Ladies of Quality and Distinction by Mary Hoffman

In

The Foundling Museum, Brunswick Square

I was in Brunswick Square a couple of weeks ago, to visit an exhibition at the Foundling Museum. It told a story I knew nothing about. I had, of course, heard of Thomas Coram, its founder, but knew nothing of the struggle he had experienced in getting his philanthropic venture off the ground.

In the early 1700s, when Thomas Coram returned to England after eleven years in America, the London poor were in a bad way, especially their children. Mortality in the under-fives was running at 75%. it was even worse in the workhouses, where the rate was 90%. It was the time of the gin craze and many poor women who couldn't feed their children adequately gave this cheap spirit to them  to suppress their appetite, not realising the dangers. Thousands of children died from alcohol poisoning.

About a thousand children a year were abandoned in the streets by desperately poor families who couldn't provide for them. Illegitimacy also bore a stigma and many abandoned babies were those who had been born out of wedlock. And yet there was no provision in London for the care of such "foundlings."

In this way we lagged behind provision in Europe, where there was the Hopital des Enfants-Trouvés in Paris in the late 17th century. Italy was even better provided, having had the Ospedale degli Innocenti (designed by Brunellechi) in Florence since 1491 and the even earlier Conservatorio della Ruota in Rome in the 13th century. The "ruota" was the wheel, also used in Florence, in the wall of the building, where desperate women placed their babies and turned the handle to deliver them inside, into the care of nuns.

In Britain, there was a fear that having somewhere to leave the results would encourage extra-marital or pre-marital sex.

Into this scene stepped Thomas Coram, a man of such determination that he spent seventeen years getting the Foundling Hospital up and running.

Thomas Coram in front of his hospital

Born to a humble family in Lyme Regis, Thomas Coram went to sea and ended up in Boston in  America as a shipbuilder. He was evident a blunt and outspoken man, who made enemies in America, and eventually returned to his native country. He continued to do well as a shipbuilder and became quite wealthy. But he was appalled at the situation of abandoned children in London and the absence of any provision for them. He had no children of his own but was determined to do something to look after the unfortunate offspring of others.

To establish a foundling hospital, he had to get a Charter of Incorporation from the king but he had no idea how to secure one. So he decided to start a petition and made extensive lists in his pocket book of the names of all the  churchmen, nobles and other dignitaries he could think of. Then he tramped the streets of London trying to get these influential people's support. This was to little avail.

Coram decided on a another approach: he would approach the women, the wives of the great and the good, and appeal to their compassion. The first woman to sign his petition was Charlotte, the Duchess of Somerset in 1729, the first of eventually twenty-one "Ladies of Quality and Disctinction" to do so. That's her, on the left, below:

Where one noble lady led, others followed. The exhibition currently at the Foundling Museum, shows portraits or copies or photographs of paintings of all twenty-one, because women of their rank would have sat to have their images preserved. Some paintings show them with their families, some alone. Here is Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, who signed in 1730, with her husband, the Earl, and their children Selina and Henry.

Ann, Duchess of Bolton

Many of these women were remarkable in their own right. Countess Selina, for example, in 1737, leading a group of titled women, broke into the House of Commons gallery and shouted comments, after they had been excluded from a debate on Spain.

Each "lady" has her own story and I recommend visiting the exhibition to explore them all.

When they had all signed, the petition was presented to the king in 1735 and there followed two years of gentle persuasion of husbands and kinsmen, until a second petition was presented, of "Noblemen and Gentlemen," which included "25 dukes, 31 earls, 26 members of the peerage and38 knights, along with the entire Privy Council, which included the Prince of Wales, the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the House of Commons andthe Justices of the Peace, 375 signatures in total."

Such a plea could not be ignored and, in 1739, King George ll signed the charter and the Foundling Hospital had its green light. Thomas Coram, now 70 years old, presented it to the Duke of Bedford, who was made its first President. 172 men from the age of 21 to 80, were appointed its first governors. (Anyone who donated £50 was eligible).

Now all they had to do was raise the money. A committee of 50 governors was chosen by lot and they met every two weeks to discuss fund-raising and other matters. In 1740 a lease was taken on a house in Hatton Garden, to provide a home for sixty children. But it wasn't until 1753 that permanent premises opened, with half the cost of building (£2,000) donated by the king.


