pension is not large but, pooled with the family’s resources, it was
adequate for a comfortable life. Such was the plan. The reason I told none of
my relatives or friends at home was from a dread of farewells – forever – my
intention was to announce it from NZ after a month or so there.
‘As you will
remember, I have no furniture or household effects (lost in a depository fire
in 1953), so it was merely a question of having my books, pictures and papers
crated, and saying that they were going into store! My clothes went into a
couple of trunks and sundry suitcases. (And I told Ronnie Hill it would be too
expensive for me to return to Dorset House, which God knows is the truth!) So
there I was – fully uprooted – with all my worldly possessions going ahead of
me by sea, except what I needed for the journey.
‘Mind you, I talk of avoiding
farewells – but I had to suffer them one-sidedly, saying “See you in a year’s
time” with a gay laugh, while simultaneously genuinely believing I should never
see them again. And now you will be wondering what has happened to alter all
this. Let me hasten to say it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with New
Zealand (I’m no ‘moaning pom’), still less with my welcome from the family. I
was lapped in every comfort, my room had been planned and equipped with the
greatest care and affection, with a multitude of cupboards and bookshelves and
drawers, and the sun shone unblinkingly on one of the most beautiful countries
in the world despite its being winter when I got there.
‘My first two months
were very happy indeed. I hadn’t seen Meg for eleven years, so there was much
to catch up on, and it was great getting to know Adam again. I seem to have
been born to retirement as the sparks fly upward – new routines of life took
over smoothly, the more so since they were linked with Meg, with whom I had
shared the earliest routines of all, those of childhood. I like New Zealand’s
uncongestedness and cleanliness and quietness – and of course its beauty.
‘Then
gradually an obscure sense of unease crept up on me – which became, more
distinctly, a sense of something missing – and what was missing was of course
the familiarity of England. Not Britain, I hasten to say – none of that robust
sort of flim-flam – equally not the theatre, ballet, opera, etc – not even my
friends.
‘No, I can put it in no other way than by the word familiarity. New
Zealand stared back at me, beautiful but uncomprehending. England took me in,
absorbed me, made me a part of her. Sounds sentimental, I know, but it was
pretty basic. A matter of roots, I suppose, or age – or both.
‘Anyway, I became
unhappy, seemed to be in a cleft stick – cleft, what’s more, by myself – and
the day I said to myself almost with a sense of discovery “But this needn’t be
a life-sentence” was the beginning of release and of my eventual resolve to
return. From that moment I could regard the enterprise as a holiday and extend
it indefinitely with perfect equanimity.
‘Of course, telling Meg was hellish –
at a stroke it made her own exile so extreme – but she understood as I knew she
would, which in a strange sort of way didn’t make it any easier. However, human
nature is nothing if not resilient, and we all soon settled down again on the
new footing. We caravanned up the Tasman coast in the summer – and a glorious
summer too – and bathed and fished. I was taken for an exhausting but
exhilarating two-day bush trek by friends of Adam’s.
‘I visited the South
Island twice and was given a marvellous time on both occasions by Meg’s
multitude of in-laws. I walked the Milford Track, a wonderful 35-mile hike
through the mountains of the extreme south, taking four days in superb weather.
I had a week with friends in Auckland, New Zealand’s ‘swinging’ city – when I
heard Ashkenazy play Chopin (good old Fred!) at the Town Hall, went to the
theatre, saw a perfect first folio of Shakespeare in the library, tasted the
fleshpots.
‘I was given plenty of evidence of how very possible it is to live a
perfectly fulfilled life in New Zealand – but still I wanted to go home – so
here I am on my way! Ironically enough, no-one at home need ever know any of
this – so far as they’re concerned I was going to be away for a year at least
and am returning after 16 months.
‘So that’s my story. It has been in many
respects a distressing way, and certainly an expensive one, of learning
something more about myself. Simply that I am not the footloose guy I thought I
was! I shall miss the family sorely, of course – but it is my fate, and I must
accept it, to be missing something whichever side of the world I’m on. One
reason I’m returning by sea is that it’s the cheapest way of bringing the bulk
of my clobber back with me, though even so I’ve had to leave behind a quantity
of books and papers for later transmission when I have somewhere for them to
come to. Where that will be, I have no idea at present. I intend to get the
smell of the place again first. I’m pretty resourceless, so it will probably
end up by being a back room in Balham. As I said earlier, New Zealand was the
sensible course!
