THEATRE ARCHIVE PROJECT http://sounds.bl.uk

Rose, Pamela – interview transcript

Interviewer: Zoë Wilcox

17 April 2013

Summary

(Susan) Pamela Rose née Gibson, actor, on: her career prior to 1945 and return to the stage in her 80s, Webber Douglas drama school, Mercury Theatre, playing Pegeen Mike in The Playboy of the Western World opposite Cyril Cusack and Máire O’Neill, repertory theatre, bombing of Birmingham Rep in World War II, ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association), Bletchley Park, marriage to Jim Rose, the National Theatre, the star system, vocal training/performance, early experiences of theatre-going, Ivor Novello, John Gielgud in Richard of Bordeaux, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, Ben Greet’s Shakespearean performances, race relations, teaching Caribbean immigrant children at North Paddington comprehensive.

ZW: The date is the 17th of April 2013. This is Zoë Wilcox of the British Library and I’m here in the home of Pam Rose – Pamela Rose?

PR: That’s right.

ZW: And if you wouldn’t mind just spelling your name for us before we start properly.

PR: Yes. Well, my name is really Susan, the name I was christened with is Susan Pamela, born Gibson. But I married Jim Rose, and so now my name is Susan Pamela Rose R-O-S- E.

ZW: Lovely. And we’re going to be talking today for an interview that will go into the Theatre Archive Project. So I wondered if you start from the very beginning and tell us where you were born and when?

PR: Well, starting at the very beginning, I was born in 1917 and my father at that time of course, like everyone else, was a soldier but he had been a singer before the war. And my mother had also been a singer, or wanted to be a singer, and once she got married to my father in 1913 she was able, after the war, to become a singer, because her parents weren’t very keen on it. But therefore we had a certain amount of theatre in our blood and from the age of about 3 or 4 onwards it was sure for me that I was going on

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the stage. We played a lot of acting games. I had one brother, he was very musical, and he liked singing games. But mostly I was acting and if no one would act with me, I was acting by myself. So naturally when I grew up I wanted to go to a drama school, because that seemed the best way then of getting on the stage, although had I been born a little earlier I probably would have attached myself to a theatre company, if I could get anyone to take me, as a sort of dogsbody. That’s what I’ve heard of people doing a bit earlier. But there were already a few theatre schools in... when did I go? 1935 or ’36, I’m not sure which. And I went for two years. I simply loved it. I can’t… I’m trying to think. The people who’d been there just before me were… What was his name? Jimmy Smith. I’m trying to think of the famous names. There weren’t so very many famous people at that time who’d been to Webber Douglas - which was originally started to teach opera singers to act, because opera singers never learnt to act in the old days. They just came on and sang their arias really. And that was the original purpose of the school, but then the acting side became much more paying than the other side and grew and, by the time I got there, was really larger than the singing side, although they did have their own little operatic company called the Chanticleer company. And, well then I must have left, I suppose I left the theatre, left the… Webber Douglas in 1938 - ‘7? - ‘8? - yes ‘8. And the first thing I did was, I got a job, the very first job I got, didn’t last very long I’m sorry to say, because we had end-of-term shows of course. And after my last end-of-term show I was offered two jobs. One job was at the Mercury Theatre, which was run by Ashley Dukes, and which was a sort of, like an Off-Broadway theatre, fringe I think you call it now, a fringe theatre, where they did quite good experimental and less well-known things. And I was also offered a job by—who was it?—Owen Nares, to act in a play called something Day. I can’t remember the name of the day even – for a very good reason: that we were due to rehearse two days after I left my drama school, but we had a terrific party on the last night, and I’m sorry to say I rather overdid it at the party, and when I went to the next—the first—rehearsal the next day. I should of course have been studying all night and having a good look at the part, instead of which I had been having fun and so when I went to the rehearsal I did extremely badly. I’d never read in front of such distinguished actors before. I’m trying to think of the names of them but I can’t remember anyone except Owen Nares, and his son Geoffrey Nares was supposed to be acting opposite me but he hadn’t arrived yet. And Kenneth Kent, I think, was supposed to be producing it, directing it—but we called it producing in those days funnily enough. And at the end of the day they came up to me and said ‘I’m very sorry dear, I think we’ve made a mistake. You haven’t really got the experience to do a West End show yet.’ Of course they were perfectly right but I felt dreadful and I knew it was because I hadn’t tried hard enough. I thought about going and flinging myself in the Thames. I walked in that direction in fact, but I smelt some coffee on the way and I’ve always been very fond of coffee so I went in to have a cup of coffee first and that changed my mind. I thought, after all there is another job that I could go to. So I went home and rang up Ashley Dukes and said, and said… you know, ‘Can I accept the job you offered me?’ And he said, ‘Come along. We start rehearsing next week. I’m not quite sure which part we’re going to give you yet but we’ll see at the rehearsal.’ Well, I was so thrilled to have a job that I was very happy, went back and told my parents and they didn’t know much about the other job so it was quite all right. And that was really the beginning of my career. The first play we did… I’ve got a cutting of this here because I can’t remember for the moment because.... Over her I’ve got some papers.

ZW: Ok. Yes. Let me get them.

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PR: Not that but the ones on the chair.

ZW: OK.

PR: Sorry. There’s... I found a copy of Punch. Could you remind me what that is?

ZW: I’m just picking up a large pile of papers. We’ve got some photographs and some photocopies—

Oh yes. That’s right. That’s right, yes. Because I’ve kept everything that I’ve ever ever …. That’s it. This one here. And I can’t read it. But there was Shaw’s Man of Destiny, in which I played the woman, the young girl who pretends to be a lieutenant. And then the other one was a Russian play. What was it called? Squaring the Circle, I’ve got it. Squaring the Circle. I can’t remember who it’s by, some Russian. About the sort of present state of Russia really. There was someone called Donald Eccles in it and Robert Sampson and Kate Kinnear and myself I think. There were four of us. And I’m sorry to say I don’t know what’s happened to any of them but I expect they’re all dead since I’m now 95. But, anyhow, it was great fun. It was a double bill. And it ran and while we were doing that Ashley told me that we were going to do was The Playboy of the Western World. And he’d like to see if I could play the, whatshername, the heroine in Playboy of the Western World?