From 1742-55 there was an admission system of lottery, using coloured balls. This was becaiuse there were always more babies that places. A white ball meant a definite admission subject to medical examination, a black ball meant there was definitely no place for the child and a red ball meant a reserve place if any of the accepted children failed the medical.

Every child came with a token from its mother, which could be as simple as a piece of cloth, in the event that a child might be taken back at a later date when the parents could afford to support it. Infants were taken into the country to foster mothers until they were four years old. One of the inspectors of these foster-homes was the artist William Hogarth.

Self-portrait with pug

 He was one of the original governors of the Foundling Hospital and he and his wife Jan, although childless themselves, fostered several foundlings themselves. He donated his portrait of Thomas Coram to the hospital.

Coram himself was chucked off the committee within a year. He was obviously no easier to get along with than he had been in America. But obstinacy can be a good quality, as his perseverance shows.

But he couldn't have succeeded without the support of his Ladies of Quality and Distinction. Some were happily married, like Elizabeth, Countess of Cardigan, whose husband wrote he was "the happiest man in the whole world by being married last Thursday to my Lady Betty Bruce." They had six children, two of whom are in this painting:

Elizabeth, Countess of Cardigan

Others were not so lucky, like Anne, Duchess of Bedford, whose first husband was the "intellectually weak" seventeen-year-old 3rd Duke of Bedford. Anne, the granddaughter of Sarah Churchill, the uchess of Marlborough, was six years older than her pathetic teenage husband, who didn't fancy her and wouldn't perform his marital duties. He was also gambling away hisfamily fortune.

Grandma stepped in and suggested he might travel abroad, where he conveniently died in his early twenties. Anne swapped her title for the lesser one of Countess of Jersey a year later and had a happy second marriage. She signed the petition while her first husband was still alive.

Anne, Duchess of Bedford

It was a story I knew nothing about, all these duchesses and countesses, who lent their names to the great venture that was to become the Foundling Hospital and rescue so many children, although of course many more were lost. Not only did it help the ones who were fortunate in the lottery but it helped to change society's view of illegitimacy.

(And the Hospital inspired two great children's books: Jamila Gavin's Coram Boy (2000), which won the Whitbread Prize and Jacqueline Wilson's Hetty Feather, which was turned into  TV series in 2015)


Many thanks to volunteer Jane King for showing us around the museum.

With acknowledgmentsto the exhibition brochure and The Foundling Museum: an Introduction by Caro Howell et.al. (2014)

(Images by author and Wikimedia Commons)

Cabinet of Curiosities - a Baby Dinosaur

A few months ago I wrote on this blog about an ending for me – finishing my life as a civil servant. Today is another ending – and, excitingly, a new beginning – because today I’m leaving London, and moving to Brighton.

Me on Dinosaur Island, Crystal Palace Park Photo: L O'Sullivan

It became the defining feature of the area, bringing millions of people to visit and live over the next 80 years and changing it forever. Two train stations were built to manage the influx of visitors. Many of the bus routes in south London end in Crystal Palace even now because of the number of people who wanted to get to the attraction. And, as across London, huge numbers of houses were built, but in this case many of them were large and beautiful villas for the well-to-do, wanting to live in this now-fashionable spot.

The Megalosaurus, striding through the autumn foliage. Photo C. Wightwic

1) The Dinosaurs. I’ve written about them before, but I make no bones (boom boom) about doing so again. Declaring an Interest, I’m now on the Board of the charity that works to promote and conserve the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (most of which aren’t actually Dinosaurs, but hey…) They were built in the 1850s as an attraction in the grounds of Crystal Palace and were the first ever life sized sculptures of dinosaurs (and other extinct creatures) anywhere in the world. The sculptures were created at the dawn of dinosaur palaeontology, taking into account the cutting-edge science of the day. We obviously know much more now, so many of them look weird and ‘wrong’ to our eyes. From the point of view of the history of science, therefore, they are a testament to how our knowledge changes and grows with each generation. For the general viewer today, their ‘wrongness’ adds to their charm.