‘But my immediate intention is a Grand Tour visiting sundry
strategically placed friends and relations, which will take me into the New
Year. After that I have plenty of invitations to stay with various people in London
like old Humphrey. During this battening period I shall of course be
prospecting with regard to a future ‘home’. Till further notice, though,
continue to use Dorset House as my holding address.
‘This has been a good
voyage. We left Wellington on Monday 2nd July, twenty-four hours late due to a
pilots’ strike, and had to miss Tahiti in order to make up time, which was
disappointing – and which meant a long fortnight between Wellington and the
Panama Canal without sight of land; but I enjoyed even that, for I’m never
tired of gazing at the sea and the occasional scurry of flying fish. I started
this letter when we were two days out of Curaçao. It has seen me across the
Atlantic, for we now have only a day to go to Ponta Delgada (in the Azores)
whence it will wing its way to you.
‘We docked at Balboa late one night, and I
went into Panama City by the bus next morning and walked around for a couple of
hours. I found the passage through the canal absolutely fascinating, and
watched every moment of our progress from sea to sea, eschewing all meals till
we emerged safely into the Caribbean – not much of a sacrifice as it was a
humid hot day and I’ve eaten enough on this trip to last me till Christmas! I
kept my eyes skinned for the burnt-out Indian freighter – wasn’t quite sure
which way you were going when you referred me to the port side, so peered at
both, but no sign – they must have removed it.
‘Did you touch Curaçao on your
way? An odd island, I thought, dominated by the Shell refinery, but Willemstad
looked charming as we sailed in. I had a pleasant stroll round it – and of
course a sip or two of Curaçao! Since then there has been no excitement. I read
a book a day on average, go to the movies every other night, and spend the rest
of the time eating, sleeping, watching porpoises – and writing to you!
‘Writing, moreover, at far too prolix a length for your patience, I fear, but
there’s been a lot of slack to pull in. However, we’re more or less up to date
now, I think, so I’ll shut up and take this along to the purser’s office for
mailing. It is Monday 23rd July, latitude 34N, longitude 36W, and on Friday
I’ll be in Southampton; London the same night. I can scarcely believe it!’
By
the time these letters had bounced off my mother’s address in Maidenhead and
caught up with us, Pam and I were back in Perth, Western Australia! Our
attempts to buy the house of our dreams in the Welsh Marches during 1971-72
were foiled by a house-price boom, so in October 1972 we returned to Perth to
earn a larger deposit. We corresponded with Peter intermittently till we came
back to England in February 1975, before the birth of our first child, and
bought an isolated cottage in Shropshire. A letter from Peter dated 30th April
1976 was written to fill in gaps in our knowledge since he had arrived back
from New Zealand and landed feet-first into a new career:
‘Arriving back from
New Zealand after an eighteen-month absence, I was so shaken by the cost of
things that momentarily I feared a pauper’s grave and, although in NZ I’d fallen
in love with inactivity, I was quite glad to accept the BBC’s unexpected recall
to freelance production. First it was a new domestic comedy series about
(ironically) retirement, called Home to Roost, starring Deryck Guyler and Molly
Sugden, two lovely artists, and it was great fun to do.
‘Then I took over an
existing series of P G Wodehouse adaptations (fortunately I like Wodehouse)
with Michael Hordern as Jeeves and Richard Briers as Bertie Wooster, two more
lovely artists, so that was great fun to do too. Home to Roost proved a success
and Radio 4 wanted a second series, but by that time (Spring 1975) the axe had
fallen and it had to be produced by a staff man.
‘The dear good faithful BBC,
however, then asked me to write a report on Revue – its history, its present
state, its potential for a Radio 2 nostalgia series, etc; so I plunged into
research and came up with twenty closely typewritten foolscap pages, such
industry! On the strength of it they further asked me to assemble, and write
the narrative for, a series of eight hour-long programmes, but by then I was
sick of the subject – and had also discovered I could exist quite adequately on
my income – so I said no.