ZW: Pegeen

PR: I’m going mad. Pegeen Mike, that’s right. Pegeen Mike. And so towards the end of the run, I don’t remember how many weeks it ran for but I think it was about twelve. And then… and of course at the same time in the Mercury, Madame Rambert was having her ballet company and they used… we gave performances all the week and she gave performances with the ballet company on Sundays. So it was great fun because we got to know all the ballet people. And I was thrilled. And then the next production we did at the Mercury was in fact The Playboy of the [Western] World. And in that was Cyril Cusack, Breffni O’Rourke, Máire O’Neill, a lot of very distinguished Irish players really. And I was amazed to find myself among them. I had luckily had a very best friend at the Webber Douglas who was somebody called Barbara Mullen, who unfortunately died early, but she was discovered on the Aran Islands by a friend of ours and she had been the daughter of somebody called the Man of Aran who was the lead in Robert J Flagherty’s famous film The Man of Aran. And so I had been to stay on the Aran Islands, the Irish Aran Islands—there are two, there’s the Scots too but this is the Irish one—a few times and acquainted myself with a good Irish accent. And so I went to the auditions and it was between myself and another girl and they went on for a long time, the auditions, and Máire O’Neill who was a famous old Irish actress and who had been the first one when Sean O’Casey wrote it [The Playboy of the Western World is actually by J M Synge, not Sean O’Casey] she was at the… she was allowed to choose, and my great luck she chose me. So I had a hilarious time from then on doing The Playboy of the Western World with this otherwise entirely Irish company. It was a bit of a sort of, what do you call it, an ordeal in a way, because Máire was quite old by then. She played the Widow Quin, although she was a bit old to play it really, but she was a wonderful

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actress. But she was by that time a pretty steady drunk too. And every now and then she’d have a go at the bottle just a bit before the curtain went up. And one night I was standing at the door waving goodbye to the Playboy which she does at a certain point in the play and a long speech really and I started off saying—no she does, I’m sorry, I’m mixed up. She started doing that. And she—I had to come in at the end of her speech. And she said: ‘You take the roadway to the north and then’— and then it should go on for ages but instead of that she said, ‘Go anywhere you like.’ And of course because I was very young and hadn’t… I shouldn’t have burst into laughter but I did sort of what they call corpse and this was a rather bad moment in my career, but anyway, I recovered. And things went a bit better from then but she was tricky to act with because she was a little bit, always… But she was very sweet to me. I was staying with an old aunt in Eton Square who was rather prim and proper, because my parents weren’t keen on me being alone in London and on the eve of St Patrick’s Night she rang up about half past 12 and my old aunt came out to the one telephone which hung in the hall and answered it and I came fearfully out and hung over the banisters to hear what was happening and my old aunt said,’It’s for you, dear,’ and so I went downstairs and it was Máire, drunk as the Lord, saying ‘I just rung up to tell you, dear. Don’t buy any shamrock tomorrow. I have some for you straight from Ireland.’ Well of course this didn’t go down terribly well in my aunt’s household. But anyway the next day she did give me a great bunch of shamrock, which is supposed to be a tremendous tribute and I didn’t quite know what to do with it but I wore it all over the place. And so it went on until it ended. Well of course this was towards the end of 1938 by then and in 1939—Is that Munich, 1939? Or was it 1938. 1939 was Munich [the Munich Agreement was made in 1938]. So the next thing I did, I thought I ought to get some experience and I got myself a job in rep, a small rep in Bournemouth and just then the War broke out and all the theatres shut, practically. So I trained as a VAD, a voluntary nurse, a Red Cross nurse. So then I was called up as a Red Cross nurse and the theatres shut and that went on for not very long, I think it was a few months only. It was called the sort of the false war really because no one was wounded at the beginning and nothing happened except we were at war. And I was acting, I mean I was nursing, at St Thomas’s Theatre [Hospital?] and then suddenly the call went up, ‘Nothing seems to be happening, if anyone’s got a job they want to go back to, they can.’ So I naturally wanted to go back to the theatre, but I didn’t know what theatre was going to open. So I took a job in pantomime around Salisbury Plain. I played the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella round Salisbury Plain for a short time entertaining the troops. And then I went back to Bournemouth where Kenneth Kent, who had turned me down before, had set up a little rep in the Palace Theatre there chiefly, I think, because he thought people would need entertaining in the War. It’s not too far from Salisbury Plain and all the places where the soldiers were and people would also need entertaining and like to get out of London. So… and quite a lot of quite distinguished actors and actresses did come down and act with us because they were so very glad if they had the free time, if they were not in a play, to come down and get out of London for a few weeks. And we did all sorts of things. Rep was lovely really, doesn’t exist much now because of course with television people don’t need rep nearly so much. But it was great fun, living in a town and living with a company was like a real family, because mostly one stayed at least a year in some place. I don’t think it was very good for your acting to stay in rep for long, although some people did it all their lives, because, if you were in weekly rep you had to learn a part in one week, read one one week and be learning one as well and acting one, no a different one in the evening, so you had to… it was very good for your memory but you naturally developed a few tricks in order to play… you had about five performances which you fitted into whichever part you were playing. But to start with it taught one to stand on one’s feet and cope with emergencies and have sort of presence of mind in any

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situation because naturally with so little rehearsal and such a full programme all sorts of extraordinary things did happen.

ZW: Do you remember any in particular – emergencies? PR: No, I think most of the emergencies were things like people going into the wrong play or saying completely the wrong thing. I remember myself once having a fit of just sort of saying things wrong and instead of saying ‘It’s lovely and cool when you get to the top’ I’d said ‘It’s lovely and cool when you get to the tap.’ And things like that which made everybody laugh and you had to learn how not to laugh. I don’t know – there were people who didn’t turn up because there’d been a bomb dropped fairly near or… can’t think of any particularly sort of extraordinary things that happened but they were just sort of little emergencies that happened like tables falling down or chairs falling over because there was so little time to do anything properly. But those are the sort of little things that one needs to learn to cope with because they happen sometimes even if you’re playing in a very big London theatre. Anyhow, that went on. I made a lot of friends, but every now and then someone would disappear into the War scene and join up or not come back in some way. And after that I went… What did I do after that? I’m just trying to remember. Oh yes, I went to Birmingham Rep which was bombed almost immediately, and then across to the, oh—what’s it called? Sorry—the Alexander [Alexandra] Theatre which had a rep also, a big weekly rep, wasn’t quite as well known but it was run by a family called Salzbergs [Salberg] and that was great fun. I always enjoyed rep.

ZW: Do you remember the day that Birmingham Rep was bombed?