The Subway in 2017. Photo: C.Wightwick

Find out more at:

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs: https://cpdinosaurs.org/ The Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are currently fundraising to build a bridge to improve conservation, maintenance and improve public access. Details – including how to pledge – are at www.spacehive.co.uk/bridges-to-the-crystal-palace-dinsosaurs

The Crystal Palace Subway: www.cpsubway.org.uk

November Competition

To win a copy of Chris Skaife's The Ravenmaster, just answer the question below in the Comments section. Then send a copy of your answer to me at: maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk

Just for once, it's a question with a right answer! If we get more than five right answers, we will put names into a hat.

Closing date: 7th December

Name all seven ravens currently living at the Tower of London. 

We are sorry that our competitions are open only to UK Followers

Good luck!

The Legend of the Tower ravens by Chris Skaife

November's guest is very special. Not only is he a History Boy, he is the only guest we've ever had who lives inside one of the oldest historical spots in the UK. Meet Chris Skaife, a modest man with a very unusual job, who has recently become a bit of a media star. You'll find out why below.

Before becoming Yeoman Warder and Ravenmaster at the Tower of London, Chistopher Skaife served in the British Army for twenty-four years, during which time he became a Drum Major as part of a specialist machine gun platoon. He has been featured on the BBC, the History Channel, PBS, BuzzFeed, Slate, and other media. He lives at the Tower with his wife, his daughter, and, of course, the ravens. Follow him on Twitter at @ravenmaster1. 

Credit: Historic Royal Palaces

I have what is often described as the oddest job in Britain.

Odd? Maybe.

The best? Definitely.

My name is Chris Skaife and I am the Ravenmaster at the Tower of London.

My official title is Yeoman Warder Christopher Skaife, of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, and member of the Sovereign’s Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary – that’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it!

All of us Yeoman Warders are former servicemen and women with at least twenty-two years of unblemished service. We are the ceremonial guardians of the Tower of London. In principle we’re responsible for looking after any prisoners at the Tower and safeguarding the Crown Jewels. In practice, we act as tour guides and as custodians of the rituals of the Tower.

As the Ravenmaster, I have the added responsibility for the safety, security and welfare of the ravens in my care. Without the ravens, so the legend goes, the Tower itself will crumble into dust and great harm will befall the kingdom.

The legend of the ravens at the Tower of London is as strange and perplexing in its way as any of the great legends of the raven from around the world.



What follows is my take on the legend of the ravens at the Tower.

The story goes that Charles II was once visiting the Tower of London after the restoration of the monarchy to survey a new building. At the time, a young astronomer named John Flamsteed was using a room in the round turret house at the top of the White Tower for his observations of the stars and the moon, but he had found that the nesting ravens rather obstructed his view and interfered with his work. Flamsteed asked Charles II if he might be able to get rid of “ those confounded ravens.” Charles, being a decent sort of a king, readily agreed, until someone pointed out that the birds had always been at the Tower and were an important symbol of the city and the monarchy and that getting rid of them would therefore seem like rather a bad omen. Mindful no doubt that both the city and the monarchy had had a bit of a run of bad luck recently, what with his father Charles I having been executed and there having been a terrible plague in London in 1665 and then the Great Fire of London in 1666, Charles promptly issued a royal decree, commanding that instead of banishing the birds, at least six ravens should be kept at the Tower forevermore.

But in all my research over the years, assisted by the incredible resources of the Tower’s library and my archives, in all the years I’ve been looking and searching, and with all the experts I’ve consulted. I have been able to find no mention whatsoever of the legend of the ravens at the Tower before the late nineteenth century.

Let me just say that again, no mention of the legend of the ravens at the Tower until the late nineteenth century.

Nothing, nada, zilch. Not a croak.

Nothing about Charles II and his decree. Nothing about Flamsteed and the confounded ravens. Nothing about the kingdom falling if the ravens should ever leave the Tower. The truth is that there was no Royal Decree protecting the ravens issued by Charles II, though there was admittedly a Royal Warrant issued in June 1675, which provided John Flamsteed, who became the first Royal Astronomer, with the funding to set up a proper observatory in Greenwich.

So it’s possible that the confounded ravens played a small part in the history of astronomy and navigation in this country simply by being so bloody annoying that Flamsteed had to move out to Greenwich to get away from them!

