Grandson Rhys

My grandson, Rhys (named after my Welsh grandfather) hasn't yet ordered his copy of Left Field - despite the fact that I wrote the memoir with him in mind. I am visiting him next week in Barcelona so will have the opportunity to let him know that it is now in the publication planning stage. So neither he nor you have long to wait.

Uncle Karl

A regular guest at our house was Karl Henrik Køster, a Danish neurosurgeon who wrote for The Lancet and who’d met my father in Bergen-Belsen.They became friends and my sisters and I called him Uncle Karl. 

He always arrived with a large bottle of Cherry Heering, a Danish liqueur, and gifts for us children. I remember the brightly-painted wooden soldier with its red tunic and blue trousers. It had moveable arms and a detachable lance which was quickly lost.

Karl Henrik had been in the Resistance. One day, when leaving his apartment he passed the Gestapo on the stairs. They asked him where Dr Køster could be found. As he left the building he passed the body of a medical student shot in the back. He then followed the same route as those he had helped save and escaped by boat to Sweden. He made his way to the UK and joined the British army. 

Karl committed suicide in the 1980s and didn’t live long enough to see the 1998 Disney film made about his life, Miracle at Midnight, directed by Ken Cameron which starring Sam Waterson as Karl and Mia Farrow as his wife, Doris.

I recently came across words of his explaining why he acted as he did. “It was the natural thing to do. I would have helped any group of Danes being persecuted. The Germans' picking on the Jews made as much sense to me as picking on redheads.”
I had contact at a young age with people who’d led dangerous political lives. Karl Henrik’s booming voice and wry humour has stayed with me. It has always been important to be able to see the funny side of the grimmest experiences. There is always a Springtime for Hitler.  Read more about Uncle Karl in Left Field.

Ships at Sea

Ambrose Bierce said that politics is ‘a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.’ This 'Politics' takes place in a box with shared rules of engagement. If, like me, you believe there is nothing ‘shared’ about our world, the only place for politics is on the streets, not in a debating chamber full of Right Honourables who ridicule each other, then go off to have cosy lunches together. For my mother, my extra-parliamentary activities made me an extremist. But it’s like ships at sea. If a fleet of ships are sailing together, a lone ship on the horizon is viewed as occupying an extreme position. However, from the point of view of the lone ship, you have to be a damn good sailor.  Read more on my political life at Left Field

'Blah Blah photo courtesy of Left Unity

Juba - our Mostar cat

Had to have a reference to our feral cat, Juba, at the Pavarotti Music Centre. Here she is in 1998. She learned to use the toilet and she disappeared back into the streets when Anne left Mostar. Read more about her at  Left Field

Zagreb trams 50 years ago

"The blue cars clanked and screeched their way over the bumpy rails, the driver hunched over a lever which was both accelerator and brake. Pedestrians ran when they heard the tram’s bell, a double dang-dang. It was like being on the set of The Third Man."

Zagreb trams in the early 1960s as described in 

Left Field

The gauchos of South America

In the early 60s gauchos no longer looked like this ...

They looked like this ...

Read more about my time as a gaucho on the Pampas fifty years ago at Left Field

Easter Twitter

Left Field