‘Then came the approach from the publishers I told
you of (to write a history of Aeolian Hall). I must confess I was flattered,
and I allowed myself to be given an extremely expensive lunch and said I would
think about it. And indeed the idea was attractive, for I loved the dear old
Aeolian. But finally the thought of writing forty thousand words in six months
and selecting a hundred or so illustrations – nay more, the tedium of re-living
twenty-five years of my past life – filled me with such melancholy that I
fiendishly put them onto Ronnie Hill instead. He accepted, but has often since,
much to my wry amusement, declared how wise I was not to!
‘By this time
people were beginning to think me slightly unhinged – you know how strenuous
the average Anglo-Saxon is, and one seems to be surrounded by average
Anglo-Saxons in this country – and it was this more than anything (well,
perhaps the lure of a free fare north too!) that caused me to say yes when
Manchester University asked me to lecture on Radio Comedy to their Penn State
course, an educational sensation from which I have just returned.
‘Amid all the
above, of course, I had to find somewhere to live. I ‘gypsied’ around for most
of my first year home – dear old Humphrey put me up for ages, and I had several
spells back at Dorset House (by now grown too expensive to consider as a
permanency). I spent my second year in an unsatisfactory flat (share of
bathroom, you know the sort of thing), but at least it was in St John’s Wood
which is the part of London I understand best (because linked with childhood
and youth) and so I was on the spot when this place fell vacant, where the only
thing I share is the telephone. I’m really very lucky to have hit on anything
in St John’s Wood within my means because it’s a hellishly expensive area – I
actually saw an advert in The Times for a furnished flat only two roads away
from me at £110 a week!!
‘Well, that brings me up to date. If you ask what I do
with myself, well, for a start I’ve never lived alone before and it has been a
revelation how much time, energy and wit it takes to feed, launder, and
house-clean one solitary being. Practicalities apart, there is always something
I should be doing (at the moment it’s my income-tax return) which I seem to end
up not doing in order to do something I don’t have to do (like going to see
Truffaut’s Baisers Volés this afternoon at the dear old Everyman), and this
continuous slight pressure on my conscience provides just the irritant the
oyster needs to achieve a pearl, and I a contented life. And certainly there
never seems to be any time. But I suspect time, like money, adjusts to one’s
temperament. In fact I think I’ve got exactly the right temperament for
retirement – bone-lazy.
‘Mentally, that is – physically, I’m a ball of fire and
bound about London like some character out of Dickens – remember how they
thought nothing of walking home to Walworth after a hard day’s work? I’ve no
idea where Walworth is but it sounds most frightfully remote. Yesterday for
instance I wanted to find a disused church in Tufnell Park (and you can’t get
remoter than that) which has just been converted to a theatre and I walked all
the way there from the Marylebone Road.’
Following this 1976 letter, Peter
stayed with us twice in Shropshire. We saw Paul Jones’ Hamlet with him at the
Ludlow Festival that year, and Henry V starring Mark Wing-Davey the following
year during a third stay. In 1977, we moved to a village in East Anglia, where
Peter again visited in September 1978 and April 1979. He was leading a very
peripatetic life, and often sent us postcards from places all over the country
where he happened to be staying.
Late in 1980, Peter must have again made a
lengthy visit to his sister Meg in New Zealand, for that year he sent us a
Christmas card designed, made and printed by his brother-in-law Keith; and in
March 1981 we received an aerogramme from him in New Zealand, the contents of
which were simply his (very typical!) poem below:
Alert the Royal Trumpeters!
England again may laugh.
Forth from the deep-freeze bring the fatted calf!
For in the latter days of March
(Get on with that triumphal arch!)
Will come
the Voyager, the Flyer –
Rehearse the choir!
Summon the Yeomen of the Guard!
The conquering hero comes,
You’ll know it by the pricking of your thumbs.
For
as the world from winter wakes
(Away with melancholy, Jacques –
Prepare to sing
that thing of Blake’s!)
He leaves the far Antipodes –
Down on your knees!
And
if the time of waiting lags,
Put out more flags!
Sound, sound the clarion! Let
it rip!
You shall not sound in vain.
Set London’s gutters gushing with
champagne!
For with the coming of the Spring
(Ring out, wild bells, God damn
you, ring!)
Behold the Revenant, the Rover,
His journeying over!