Not only is there no evidence of ravens having played an important part in the history of the Tower before the late nineteenth century, there is barely any mention of the ravens at the Tower in the historical records before then at all.

Merlina

Take the old Authorised Guide to the Tower of London by W. J. Loftie published in its second edition in 1888. Any mention of the ravens? No, Nothing.

The ever popular and magisterial Her Majesty’s Tower, by William Hepworth Dixon, first published in 1869? Nothing. Even William Benham’s The Tower of London, published in 1906, mentions not the mighty raven.

One of the first official Tower guidebooks to mention the birds is Colonel E. H. Carkeet- James’s His Majesty’s Tower of London, which wasn’t published until 1950, and even then the birds are seen largely as an annoyance.

“They are not popular with the residents of the Tower,” according to the Colonel. “They tear up the grass, flowers create an urge to destroy, they pick out the putty from windows and the lead from the diamond leaded lights in the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula. Few motor cars are safe from their marauding and they find a strange fascination in ladies’ silk stockings.”

As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, from my own research and from the work of various historians and scholars, the first significant depiction of the ravens at the Tower wasn’t until 1883 in an article in the Pictorial World newspaper on July 14, which has a drawing of what certainly looks like a raven by the entrance to the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, near the plaque commemorating the executions on Tower Green.

Erin

In the same year there was also a children’s book, London Town, by Felix Leigh, illustrated by Thomas Crane and Ellen Houghton, which tells the story, in verse, of a young girl named Prue touring London with her parents.

The book includes a drawing of Prue and her parents at the Tower, observing a little girl outside Beauchamp Tower, looking rather frightened at the sight of two ravens and clinging to a Yeoman Warder. The text accompanying the drawing seems to be the first significant mention of the ravens at the Tower.

Among the sights of London Town
Which little visitors wish to view,
The Tower stands first, and its great renown
Has, you will notice, attracted Prue.

At a well- known spot, to Miss Prue’s surprise,
 some fine old ravens are strutting about.
If upon the picture a glance you cast,
you will know the ravens next time, no doubt.

The red-coated guard who’s watching her
Is called a Beefeater— fancy that!
And Prue discovers, as she draws near,
A child by his side who is round and fat.

“ Father and Mother… pray come here,”
In tones so pleasant, laughs lively Prue:
“ You’ve shown me things that are odd and queer,
A Beefeater’s baby I’ll show you!”

After Prue and her parents, the accounts of the ravens at the Tower start to proliferate… There is raven contagion!


In Birds in London, published in 1898, W. H. Hudson claims,

“For many years past two or three ravens have usually been kept at the Tower of London.” And so the stories begin to grow. You can see the beginnings of the legend of the ravens growing and blossoming before your very eyes in the work of Major-General Sir George Younghusband, of the Guides Cavalry, a formidable soldier who served in the Second Afghan War, the Mahdist War, the Third Burmese War, the Second Boer War, and the First World War, and who was appointed Keeper of the Jewel House at the Tower in 1917.

In his book The Tower from Within, Younghusband provides a comprehensive guide to life at the Tower, its history and traditions as understood at the beginning of the twentieth century.

According to Younghusband:

"Round and about the site of the ancient scaffold, or sitting silent on a bench nearby, may be seen the historic ravens of the Tower. No doubt when forests grew close up to the moat the turrets of the old Tower made an ideal place in which ravens could build their nests, and rear future generations of Tower ravens. But as the city grew around and the forests receded, and with them fields for forage, the ravens would no longer nest or breed in their old haunts. They have therefore since then from time to time had to be replaced by new blood from outside.

The present birds were given to the Tower by Lord Dunraven, and one of them is now of considerable age. It would be of historic interest if those whose ancestors have suffered at the Tower would send from their homes successors to the old ravens, as they die off, and thus maintain a very old tradition in a manner well in keeping."