PR: I remember the night, yes, very well. It was horrible. There were quite a few raids in Birmingham when I was there. I was spending… I was in digs actually with a company of dancers who were, I think… There were three theatres in Birmingham at the time, there was the Rep, the Prince of Wales and the Alexander [Alexandra] and I think they were dancing at the Prince of Wales which was completely bombed. But we all went down to the cellar of the sort of boarding house we were staying in and they were a bit hysterical, the dancers. For some reason they didn’t, I think probably lack of imagination, but they didn’t frighten me very much the Rep, the air raids, I don’t know why because it would have been quite easy to be killed, just somehow, it all seemed part of an adventure in some extraordinary way… I think it’s lack of imagination. Anyway, I stayed there for a season and then we did…some of us from the Rep went with the company and worked for ENSA [Entertainments National Service Association], you know, which was the official troops entertainment, it was run from Covent Garden I think. And we went with a terrible play called Grandpa Sees It Through. That was rather fun, but a very bad play. And then I went… I’m just trying to remember the order of things… And I suddenly remember another tour I went on I think, yes I think it was before I did the ENSA one. I did a tour with someone called Richard Goolden. What was the name of the play? … All I remember is that he got shingles and I got chickenpox from him [laughs] but I don’t remember quite what it was called… Anyway, it was fun and…

ZW: So from that time what, which production do you remember as being the best one or what do you think was—?

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PR: Oh The Playboy of the Western World. By far, by far, of anything I’ve ever done I think I enjoyed that almost best. Partly because Cyril Cusack was such a lovely actor and it was such a privilege to be acting opposite him.

ZW: Do you remember the day you first met him?

PR: The day I first met Cyril? Not especially but I mean I suppose it was the day we started to rehearse. No it wasn’t. No it wasn’t. Because there was somebody called John Chandos who played first because Cyril wasn’t free to play the first couple of weeks and John played it, I think, and then Cyril came and took over from him. Or was it the other way round? [Laughs] I can’t remember, it’s an awful thing, I can’t remember. But I do know that it was acting with Cyril that was the real thrill and I loved all the other people too. I loved Máire O’Neill although she was not easy to act with, and Breffni. They were all very sweet to me, because they were all Irish and I wasn’t really so they might have slightly resented me but they didn’t I don’t think. And we had great fun and quite good notices and it was a nice little theatre to be acting in.

ZW: I was going to ask how the play was received because I know that initially when it was first performed in Dublin there were riots but obviously this was sometime later—

PR: There were because it was supposed to be such an insult to the Irish because the whole theme is that they make such a fuss of the Playboy because he says he’s killed his father when he turns up in the village, you know, and then of course when the father appears it proves he hasn’t killed him, he’s merely hit him quite hard and he has a bandage on his head which obviously knocked him out for a short time but the boy thought he’d killed him and ran away and turned up in this other village and then he’s made absolute sort of Lord of the day and everybody thinks he’s too wonderful because he’s killed his father and then when the father turns up they say that he’s shamed them all, you know, because he’s pretending to be something glorious when he wasn’t. And that was what’s his name—it’s not O’Casey it says there… A man. It says there – who wrote it.

ZW: Synge?

PR: Oh no it doesn’t say there. It says…Who wrote it? I’m just remembering… There we are. That’s, that was me and Cyril. Does it say…? Is it Sean O’Casey?

ZW: It’s Synge I believe, J M Synge [mispronounces]

PR: Oh Synge! [pronounces correctly]

ZW: Synge, sorry.

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PR: Synge, of course it’s Synge. That’s right. I knew it wasn’t Sean O’Casey when I said. Synge, J M Synge.

ZW: So I’m looking at a review from the Evening Standard—

PR: Oh well that from the Evening Standard is when I went back, you know I had this extraordinary gap of 60 years because what I’m going to tell you in a minute is that I while I was on tour with, yes with the ENSA tour, that’s right, first of all I got a message saying my brother was missing. In fact that has a happy ending because he’d been taken prisoner and in fact lived to be 89 so… that, you know, was all right. But at the time I was fairly depressed and I got a letter from my godmother saying she knew I was doing splendid work entertaining the troops but she thought I ought to consider going to a place called Bletchley Park where they needed just my sort of girl, and skills. I did speak German quite well because I’d been, had some German relations and had been there several times before the War and, so in the end I wrote to an address she gave me whilst I was still—and then rather forgot about it and in fact got an offer from H M Tennent, somebody called Binkie Beaumont that I went to see and he offered me an understudy and a very small part in a play called Watch on the Rhine, but just at that moment I got a call from Bletchley Park saying that they wanted me so I said to the person who was interviewing me who was called Frank Burt, and who had been a very theatrical don in his day, and I said, ‘Well, what am I to do? I’ve got this offer of a part in the West End and I’ve got a… been called to Bletchley Park, and what would you do?’ And he said, ‘Well, the stage can wait and the War can’t.’ So I went to Bletchley Park. And then of course, when I was at Bletchley I met my husband and so I didn’t go back to the stage for 60 years.

ZW: And how did you feel when you left the stage?

PR: Well, you see when I went to Bletchley Park it’s difficult to imagine it but it was the middle of the War and people one knew were disappearing and a lot of my actor friends had gone into the Forces, both men and women. Some hadn’t and some were doing quite well because there were… a minority by then you know, but most of them had. And I always felt a little bit that I was fiddling while Rome burnt. So well, I went to Bletchley I just thought I was being quite noble. I also thought it was going to be passionately interesting from the start. I had no idea, because we weren’t told what we were going to do at all, I had some vague idea that I might be dropped into France or something. But of course it wasn’t anything like that, it was sitting at a desk and doing quite dull things really.

ZW: Could you tell us what a typical day was like at Bletchley Park?