Our last
contacts with Peter were in the mid-1980s, when he came to visit us after we
had been nearly out of touch for a while. By this time we had moved to Devon,
and were buried in work and parenthood, but it was always lovely to see him. He
had moved back to Dorset House, but was still very busy house-sitting for
friends and swanning round the most interesting parts of England.
In September
1985, he made another trip to New Zealand before his 75th birthday, staying for
six months. A postcard in late November from Lake Wanaka revealed he was ‘in
the midst of a mighty safari up and down and through the South Island of NZ,
here for a week in a house overlooking this very fine lake. Up the Tasman coast
next week to Nelson where my nephew Adam recently bought a small picture
gallery…and a picture-framing workshop in which he is – thank God! – going mad
trying to cope with floods of orders. Back to the North Island in time for
Christmas’.
At the end of March 1987, we received a brief letter from Peter,
written from hospital in London: ‘Do forgive my impenetrable veil of silence,
but my wretched old allergy …has been giving trouble and my weight has rocketed
down. So they’ve hauled me in for tests and experiments with diet. In a
perverse sort of way I’m rather enjoying myself, just sinking back on my
pillows and watching everyone else milling around! I don’t think I’ll be here
much longer than the end of next week…’
I replied a couple of weeks later, and
at the end of April 1987 we received a postcard from Llandaff in Cardiff:
‘Thanks so much for a bumper letter, far more than my meagre communications
deserve! The doctors seem to have pulled me round. Having gone down to six
stone (didn’t know you could do that and live!), I am now well above seven and
rising. Convalescing with my cousins here and being spoilt rotten! Should
love to come and see you later in the year but want to be really fit again first.
I’ll give you a ring when I get back to Dorset House – should be mid-May. You
seem to have quite enough on your hands at the moment!’
That, regrettably, was
our last written communication from Peter. Although Pam and I were both
ridiculously busy working in Devon and bringing up two children, Peter was also
busy doing what he (and Oscar Wilde) called ‘a Bunbury’ – visiting country
friends and relatives or house-sitting. We spoke by phone now and then to
exchange news and discuss possible dates to get together, but didn’t actually
see each other. A long silence ensued.
As usual, we sent a Christmas card to
Peter in 1990, and at the year’s end we were deeply shocked to receive a card
in Ronnie Hill’s wild writing, penned on Christmas Eve: ‘Your card, addressed
to Peter, brought me some sadness. As you may have suspected, he died on March
21st of 1989. He got very ill that time when he went to Llandaff and had to go
into hospital early the next year. I was also in another hospital at the time,
having had a bad fall, and he left us on my birthday, 21st March of that year.
John Loney and Humphrey Barclay arranged the setting up of a trust to encourage
and develop two young writers, so we were all happy about that. I do remember
meeting you, and wish you and the family very well. With good – and sad –
wishes, yours very sincerely, Ronnie Hill’.
I was very upset not to have been
able to attend Peter’s funeral, and in March 1991 I sent Ronnie a birthday card
to arrive on the 21st, with a note asking for details of the trust and the
whereabouts of Peter’s grave. There was no reply, and I assumed that by then he
might have died too.
Peter was a modest man, and although he mentioned his
theatrical ancestors, I had no idea they were so famous and highly regarded.
Similarly, he used to speak lightly of having ‘written some silly little
musicals before the war’, but I had no idea of their extent and popularity (no
internet then!). However, I did once ask about his wartime experience, and he
lent me a document he called his ‘Credo’. Written at an all-night sitting while
posted to some remote location in India, it was an exploration of his
philosophy of life, his values and beliefs, and an assessment of where he
stood, and how and where he would like his life to proceed. As expected, it was
deeply thought-out, fluently expressed and extremely moving.
The photo shows
Peter at his office desk as Light Entertainment Organiser in Aeolian Hall circa
1965, gazing pensively out of the window. The pose is typical: a Woodbine
between two fingers (and probably another forgotten and smoking on the ashtray
beside him), and a cigarette pack held in the left hand. As usual, he’s wearing
a bow tie, with a silk handkerchief peeping from his jacket pocket. On the back
of the photo he has written: ‘For Thain and Pam, with love, Peter.’
By Thain
Hatherly, June 2020