It seems likely that the “very old tradition” that Younghusband mentions was no more than thirty or forty years old at the time. Nonetheless, a few years later, in 1924, when he published another book about the Tower, A Short History of the Tower of London, he elaborated upon the theme of the Tower’s ancient raven traditions:

"Walking about on the Tower Green, or perhaps perched on the steps of the White Tower, may be seen a few ravens, three or four, sometimes five. These are the Ravens of the Tower and as much part of it as are the Yeomen Warders. What their origin may have been is lost in the mists of antiquity, but possibly when the Tower stood alone— a rock- like edifice amidst the fields and forests which then surrounded it— ravens built their nests in its high turrets. An historian mentions that they were gazing on the scene when Queen Anne Boleyn was executed. Perhaps after the ravens ceased to nest in such unquiet surroundings as the Tower they formed part of the menagerie maintained by Kings of England in the Tower as one of their regal fancies. Whatever their origin may have been, they are now maintained on the strength of the garrison… are duly enlisted— having an attestation card as has a soldier— and daily receive their ration of raw meat and other delicacies issued by the Yeoman Warder in whose charge they are placed. [. . .] A whole chapter could be filled with stories about the Tower Ravens and their adventures and escapades and amusements, and these can be gathered from any of the kindly Yeoman Warders whom the visitor may meet, but here unhappily there is no more space for them."

Merlina

Personally, I have no doubt that ravens have long been present here. The White Tower was for many centuries one of the tallest buildings in London, and what with Smithfield Market nearby, and the amount of rubbish and decaying flesh that would anyway have been bobbing its way downstream in the River Thames, the Tower would have been an ideal spot for ravens to congregate and nest.

In a letter written by Sir Walter Raleigh to Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cranborne, in the winter of 1604–1605, while he was imprisoned in the Bloody Tower, Raleigh implores his friend to “save this quarter which remaineth from the ravens of this time which feed on all things.” Poor Sir Walter was clearly having a bad day when he wrote the letter, though the good news is that he survived his imprisonment in the Tower and was in fact pardoned by the King in 1617 and granted permission to go off in search of El Dorado — though he was then admittedly beheaded in the Old Palace Yard at the Palace of Westminster in 1618!

Anyway, his plea to Robert Cecil to save his wasted body from the ravens suggests that there were indeed ravens in and around the Tower at the time.

What we know for sure is that the ravens only became a notable and remarkable feature at the Tower sometime in the late 1800s. Perhaps it was simply because the raven population throughout the rest of the country had declined so sharply having been hunted down and killed as vermin that the few remaining birds at the Tower became worthy of comment.

But I think there’s more to it.

Here’s what I think happened. This is the unproven and untested Skaife Theory about the creation of the legend of the ravens at the Tower, derived from many years of research and experience working at the Tower: you could also call it the Yeoman Warder Theory.

The Yeoman Warder Theory is based on an understanding not only of the nature and behaviour of the ravens, but also on the nature and behaviour of human beings. The Yeoman Warder Theory is that it was the Yeoman Warders themselves who had a hand in inventing the legend of the ravens at the Tower and probably for their own profit.

Credit: Mickayla Skaife

Imagine the scene: It’s the 1880s. The Tower has begun opening its gates to ever greater numbers of the general public, to the great unwashed, accepting paying visitors to the most notorious prison and fortress in the land, with its gruesome history of murder, executions, and torture. And here you are among them— washed, unwashed, whatever— waiting in anticipation for the Tower’s ancient wooden gates to open and your Beefeater guide to meet you.

Slowly the gates begin to part, creaking and groaning from almost a thousand years of use. From behind the great gate appears an old man leaning on a twisted wooden cane, wearing a dirty dark blue uniform decorated with scarlet and braid, an odd medal or two pinned to his chest. On his head is a curious hat, set at a jaunty angle. There’s a strong whiff of gin and stale tobacco about him.

“Give me a shilling and you can come in,” he growls. “And I will tell you our dark, dark secrets.”

You hand over your coin, he shoves it in his pocket, and then he turns and hobbles back inside the Tower. “Follow me!” he cries. “And keep up!” So you enter through the gates and follow him as he begins to recount his dreadful tales of the Tower’s history.

As you reach the Traitor’s Gate, he stops and turns. “Do you dare to go farther inside?” You nod, fearful and excited, and he rubs his fingers together. “In which case, I will need another coin or two.”