PR: Well, for me it was, well, we did shifts. So days weren’t altogether typical but you’d get up at… The shifts were, wait a minute there were, nine till six, four to midnight, or midnight to nine, I think, so you get up at the relevant time and be fetched by a bus because we were all billeted out around the area. And come in, and endless passes of course to get in and then it depended on what your work was. I had two sorts of work. Either you…The messages… of course we were… Most of us weren’t decoders. The

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ones who were decoders were brilliant mathematicians. If people tell you they were decoding at Bletchley, they probably weren’t, but what they were doing was either translating—when the messages came in they weren’t in perfect German; they were in something rather like you use for text messaging, you know—and you had to put them into perfect German, which I was doing for part of the time; and part of the time I was working on an index. Because, again, if we’d had computers, I mean proper computers, in those days we could have got all our information into something about the size of that armchair probably, but as it was we had everything written on little cards. I mean, every battleship, every torpedo, had a little card of itself and then all its references written on it, and then they were cross-referenced. So all that was done really by hand on small cards in drawers and put in series so it took up a whole billeting [?] which was extraordinary to think of. I don’t know what’s happened to all those cards: I imagine they’ve been burnt. But anyway, it was useful stuff and then we would sort of service all the people working on the Intelligence side of it. So a typical day would be, if I was working on the index part, for instance, which in the end I ran, I was made a Senior, Temporary Senior Administrative Officer and I ran the indexing part for the naval section. And a typical day would be seeing that all the messages came in and that they were properly cross-referenced and so, I mean, just clerk’s work really. With, I mean, translating clerks, but clerks all the same. And often quite dull because although occasionally we would get a message that was tremendously important like a sort of warship had moved to some important point, or we hadn’t expected it to move, I remember the Schanhorst, which was a famous German battleship, we were getting a message that that was moving and that was terrific and we were all very excited, but other times it might be about the Admiral’s socks or something [laughs] so it could be quite boring as well. Anyway, we did… Funnily enough we did some plays there. We had naturally because we had to find our own entertainment so we had a theatrical society so to speak. And there were one or two other actors there too. I directed a performance of Shaw’s Candida and I played Beatrice in a performance we did of… I was going to say As You Like It. I mean, oh dear, what it is to be 95! [Laughs] Benedict and Beatrice?

ZW: Much Ado About Nothing.

PR: Much Ado, thank you. It went out of my head. I played Beatrice in Much Ado. Which somebody else directed. And we… every Christmas we used to have a review. And actually it was in one of those reviews I met my husband, who’d been transferred, because at 32 he was considered too old to fly, so he was transferred to the air section at Bletchley and in fact was running their Intelligence. And I met him at Bletchley. And our relationship deepened and we decided to get married and then Jim said to me: ‘There’s not much point in our actually getting married if you’re going to go back to the stage because you’ll always be going out when I’m coming in.’ And I suppose it’s an old-fashioned way of looking at things but in those days I thought, well that’s perfectly true. And since I was absolutely determined to marry Jim I said ‘All right, I won’t go back to the stage, while we’re married anyway. And I expect we’ll be married forever.’ And we were married for 65 years, but, then, and I did various things next, because I did do various things while we were married such as teaching for nine years at a comprehensive school in Harrow Road.

ZW: How did your husband feel about that?

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PR: Oh, he didn’t mind my working at all. He just didn’t want me to work at night. Which I do see. I mean, I must say that the only couple among my friends who stayed on the stage and who stayed together that I can remember were Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray because it is very difficult if you’re married to someone, it’s hard enough because it’s an emotional profession to stay together and keep a marriage going anyway if you’re both on the stage. But if you’re not, if you’re husband’s a lawyer or something, or whatever he is, he’s always going to be working in the day and you’re always going to be working at night. So it isn’t perfect… thing, prescription for a marriage really. But when he died, which he did in 1999, aged 89, when we’d been married for whatever it was, about 60 years or so, I was naturally very bereft, and then a friend of mine who had also been on the stage and left it for a bit, and then gone back again, not nearly as long as I did but, a chap called Sam Beazley, said to me ‘You can’t sit on your bottom for the rest of your life. You better come to the Actors’ Centre and do some acting classes.’ And I thought that would be rather fun anyway if they’ll take me, so I went along to the Actors’ Centre and so I joined up in some acting classes and I did that for a year which I enjoyed tremendously although I was—and Sam very sweetly did the same thing with me so I wasn’t the only 80-year-old in these classes but naturally I was usually... I mean, there were a lot of people who weren’t absolutely young there, but it was the sort of place singers who hadn’t acted for a bit go back and do a little acting or something or anyone who wants to refresh certain aspects of their acting may go there and take a few classes.

ZW: How did the training compare with your original training at Webber Douglas?

PR: Well, of course I found everything completely… it was a very valuable thing to do because I found everything very changed in a way. Attitudes to theatre had changed. Of course the great change was there were no footlights so the whole make-up thing was absolutely changed. That didn’t really affect me of course until I got a part because we didn’t make-up there but I mean that’s just one major aspect that I found completely changed. Otherwise, I don’t know how it had really…. It hadn’t really changed. I mean I wasn’t doing the complete training that you do at a drama school. I wasn’t sort of doing a lot of exercises or taking fencing classes, I was after all 82. But I was just doing acting classes, bits of acting practice, bits of plays and things.

ZW: And had your training at Webber Douglas… had that included movement classes and voice?

PR: Yes, oh yes. Ordinary… Any actors’ training, I’m sure yours did too, probably. We did, we had rather boring sort of keep-fit class I suppose, you’d call it I suppose. What was it called? I can’t remember. We sort of touched our toes and did all sorts of things, stood on our heads every morning. But apart from that we did fencing, although the girls were very unlikely to be fencing but you never know but I rather loved fencing. What else did we do? Various sorts of dancing, and then there were things you could do like tap-dancing and that sort of thing. All sorts of singing. You know, to be a rounded actor you need to be very supple and to be able to do all of those things. Whereas this was… it was presumed. You had to be a member of Equity, or to prove that you had been, to get in at that time to the Actors’ Centre. Luckily I had a few cuttings so I was

