IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NATIONAL LIFE STORIES AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SCIENCE Sir Anthony Laughton Interviewed by Dr Paul Merchant C1379/29 © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk This interview and transcript is accessible via http://sounds.bl.uk . © The British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB United Kingdom +44 (0)20 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no : C1379/29 Collection title: An Oral History of British Science Interviewee’s Laughton Title: Sir surname: Interviewee’s Anthony Sex: M forename: Occupation: Oceanographer Date and place of 1927, Golders Green, birth: Northwest London Mother’s occupation: nurse Father’s furniture salesman/ occupation: businessman/antique dealer Dates of recording, Compact flash cards used, tracks (from – to): 2/9/10 (track 1-2), 21/9/10 (track 3-4), 21/10/10 (track 5-7), 29/11/10 (track 8-10), 19/1/11 (track 11-14) Location of interview: Interviewees home, Chiddingfold, Surrey Name of interviewer: Dr Paul Merchant Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661 Recording format : 661: WAV 24 bit 48kHz Total no. of tracks: 14 Mono or stereo: Stereo Total Duration: 12:07:48 Additional material: 4 scans of 2 newspaper articles from Anthony Laughton’s scrapbooks. Track 11 relates to archive film footage Copyright/Clearance: Tracks 12 and 13 are closed for twenty years until February 2032. Interviewer’s comments: © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Anthony Laughton Page 1 C1379/29 Track 1 Track/Part 1 Could I start by asking you please when and where you were born? Well, I was born in Golders Green in London in 1927, April 29 th . Thank you. And could you tell me something of your – of what you know of your father’s life? My father was born himself in Rugby and his father was a cabinet maker, and so initially my father was apprenticed to his father at the bench making furniture. But he didn’t think very much of this, he didn’t think that it was going to produce his fortune and so he took off on his own and went to London to try to find a career for himself. And he joined a furniture company, Gillow’s, now Waring & Gillow’s, where he became a salesman and I think was a very good salesman probably. He did sufficiently well in London to actually bring his sister and his brother and his mother all up to live in London in the area of Golders Green and Hampstead. At that time it was not so populated as it is now of course. But he later got into independent interior design, interior decoration, having left the company and set up his own company and that went well between the war years, but of course when World War Two came that business completely went out of the window. And so after the war he actually then got into the antique market, selling antiques, but by this time he was getting quite old. Did he serve in the First World War? [2:01] He did serve in the First World War. He initially was called up as a private to serve in the infantry. He took exception to his sergeant major who told him to fold his wet towels at the bottom of his bed when he wanted to hang them out to dry. He then went up to London on a leave, went to see the War Office, and said I can do better than being a private, I’ve got languages, and he persuaded the War Office to give him a commission there and then and he arrived back as a second lieutenant. That commission took him out during the First World War essentially for ordering fruit © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Anthony Laughton Page 2 C1379/29 Track 1 from Sicily for the British army, bulk orders of oranges, working for the Royal Army Service Corps, so he didn’t see any action. And do you remember when he told you this, these stories about his war service? For example, the story about sort of resisting the discipline in terms of being sensible about the drying of towels, when did he tell you that? Well, it was sort of part of the family history that got told, but he did before he died, in his last few years, write about twenty pages of handwritten memoirs and the story is in there … and I’ve incorporated his memoirs actually as a chapter in the book of my own memoirs. I see. And are there any other stories of his war service that he told or that were sort of circulating in the family as family memories? Not really, no, except the enjoyable time he had in Sicily in Taormina, a beautiful port. [03:57] Thank you. And your paternal grandmother? I know that you’ve said a little bit about your paternal grandfather. My mother was born of a family by the name of Chamberlain. Her father, my maternal grandfather, was in shipping and he lived in Southampton. He was – worked for Cox’s shipping agents who had ships bringing goods of all sorts in, in and out of Southampton, it later became Cox & Kings, now the travel agency. So my mother and her two sisters lived in Southampton, one sister died tragically at the age of about twenty-one, so there were two sisters surviving. They worked during the First World War very much in Southampton looking after wounded soldiers coming back to the port, and this was told by my mother and by my aunt. They worked on the camps on Southampton Common where shiploads of wounded soldiers would come back from the front, they’d help them to dress their wounds, feed them, encourage them or enable them to get in touch with their families and so forth. And my mother worked © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Anthony Laughton Page 3 C1379/29 Track 1 at the Netley Hospital near Southampton and it was there that she met the man who later became my godfather … but they didn’t get married. Quite where she met my father I’m not sure but when they got married they moved to London where my father was working at that time. When did they marry? 1923 I think it was. Their first son was born but tragically died at the age of six months and then the second son, my brother Dennis, was born in 1924, so the marriage must have been earlier than ’23, and I was born in ’29 [1927]. So the family was essentially Dennis, myself and my parents. [06:28] And apart from those details that you’ve already told me what did your mother tell you of her wartime experiences in this capacity, in terms of both things that she did but also her sort of feelings in response to what she was doing? Well, I think everyone at that time, when they saw soldiers coming back in the dreadful state of wounds from the trenches, it was nothing but compassion for these people and a willingness to try to do something for them. I don’t think she ever talked about the causes of war or the justification for war, I think that was a taken in those days after what the Kaiser had done. [07:15] Yes, I see, thank you. And could you tell me about your mother’s parents, what you know of them, or your sort of relations with them possibly? Well, my grandfather, my maternal grandfather and grandmother, moved from Southampton, they moved to Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire and lived in a house called Milton Lodge. My grandfather had retired, he was very keen at the game of bowls. He couldn’t ride a bicycle but he rode a tricycle and that’s something that sticks in my memory. During the war they were living there in Gerrards Cross, the © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Anthony Laughton Page 4 C1379/29 Track 1 nearest they got to any damage was that a bomb fell in a house a street or two away and brought the plaster down in the hall. My grandfather’s reaction was, ‘Wonderful for the garden’ [laughs]. He was a very keen gardener and grew all sorts of things in the garden, vegetables and fruit. He died … I think it must have been just at the end of the war. My grandmother was looked after by her daughter Gertrude, my aunt, who lived at Milton Lodge with her until she died. I don’t remember a great deal about my grandmother, by this time of course I was away at school or later on in the navy. Do you have memories of your other grandmother, your father’s mother? No, very few. She died when I was about six or seven I think. She had moved up to London to be near to my father. My grandfather on my father’s side had died, oh, at the beginning of the second millennium I think, so I never knew him.