He scowls. And so it goes— the deeper you penetrate inside the Tower, the deeper his pockets are filled with your hard- earned cash. Until at last, at the scaffold site on Tower Green, the old Yeoman Warder claims actually to have seen the ghost of Anne Boleyn! And to have heard the pitiful whimpers of the two boy princes murdered deep within the Bloody Tower. And to himself have felt the shudders as the murdered Queens of England laid down their heads and the sharp edge of cold metal fell upon their dainty necks!

And there—he points finally, triumphantly are the ravens, reminders of our dark past, souls of the departed, the very souls of those who were executed on the private scaffold site on Tower Green!

“Witness the ravens! Here since the beginning of time! Here since Anne Boleyn herself was executed!”

What a way to enhance the story! Living, breathing representations of the life of the Tower.

And all it would have taken would have been to trim the feathers of a few ravens and feed them the occasional scraps and that’ll be another penny, Madam!



(All images author's own except where otherwise credited.)

Thanks so much for visiting, Chris, and telling us your convincing theory!

Followers – don't forget to visit tomorrow, when you'll get an opportunity to win a copy of Chris's book.

I want to speak to your manager!

If you’ve ever been left on the phone listening to tinny music and assurances that “Your call is very important to us,” then spare a thought for the outraged trader whose draft letter of complaint turned up near Hadrian’s Wall a few years ago.


Parts of the letter are missing but there’s enough to piece together most of the story. The man seems to have got into a fracas with some soldiers who threatened to tip his goods down the drain, and subsequently beat him with sticks. When he objected, they beat him again.

Then, to make matters worse, nobody wanted to listen to his complaint.

He tried the men’s Commanding Officer, but the great man was off sick.

He tried the Commanding Officer’s assistant but got nowhere.

He tried various other centurions, but none of them wanted to know - and finally he’d had enough.

We don’t know exactly which “Your majesty” the letter was intended for, but Hadrian was touring Britain at about the time it was written and, since in theory any citizen could appeal to the Emperor, it’s possible that the victim decided to go right to the top.

As he explained, he was not only an innocent man with a good reputation, but a man from overseas. And now he’d been beaten until he bled, as if he were some sort of criminal!

It’s hardly surprising that he claimed to be innocent and honest, but the third reason for his outrage is more interesting – he was an expat. He was more or less saying, “I’m one of your own people!” as opposed to being a native Briton. Giving a beating to a Briton, he implied, would have been perfectly acceptable.

There are long decades of history during which we know very little of how the Britons and the Romans rubbed along together. British names appear in trading documents (and on curses!) from the relatively peaceful south of England, but the military letters that have turned up on Hadrian’s Wall barely mention the locals. There’s a disparaging report on their fighting skills that refers to them as “wretched little Brits” (Brittunculi), but that’s about it.

There is other evidence, though. The other day I did one of my on-the-way-to-somewhere-else whistlestop tours of a museum – the sort where I rush around glancing at my watch, taking hundreds of photos and not stopping to read anything. Suddenly the rush came to a halt. I was in the Corinium museum in Cirencester, but wasn’t that the same tombstone I’d seen at Corbridge, miles away on Hadrian’s Wall?

It wasn’t until I got home and compared the photos that I realized it was the same design, but commemorated a different cavalryman. I’ve no idea how many stones there are like this, but here are the ones honouring (from left to right) Dannicus, Genialis and Candidus. Each man is shown valiantly brandishing a weapon from the back of a prancing horse. You have to look a little more closely to spot the natives.


In case you can’t make them out, I’ve highlighted them in red below. Greater minds than mine may be able to tell you if they represent the fallen from a specific battle or just generic barbarians, but either way, it’s pretty clear where Candidus’s boot is pointing. Hardly a design calculated to win the hearts and minds of the locals in an occupied country.


So did our outraged expat get justice, or was he left to seethe at being beaten like a lowly native? We don’t know. All we have is a draft of the letter, so perhaps a fair copy reached the Emperor and justice was done. On the other hand, that draft was found in the quarters of a centurion – so maybe it was intercepted before it got anywhere, and all the man got for his trouble was another beating.

French view of the First World War by Janie Hampton

During the last four years we have seen the First World War from many angles. But how did the French see it? A few years ago I found two large-format bound volumes of the magazine L’Illustration in the street with a notice ‘Take Me’. Being an obedient citizen, I did. And then wondered what to do with them. Now I am glad I did not throw them out.  My school French can read the titles and the subject matter but not the detail. So I share with you some of the 100s of illustrations, drawn and photographed.