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able to take photocopies and I must say darling Sam was a tremendous help because I don’t think I would ever have had the guts to take those classes unless he’d gone with me because it’s quite a long break 60 years, really. And then of course when I’d been there for about a year everyone said now we have to get ourself, you have to get yourself an agent. And I wrote to somebody called Meg Poole who’s an agent in the Richard Stone company but who had known a great friend of mine and told her my story and she came to lunch with me and then to my amazement she said she’d take me on. And then that Christmas she rang me up and she said, ‘I think I’ve got a part for you. They’re putting on Lady Windermere’s Fan, Peter Hall is. And they want somebody to play Lady Jedburgh and I think it will be just a very good start for you.’ I was terrified. Not having acted at all for 60 years except these little bits in the Actors’ Centre. It seemed to me and it was quite a distinguished cast, a very distinguished cast really. It was Vanessa Redgrave played the mother and Joely Richardson played Lady Windermere, Jack Davenport played Lord Darlington and what’s her name, Dawn? Googie Withers played the Duchess and I had to understudy Googie Withers and I wasn’t at all sure that I would be able to learn a part as long as the Duchess which has some very long speeches in it. And I said, ‘I don’t know whether I can do that.’ And they said, ‘Well you can’t have the part unless you do it because it goes with it.’ And so I said, ‘All right I’ll do it.’ And the extraordinary thing was – we went to Bath for… I can’t remember if it was one or two weeks, I think it was two weeks trial before we opened at the Haymarket and the third night Googie was off and the Stage Manager looked down at me and said in a rather haughty voice, ‘Can you play it?’ And I said ‘Yes’, and to my amazement I could. I only had once. I was sitting on the sofa with Joely and suddenly after about ten minutes, I thought my God, what’s happened to me? What am I doing? This middle-aged house-wife… and I just sort of dried for half a minute and Joely whispered something to me, gave me a clue, and after that I was all right. I was very pleased to have contrived that. But alas, next day she was back again and I never got another chance to play her, but I enjoyed it enormously. And then my career trickled on, because 84 is a little old for starting a career and I did, oh, a little bit of some very undistinguished television and then my eyes started to go and then I couldn’t read and then it dwindled off really and by the time I was 90, [laughs] I thought my working life was over, and I think it is.

ZW: What about this production? [referring to a photocopy of a review]

PR: Oh that. Yes well that, yes that came after the… Well, it was, yes, by William Carlos Williams. Many Loves. That was something we both accepted to do really because Sam and I, because we’d known one another for a long time. He had been training to be an officer just outside Bournemouth when I first went to the Bournemouth Rep during the War. And we’d know one another for many years on and off the stage and so when we were both asked to play in this, it seemed too good a chance to miss. And we did it in that little theatre up next to Sadler’s Wells called the Lilian Bayliss Theatre but I have to say it wasn’t a very distinguished performance and it ran into the sand rather. I think we were all right, we both had small parts, but it was, what we hadn’t quite realised was that it was subsidised by, I think I better not say too much about it, but it was subsidised from outside and the lady who played the heroine was insisted upon by the subsidy and she frankly wasn’t good enough. It was a play… He’s a very distinguished American poet, William Carlos Williams, but it’s a difficult play to act. There’s a lot of different scenes, many aspects of love I suppose really, but it needs an astonishingly powerful actress and I think a very famous Greek actress had done it, I don’t know who, had done

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it in New York, but certainly this one couldn’t and didn’t carry it off so it was two interesting weeks but it ran into the ground after that. So did we.

ZW: So is the way that theatre is managed now, how way things are produced with financial backers and things, does it seem very different to when you started, or not?

PR: I don’t think really. You’d have to ask someone who knows much more about management than I do. I don’t think so. I mean the only difference of course is that we have a National Theatre which we didn’t have before the war.

ZW: And what do you think of that?

PR: Oh, I think it’s wonderful. I really think we should be proud of our National Theatre. I like everything about it. I think it was really innovative, the National Theatre. There’s a very high standard of production. And it’s a happy place, I think. And it brought a sort of different aspect. One thing I do think, and I don’t know whether other actors agree with me, I do think the theatre is more democratic than it used to be.

ZW: Say something about that then. What did it used to be like and how is it better?

PR: Well, it’s difficult to say what I mean exactly but…. Famous actors. I mean, I may just have been lucky in the people I met after the War, I mean, people like Googie Withers and Vanessa Redgrave really couldn’t have been nicer to me, although my theatrical record was by no means very distinguished really. And curiously intermittent but... Before the War it seemed to me that the stars were much more stars, I mean in their own minds you know, much less human beings. And of course, I don’t know I think people spoke, funnily enough, although there’s much more interest in the voice in a way and most theatres have their own voice producers, you know voice experts, who sort of help people, I find when I go to the theatre now that it’s the older generation of actors that I can hear and very often the young people I can’t hear although they must have had just as much voice training as we had. I don’t know why… that’s one of the things that puzzles me actually. I mean there’s an awful lot of thought gone into voice production since the War but it doesn’t seem to me to have worked out very well. It’s quite true that if you listen to a lot of old broadcasts and things like that the voices sound incredibly old-fashioned, don’t they? There’s quite different pronunciation. But I think you can always hear them. Have you noticed that?

ZW: Mmm, Yes. Exactly. I suppose—

PR: Well I expect you’re very young and your hearing’s obviously very good and mine isn’t so I shouldn’t criticise anybody if I didn’t hear them, but I just do notice the difference tremendously, and on radio too. I did a few radio plays but they really don’t come into it. That was before the War though and I really can’t… Nothing very distinguished and I can’t remember what they were called which is so awful. I never kept any notes of any kind, which is terrible. A great mistake.

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ZW: And do you remember going to the theatre? Do you remember say the first time you went to the theatre?

PR: Oh you mean as audience?

ZW: Yes, yes.

PR: Oh I see. What did I go to when I…? Well…I think Peter Pan was the first thing I ever saw. Jean Forbes-Robertson playing Peter Pan.

ZW: And that would have been when?

PR: That was when I was about six, five or six I suppose. And I remember… We were actually, as children, I mean, but older… My parents were great friends of Ivor Novello’s and we were always taken to an Ivor Novello. He was the sort of, you know, the man who runs all the musicals… ZW: Andrew Lloyd Webber? PR: Andrew Lloyd Webber, thank you [laughs]. He was the Andrew Lloyd Webber of our day rather, I mean he wrote very charming musicals. And we went to one every holidays because he was a friend of my parents. And once when we went backstage – and my mother was ill so I took a school friend instead, and we went backstage and the dresser announced ‘Mr and Mrs Ormsley Gibson, Miss Pamela, Master Patrick’, or something and anyway, Ivor looked, turned round and I was rather a plump little girl and just for a moment, I suppose I was about, must have been about fourteen or fifteen. And Ivor turned round and thought I was my mother and rushed up to me and threw his arms round me and said, ‘Dolly darling, how lovely to see you.’ And, so when I went back to school that term my friend – we were very, very innocent I may say in those days, we absolutely had never heard the word, well we didn’t call it gay in those days but I mean we had no idea what homosexuality was – and my friend said to everybody, ‘She knows Ivor Novello terribly well’ and I was very, very proud of this. Because he actually wasn’t very interested in me or my mother but it was great fun, I got great kudos for that at school as you can imagine. But we were very innocent, much more innocent I think than… Of course there was no television. So that’s why we did so many acting games at home and I think that made a difference to acting too. I think having television has made actors in a way, especially actors who do television, even more natural and the old sort of ham star in a way has really disappeared from the stage I would say.

