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Russell Stannard Interviewed by Paul Merchant: Full Transcript of The NATIONAL LIFE STORIES Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum. Life Story Interviews Russell Stannard Interviewed by Paul Merchant C1672/03 IMPORTANT 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 National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C1672/03 Collection title: ‘Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum’ Life Story Interviews Interviewee’s surname: Stannard Title: Professor Interviewee’s Russell Sex: Male forename: Occupation: Professor of Physics Date and place of birth: 24th December 1931, Brixton, London Mother’s occupation: bus conductress Father’s occupation: doorman for London Electricity Board Dates of recording, Compact flash cards used, tracks (from – to): 15/01/2015 (track 1-3), 12/02/2015 (track 4-5), 25/06/2015 (track 6-7), 05/08/15 (track 8-10) Location of interview: British Library, London Name of interviewer: Paul Merchant Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661on compact flash Recording format : audio file 12 WAV 24 bit 48 kHz 2-channel Total no. of tracks 10 Mono or stereo: Stereo Total Duration: 12 hrs. 03 min. 04 sec. Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: OPEN Interviewer’s comments: Russell Stannard Page 1 C1672/03 Track 1 [Track 1] Could you start then by telling me when and where you were born? Where? I was born in Brixton in London, which is, not a very savoury district. [laughs] I was born very much of, of working-class parents. My father was, he was a sergeant in the Royal Horse Artillery; he was a farrier, he shoed the horses. Spent a lot of time out in India. And when he retired from that he became a commissionaire, he was a doorman for the London headquarters of the London Electricity Board. And my mother was a bus conductress, she collected fares on London buses. What did your dad tell you, if he did, about his early life, about his childhood? I, I really don’t know very much about his early life, except that, you know, he, he was out in India, you know, working with the Royal Horse Artillery. He was, he was forty-five when he had me, and so, I always sort of regarded him as, an old man. [laughs] Mm. So, we didn’t do a great deal together. And, not only that, the problem was that much of my childhood was taken up with World War II, and I was evacuated, so for a total of five years I was, you know, I, I wasn’t with him, you know. What was your birth date, so we can have that on? Birth date? Christmas Eve 1931. Thank you. Did you know anything of his parents, of your paternal grandparents? 1 Russell Stannard Page 2 C1672/03 Track 1 No. No, no. No. He didn’t speak of them? No. But that doesn’t mean to say I can’t go back in the family history, because, I was giving a talk on the radio once, it was ‘Thought for the Day’, and, someone called Stannard wrote me a long, long letter. He had done research into the Stannards, and what he informed me was that, all of us Stannards are related to each other, we all go back to a common ancestor called Stannard, who was the son of Æthelwig. It’s all written down in the Domesday Book. And Æthelwig was a very prominent person. He was a shire reeve, from which we get the name sheriff, and he was promoted to King’s Reeve, a very high position, and he served under Ethelred the Unready, King Harold and William the Conqueror. And, when William the Conqueror had to go back to Normandy, he couldn’t trust his treacherous barons, so he used to take them with him. And he left the country in the charge of three viceroys, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Worcester and the Abbot of Evesham, who was Æthelwig. So, he was a big noise. And, this was all based, Æthelwig was based in Thetford in East Anglia. And this guy who wrote to me said, ‘If you trace your ancestry back you will find, I’m pretty sure you’ll find that they eventually get to East Anglia, because we’re all descended.’ And I wrote back to him and said, ‘Well I didn’t have to go very far back because my father was born in Ipswich,’ which is in Suffolk, so, it all seems to, to tie together. Mind you, Æthelwig was very, was very rich, he had lots of lands, according to the Domesday Book, but when he died in, whatever it was, 1007, most of his lands were confiscated by William the Conqueror, because William was having a lot of trouble with one of the barons called Baron Bigot, a wonderful name, that, Baron Bigot of the Castles of Bungay and Framlingham. And so to buy him off, William made over to him much of the lands of Æthelwig. So Stannard didn’t actually get very much. So, that’s why I ended up being born in Brixton [laughs] rather than a country house in East Anglia. [04:48] Thank you. What do you know of your mother’s life up to the, up to the point that she was your mother I suppose, so her, her life before? 2 Russell Stannard Page 3 C1672/03 Track 1 Well, she was brought up in a village in Staffordshire. She was one of, ten children; two didn’t survive but there were eight surviving children. So she was one of eight. Very poor, very poor. She, I think she started off her working life as a housemaid, and then eventually came to London, married my dad and was a conductor on the buses. Do you know how they met? No, I don’t, no, no. [05:37] And, did you meet the maternal grandparents? Oh, yes, because… Yah, I should explain that, in 1939, when I was, I’d be seven or eight, war broke out, the Second World War, and, living in London, that was very very dangerous because of the bombing, and so, there was a big project to evacuate the children to safer parts of the country. And my younger brother, Don, he’s fifteen months younger than me, we were both evacuated to the maternal grandmother. She lived in this village in Staffordshire. And as I say, she brought up eight children. How she managed that in the tiny cottage that they lived in, I do not know. But obviously, she had to be extremely well organised. And she was a, a very, very strict, Victorian type of woman. She had very strict rules, which Don and I had to obey. Like for example, we must never, never be late for a meal. If we were, we were banished to the outdoor scullery where the washing was done, and in that scullery there was a big mangle with wooden rollers, and in front of the wooden rollers there was a ledge, and we had to put our plates on that ledge and stand there in the freezing cold eating our, our delayed meal. She used to beat us, you know, she would thump us on the back whenever we did anything wrong, you know. In fact, things got so bad at one stage that, Grandma was out with the coal shed, she was getting… [sound change] Oh dear. [pause] In fact at one stage things got so bad that, she was out at the coal shed getting coal in, and Don and I went up behind her and gave her a push, we pushed her into the shed, slammed the door, and bolted it. Crazy thing to do, but, it was going to give us some respite. All hell was let loose when she got out, but, you know, at least we had some time where we didn’t have to be frightened of Grandma. 3 Russell Stannard Page 4 C1672/03 Track 1 And she was very frightening. We, of course, went to the local school in the village, and the other kids would say, ‘What!? You’re living with Old Ma Birkin?’ You know, that, they couldn’t imagine any, any fate worse than to be living with Old Ma Birkin. She used to be a midwife, in fact she proudly boasted that she had brought everybody in the village into the world, you know. So, she, she was quite a figure. But, I, with the benefit of hindsight, I have to say that, I do owe a great deal to Grandma, because, when you think, she was in her seventies, she had brought up eight children. The last thing she would have wanted was to have two scruffy kids from London. And we spent three years with her, three years. So, you know, one has to sympathise with the position that she was put in. During that time our parents occasionally visited us. Travelling during the war was very very difficult, and of course they had their jobs.
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