A fictional village in Alsace the day after German occupation - suddenly the residents are very patriotic

French soldiers crossing the Canal d'Yser under fire....

..while officers of several armies enjoy life in the Café du Paix in Paris...

...and their daughters play in the Bois de Boulogne...

...and refugee children from the North hope for morsels of food.

Aeroplanes were a new weapon of war..

The Secrets of the City of Metz, eastern France, by Carol Drinkwater

Metz is a city in the northeast of France, Le Grand Est, capital of the Lorraine region, and one that I had never visited before last weekend. It sits alongside the winding Moselle river and is surprisingly inspiring.

St Honorat, Provence by Miranda Miller

       From the glitz and yachts of Cannes it’s a fifteen minute boat ride to the tiny, idyllic island of St Honorat, one of the astonishingly unspoilt Lerins islands. On a sunny afternoon in late October it was almost deserted and we walked around its coastline in about forty minutes; clean blue water and rocks on our left and, on the other side, vineyards, rosemary bushes, jasmine, olive and pine trees, all of which gave out a deliciously intoxicating perfume. No hotels, cars or bikes are allowed on the island. We passed a few small ruined buildings, a well restored fort and a World War Two gun emplacement before we came to a simple church surrounded by beautifully tended gardens. There’s also a gourmet restaurant and a shop selling wine, liqueur and chocolate (at Côte d'Azur prices) made by the Cistercian monks who live in the monastery. There are now about thirty and we passed a few of them, dressed in cream and black robes and sandals, looking busy and healthy.









   The vines in the centre of the island are protected from the salty sea air by a fringe of pine trees. A large colony of pheasants shares this romantic island with the monks and, apparently, eat many of the Chardonnay grapes used to make the monks’ famous wines.

   The tourist brochures claim that monks have lived on this island since the 5th century but in fact there have been periods when they had to leave. St Honorat has had a turbulent history although it feels so sheltered and peaceful now.

   The monastery was founded by Honoratus, the son of a Roman consul, who converted to Christianity as a young man and later became Archbishop of Arles. He intended to live as a hermit on his remote island but was soon joined by disciples. According to legend, the island wasn’t always so hospitable. When Honoratus first arrived, it was overgrown by a dense forest full of poisonous snakes and spiders. After Honoratus and the other monks finished building their first monastery a tidal wave hit the island, obligingly washing away all these obnoxious creatures but leaving the monks safe in their stone tower,. This had become "an immense monastery" by 427, according to a contemporary writer. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is thought to have studied at the monastery in the fifth century. St Honorat is rather like Lyndisfarne, in that it became a great centre of religion and culture after the Roman Empire collapsed (but it has a much better climate).

   The monks were constantly attacked by Saracen pirates and in about 732 many of the community, including the abbot, Saint Porcarius, were massacred. In medieval times, many pilgrims came to the island, attracted by its beauty and by La vie de Saint Honorat, a popular book by Raymond Féraud , who is variously described as both a monk and a troubadour.
   The fortified monastery was magnificently restored by Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century. For centuries the monks needed to defend themselves because their island was in an important strategic position. This tower was built over many centuries , beginning in 1073, as a place of refuge for the monks in case of sudden attack. Inside, there are cloisters and chapels. At the end of the 15th century, the monumental center of the abbey shifted to this Monastery Tower and later the upper floors were occupied by soldiers who came on the orders of the king to defend the coastline.
   During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the island played an important role, in the wars between France and Spain. In 1635 St Honorat was captured by the Spanish and the monks were expelled but returned from exile two years later when the island was retaken by the French. The monastery continued to be attacked by the Spanish and the Genoese and the number of monks dwindled to four. One of the ruined buildings we passed on our walk was a Napoleonic oven used for heating cannon balls to a high temperature. 1707 the Lérins Islands were captured and occupied by the English navy, under the command of Sir Cloudesley Shovell.

   After the French Revolution the church and monastery were deconsecrated and the island was sold to a wealthy actress from Paris,Mademoiselle de Sainval . She lived there for twenty years and is thought to have been a lover of the painter Fragonard, who lived in Grasse, up in the hills behind Cannes.