ZW: Did you ever have any training for television? You said you did a few things but that was later on-

PR: No, I never did have any training. I’m just trying to remember. I had some training for broadcasting at the Webber Douglas, that was… but of course it was before the days of television. And when I had the television I just rang up my agent and said, you know,

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‘I’ve got this job. What does one do?’ And she said, ‘Well, just be very, very natural and underplay as hard as you can.’ And I did probably still… I was… I did a couple of things in a series, very downmarket series really, called Doctors. Do you know it? I think it tales place [coughs] at lunchtime. But broadcasting I liked before the War but I didn’t do any really. I mean, I did some broadcasting, I did some broadcasting on Woman’s Hour before the War but that was sort of giving talks really.

ZW: What were they about?

PR: I talked funnily enough about my experience at North Paddington Comprehensive, where I was teaching so-called difficult children and really acting as a sort of go-between between the parents and the children. The only thing I was qualified to teach was speech and drama so that’s what I was supposed to be teaching but I wasn’t really. We did a little bit of sort of psychodrama there but I mean I had, mostly I had them individually, so we’d do that…trying to keep them out of trouble most of the time. But it was an interesting part of my life, probably the most useful part of my life I suppose.

ZW: More useful than Bletchley Park?

PR: Well, I think anybody could have done what I did - not anybody, but people who happened to have learnt German, and who weren’t complete fools and adequately hard- working and observant – could have done what I did at Bletchley Park. I think what I did, what I did at North Paddington was my own idea. I suggested it to the Headmaster whom I met outside. I mean that’s a sort of… My husband at that time was doing a book on race relations and so it was a sort of drinks-party-come-meeting of people interested in race relations and this Headmaster was there and I was talking to him and he was saying how difficult it was for…. They had about 60 per cent West Indians… And this north Paddington was essentially a West Indian area. And sort of a feeling of very sorry. I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened really. It was very curious. I came back from Switzerland. We lived in Switzerland soon after we were married. My husband was literary editor of the Observer when we married. He lost his job. He had a sort of slight contretemps with the editor about an American spy [laughs] – I’m just trying to remember his name, Whittaker Chambers. Anyhow, David Astor, who is a charming person, but who was his editor at The Times [Observer], said ‘Perhaps you ought to eventually find another job.’ So he found a job. He started an international thing called the International Press Institute. So we lived in Zurich in fact for ten years, so that’s when I really knew I’d given up the stage and when we came back I felt too far away. Before we went away I’d been teaching at the Webber Douglas, because after we married I did leave the stage but I went on teaching because I could do it in the daytime and they very kindly asked me to, so I did. But…

ZW: And you were teaching acting or speech, voice?

PR: You mean at North Paddington?

ZW: At Webber Douglas.

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PR: Oh at the Webber Douglas. Yes, I actually directed plays with the students. An act, usually, from a play. Trying terribly hard to find plays that had more women than men, because there always were more girls than boys. But I enjoyed that very much. That fitted in very well with domestic life, normal hours, except just when we had the end-of- term shows sort of thing. But then in 1952 – we were married in 1946 – and in 1952 we went to Switzerland and I also had two children so that put a stop really. And whenever it was I went back to the stage. I think it was…What’s the date of—? I can’t remember the date of… [rustling among papers]

ZW: [looking at cutting] 2002?

PR: 2002 was it? Yes, that’s right.

ZW: So, we’re looking at a review here from 2002 when you were playing in Lady Windermere’s Fan. PR: [Inaudible]… remember what happened when… Would you like a cup of coffee or something?

ZW: We’ll just recap what we’ve done and then we can probably call it to a close. I’m just thinking what we haven’t covered. I’m quite interested to know more about your theatre-going, any particular productions that stand out or—

PR: Oh, theatre-going, yes. Of course I forgot you asked me that.

ZW: Any particular actors you really admired?

PR: I’m just trying to think. The first bit of theatre I remember really I think was Richard of Bordeaux, which was a play by a school mistress called Gordon Daviot. Do you know it?

ZW: No.

PR: No, I think I must have been still at school when I saw it, or nearly left, I think I was about 16 or something like that. And it was John Gielgud, playing Richard, it’s about Richard II. And I just thought it was marvellous and he was marvellous. I don’t know whether it really was or not because of course it was the first serious… I’d seen quite a lot of Shakespeare. There was, when I was at school, at a school…. I went to several schools. I was at school at Broadstairs at one time and there was a very old actor called Ben Greet. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him? But he had toured Shakespeare. He really was old-fashioned. I mean it was very ham all of it, and I found it rather boring actually. But I had therefore seen, they used to come and do Shakespeare in the open air in the summer in a sort of little park near the school, and we were allowed to go to that

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so I had seen those. But that was when I was a bit younger, and I found them rather boring because they were tremendously badly acted really, looking back on it. But then perhaps that helped all the more when I saw Richard of Bordeaux and then after that I saw Gielgud doing Hamlet and I thought that was absolutely wonderful.

ZW: Can you say why he was so wonderful?

PR: Well…

ZW: Being a trained actor yourself

PR: Well, you see it’s so difficult to compare what one thought then when I’d never seen any real theatre. I mean proper, good acting. And of course he had a lovely voice, Gielgud. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him. He did speak Shakespeare awfully well and I don’t know it’s a marvellous play, Hamlet too, and I hadn’t realised that because I’d only seen these rather gross productions before and just struck me as wonderful. And then they did a season of Shakespeare… I always thought after that Shakespeare was wonderful. And they did a season of Shakespeare I remember just before the War at the New Theatre with Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, a famous Romeo and Juliet in which they alternated playing.

ZW: And what did you think of that?

PR: I thought that was wonderful too. I thought they were… I don’t know what it was about them… They were the first sort of team productions I’d seen in a way. And also, the stage had always thrilled me but I’d never seen, I suppose, really good theatre before. And that made me very thrilled. I can’t… I remember plays by Emlyn Williams, who was a very good playwright I think. Edith Evans in The Late Christopher Bean, I remember that very well. And, I don’t know, I just loved the theatre. I loved it, I loved going to the theatre, but I loved doing it far more and I love poetry. I did one or two poetry readings for the Poetry Society too.

ZW: Am I right in thinking that that’s what the Mercury Theatre was known for, sort of poetic drama?

PR: Was what?

ZW: The Mercury Theatre, which we were talking about earlier.

PR: Poetic drama. Well, I’m just trying to think what they did. I suppose. They did classical drama there on the whole. It was a fairly small theatre, I should think it seated 250, something like that probably. Yes, they did, I mean they did Shaw, they did, not poetical. I would have said classical more, serious. They did some poetry readings there

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but it wasn’t reserved for poetry I mean it was more sort of, they did, they did a few new plays. I can’t remember what because I wasn’t in them but I remember they did. I don’t think I went to them. Because I was away quite a lot, I was at boarding school, and then I was sent to France to learn France – French – and then I was sent to Germany to brush up my German and then I came back and went to Webber Douglas but…

ZW: And what about, sort of, as time moved on through the ‘50s and ‘60s? I know you were away for a bit, but what do you go to see at the theatre now or in more recent years since-?

PR: Well I do go to the theatre, but not so much since my husband died and my vision has been rather bad. I don’t go as much. I have actually been to see The Audience – you know the one with the Queen having, giving the Prime Minister’s audience. It’s at the Apollo I think. But I haven’t been to very much theatre lately, just for that reason really. On the whole I go to more concerts now because I can hear but I can’t see very well so it makes it a bit difficult. I quite enjoy the cinema because I see better there. I’ve been to a bit of opera but... One of the best performances I think, and if you haven’t seen it you should is Dan Day-Lewis’s performance as Lincoln. Have you seen it?

ZW: No

PR: That is worth going to see. It’s I think a marvellous performance and I thought it before he won all those Oscars, but I’m glad he did. I’m just trying to think what theatre I have been to. I haven’t been to very much. I went to… My sister-in-law died a couple of years ago and before that we used to go to the theatre together quite a bit, and of course I went a lot when my husband was alive, but that was 15 years ago now.

ZW: We haven’t said very much about your husband but he was quite an extraordinary man wasn’t he?

PR: Well he was rather an extraordinary man, yes, yes. He had a very interesting career. He started… I didn’t know him before the war but I don’t think he knew what he wanted to do before the War so he went into advertising which he didn’t like. But then the War came and he went into the RAF but he was by then…. He was born in 1909 so by the time he’d finished training he was allowed to fly aeroplanes to ferry them, but he wasn’t allowed to do combat flight, they were supposed to be too old at 32. So then he was recommended by his CO to go to Bletchley Park, and that’s where I met him. And after the War… He was director of Intelligence, of Air Intelligence, there. And after the War he went for a very short time to Reuters, but he didn’t enjoy that very much either so he left. And I came across a letter from my mother the other day, who was a remarkable person really and she— It was wonderful, it was written in pencil. She usually wrote in pencil. And he’d obviously written to my parents and said, ‘I’m awfully sorry, I feel terrible, but I’ve just lost my job.’ He lost his job actually because he refused to sack some people before Christmas, which is a bit sentimental, but anyhow, there it was. And she’d written back saying, ‘Darling Jim, congratulations, I’m so glad you’re free again.’ And I thought this was so wonderful from a mother-in-law really. But anyway, it was then that somebody asked him if he’d start the International Press Institute and he made

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a great success of that, it’s changed, it still exists, it’s changed a bit. It was an association of editors all over the world, trying to make people love one another through their newspapers really. It was a very sort of 50s idealistic idea but it had had some success and we had meetings of people like the French and the Germans and the Indonesians and the Dutch – people who’d been at war with one another. And it was very interesting how people got, became friends through talking about their work. It’s a great bond, if you meet somebody, doesn’t matter what their nationality, who does the same work as you do, it is a tremendous bond and so they were very successful really these meetings I think and it became quite a good… Now it’s become a bit more managerial but it still serves a very interesting purpose I think. Then when he came back he didn’t quite know what to do and somebody, I mean there were many things he might have done, there were a couple of publishers wanted him to become a publisher, but he didn’t do that till later. He was asked to write a book (well he had a team—edit and write a book) on race relations which became quite famous it was called Colour and Citizenship and became a text book in the schools at one time. It was about immigration really, which is probably why I went to North Paddington, because I’d become so interested in it and that’s why I knew a bit about the Caribbean children. Because that had… I’d become very interested in that.

ZW: And what particular methods did you use there that were different from what anyone else had done? Because you said you did your own thing really when you were teaching.

PR: How d’you mean?

ZW: You said that when you went there to teach you were supposed to be teaching speech and drama and you sort of –

PR: Oh well, what happened really, I’ll tell you. It’s rather a curious story. I came back from Switzerland and I really didn’t know what to do. I felt too far away from the stage to go back to teaching theatre. And I tried, I worked for a charity for a short time, it didn’t suit me somehow I don’t know why. And so then I said to my maker really, ‘If you want me to do something, show me, otherwise I’ll go to Ascot.’ [Laughs] I don’t know why I said go to Ascot but anyhow it was about three days after that that I met the Headmaster of this school and after we’d been talking about his problems and about the Caribbean of course a little bit he suddenly said to me ‘Well, do you want to come and work at my school?’ Well, I’d said in my little prayer, ‘If you want me to do something, show me, and I’ll do it whatever it is.’ So I thought, oh, this is it, so I said, ‘Yes, I would like to come and work in your school.’ He said, ‘If you’re really serious, ring me up on Monday’, so I had to ring him up on Monday and then I…I went… And he sent me some forms to fill in and I looked at the forms and I had to say ‘no’ to practically all the questions like, ‘How much teacher training have you done?’ That sort of thing. Well none, you know. And the only teaching I’d ever done was at the Webber Douglas teaching people to act and speak. But I had picked up a what d’you call it? Not a degree, the thing below a degree. Diploma in speech and training. So that’s all I could produce. But to my amazement I was asked to go and have an interview at County Hall and I had an interview and the woman…then I got a letter saying we’d like you to start at North Paddington on September the 15th. So I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing but I worked out a kind of programme and when I got there they sent me down to the -

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it was one of those schools which was divided between the 15-up and 11 to 15 – and I went to the junior part and they really had, I think the Headmaster had forgotten to tell you the truth, he was a very odd fellow. And I think he’d forgotten I was coming because they had absolutely no plan for me at all so therefore I was able to work out what I thought I’d do best myself. And I sat around a lot in the staff room listening to staff talking and getting to know them and finding out what the problems were and then I worked out a sort of plan for myself of working with the young children. I saw all the children when they first came, whoever they were, for a short time just as a little interview. And I can remember, I used to ask them a few... And I remember once [laughs], I asked one of the children who came to see me who had just arrived. And I talked to her, asked her a lot of questions and I said, ‘Now Susan, I’ve asked you a lot of questions, how about you asking me a question. Would you like to ask me anything?’ She said, ‘Yes miss, I would please.’ So I said, ‘What would you like to ask?’ She said, ‘Why do prices go up and up?’ [Laughs] It was a very difficult one to answer, but it was a very good question really. But I planned it all. I stayed there for ten years. But I planned it all myself really, what I would do with them. It wasn’t much to do with theatre. We occasionally, when there had been a sort of tremendous bust-up, occasionally I, I very often had them to myself but occasionally I had two or three of them together and we’d make up a little play and they would sort of act out…

ZW: And what were the particular problems in that school that the other teachers would tell you about?

PR: Well the problems mostly of the West Indian children were particularly that children, it very often happened that the parents would come on ahead leaving the children with a grandparent. And they would then perhaps have a child or two over here and then they would suddenly remember this child who had been with the grandparent and thought, ‘What a good thing to get Jimmy, or Josie or whoever it was over’ and she’d help in the house and looking after the little children but of course they were still children themselves, they’d been running wild in the Caribbean and depending very much on the nature of the child and the parents but very often that was really too much for the children. They’d come over and come to overcrowded conditions here to a school where the language is fairly different really. I mean, everything seemed different to them, they felt lost. If they were bright and if they came across the right people they got over and I must say some of them had done very well but an awful lot of them got into hopeless tangles really because very often the new step-father wasn’t nice to them. There was quite a bit of child abuse really not just from Caribbeans but I mean… It’s a difficult situation really if you imagine yourself coming over from a completely different civilisation alone aged 11-and-a-half and finding your mother practically unrecognisable with new siblings, whom you’ve never seen who are already probably two or three years old or something, maybe three of them, you know. I think all those were the original problems because I did not just see West Indian children, I saw quite a lot of… But I may say I’ve still got three of the West Indian children who ring me up who are now parents with their own children and I’ve been to two of their marriages and one of their funerals now so I got to know them quite well really.

ZW: And how did you deal with those problems in the classroom?

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PR: Mostly I went to see the parents and tried to talk it through with them and keep an eye on the parents. I mean, in a way I was more of a social worker when I was there really. But I think it was the most useful thing I did. Partly because I seemed to have a sort of rapport with them you know. We got on well and they were, you see they were very, very innocent themselves. I mean there was one day, I had a little room all to myself, smaller than this room, about half this, and I was talking to a child and there was a big classroom next door and they had masses of supply teachers and there was a fairly elderly supply teacher in that room and I suddenly heard a riot going on so I went out and I saw this wretched woman come out in tears and I knew that she’d be in trouble if… and sort of ink pots were flying you know. So I walked into that room and stood absolutely still for a moment and if you stand completely still you usually get attention for a moment, that’s one thing you do learn on the stage and I stood absolutely still on the little teacher’s dais and the children were just quiet for a moment, sort of looking: who’s this new teacher? And I said, ‘Sit down, I’m going to tell you a story’ and so they liked stories. And I said ‘There was once a witch who was so wicked that she ate a child every day’ and I knew I had to go on and I went on for about twenty minutes. And well, funny thing was, at the end a little boy looked up and said, ‘Is that true miss?’ And they were 11 you know, they weren’t three. 11 and 12. Oh, so they were fairly primitive really some of them. And it was a very difficult position for them. It should have been managed better I think. In some ways I think they probably ought to have insisted on families coming altogether I think or something looking back on it, if they came at all.

ZW: What was you husband’s opinion?

PR: Well he certainly, I mean he was very fond of many of the West Indians and he was awfully helpful with the children. One little boy whose mother, well he was such a little boy, his mother wouldn’t let him do – he was one of these grandmother’s children, there were masses of siblings – and she wouldn’t le him do his prep in the front room because that was kept always under wraps in case somebody might come, you know and the kitchen was just impossible with about five children and cooking and pipe smoking and everything going on and so I said he’d got to do his prep because he was going to try and do some O Levels and… so Jim let him do them in his office [laughs]. He was running a group of newspapers at that time, so that was rather touching. No, I mean he was very helpful and sweet with the children. He didn’t have many ideas on what to do except that somehow they’d got to be educated. If they were going to stay over here they’d got to get an education which… People were doing their best, I think they were, I mean I don’t think they were badly treated I just think they had insoluble problems really in being asked to make too great changes in a time when they were so young.

ZW: And was it your husband’s report on race relations that came before your work with the children, or was that going on at the same time?

PR: No it was going on at the same time really and I went with him to the Caribbean a couple of times, where I sometimes saw parents of some of the children and I was able to see backgrounds a bit so I was very lucky. I’m just trying to see if I’ve got a picture of Jim here but I don’t think I have… [picking up photograph] but that was the awful play.

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ZW: We’re looking at two large black and white photographs, are these from the same play? Oh yes, the same.

PR: Yes, they’re the same. And that was me sitting in the chair. It was a play about the Deep South but it was a rotten production.

ZW: Can you remember which production?

PR: What it was called?

ZW: Yes.

PR: It was called Many Loves.

ZW: This is Many Loves.

PR: That’s the Carlos Williams.

ZW: Yes.

PR: I don’t think there’s anything else much there. What’s that? That’s Man of Destiny. I’m hopeless at keeping anything, always have been.

ZW: Well I think we’ve done really well. We’ve covered a really wide range of things. Is there anything else?

PR: I apologise for my memory. It’s so awful.

ZW: It’s not awful at all.

PR: It goes. You see, my career’s really quite short on the stage because it’s 60 years, if you take 60 years out of anybody’s life and it didn’t begin. I probably didn’t have more than… I’m just trying to think how many I had. I suppose if you count the drama school, from ‘36 to ‘42. That’s only six years isn’t it? That’s when I went to Bletchley. And then 82, yes it was 82 to about. I mean it wasn’t more than 12 years altogether my career so I don’t know why dear whatshisname, who, you know who I mean, Baring – Nicholas, suggested that I’d be a good interviewee.

ZW: I think you’ve been a wonderful interviewee.

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PR: Do you? [laughs]

ZW: Yes.

PR: Well I’m very glad.

PR: Thank you very much.

ENDS

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