National Life Stories an Oral History of British Science

NATIONAL LIFE STORIES

AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SCIENCE

John Kington

Interviewed by Dr Paul Merchant

C1379/33

This interview and transcript is accessible via http://sounds.bl.uk .

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The British Library National Life Stories

Interview Summary Sheet Title Page

Ref no: C1379/33

Collection title: An Oral History of British Science

Interviewee’s surname: Kington Title: Mr

Interviewee’s forename: John Sex: M

Occupation: Meteorologist/ Date and place of birth: 1930; climatologist Camden Town, London

Mother’s occupation: / Father’s occupation: Verger

Dates of recording, Compact flash cards used, tracks (from – to): 11/10/10 (track 1-2); 14/10/10 (track 3); 27/10/10 (track 4-5); 17/12/10 (track 6-7); 8/2/11 (track 8- 10) Location of interview: Interviewee’s home, Cringleford, Norwich

Name of interviewer: Dr Paul Merchant

Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661

Recording format : WAV 24 bit 48kHz

Total no. of tracks: 10 Mono or stereo: Stereo

Total Duration: 8:24:54

Additional material: Scan of childhood drawings, photo of John with camera, photo taken by John of cloud formation.

Interviewer’s comments: Interviewee amendments / additions are added in square brackets throughout the transcript. JK’s wife, Beryl Kington [BK], is a speaker on track 8.

Track 1

Could I ask by - start by asking when and where you were born please?

I was born in London at Camden Town in 1930. My parents, my father originally came from Wiltshire, excuse me, a village called Littleton Drew outside Chippenham but I understand that after the First World War – he was a farm worker and conditions became very difficult and he had to find employment elsewhere, and my [his] wife’s mother who was living in London, in Camden Town at the time, saw an opening in that area for a Verger at St Paul’s Church and he came up and was interviewed and obviously was suitable for the post and that’s how they came to London, presumably in the late 1920s. I was born in 1930 so that explains why I’m a Londoner by birth but I think my father really is [was] a countryman, truly because when we had holidays before the war we used to go down every year to Wiltshire on the Great Western Railway from Paddington Station and I think he used to love to handle horses again and I think I have a picture of him behind a two horse plough which I think was what he probably did when – before he actually came to London, that was his farming occupation. However, he proved to be very useful, valuable to the people, the congregation of St Paul’s Church, he was much esteemed but eventually – I don’t know the actual story but the conditions again in the late 1930s became difficult with salary and what have you, so he had to find another position. So then we moved in 1939, summer, to Chiswick where another opening was available as a Verger again at the parish church of Chiswick, St Nicholas on the River Thames, and we set up home there and had a fairly pleasant time. The summer of 1939 was warm and sunny and – but then of course war broke out in September and because of the threat of bombing – we had seen what had happened in Warsaw and Rotterdam and there was a great fear that London was going to be targeted next and so there was a great panic, people evacuated their children and I was one and I was evacuated back to Wiltshire, to relations, my father’s brother who lived at Littleton Drew and his wife, and I was set up there with their family, they had two sons and I remember quite well the following winter, 1939-1940 was very severe and I have very happy memories of sliding on village ponds and sledging down slopes with my cousin who was just a few years older than me but I used to tag along behind him and his friend on various jaunts, and that was a very happy time because the country there was more or less deserted, there were hardly any cars or buses on the roads and we had a beautiful time. I have these vivid memories of playing in that area, and there

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 2 C1379/33 Track 1 was a brook nearby, woods and what have you and we used to go on various jaunts. My cousin had a – a den as it were in a tree and this little brook had wooden bridges which we used to cross over, and it was really delightful and it’s one of the most treasured memories I have today.

Excellent , I’ll – I’ll return to those – those jaunts then in – in a little while. Could you say something – or anything you know of your father’s sort of childhood?

Well as far as I know he was born in Littleton Drew, a large family, I have a family tree somewhere but I can –

That’s okay.

Probably ten or eleven children, brothers and sisters, I had many aunts and uncles from that line living in Littleton Drew and the surrounding villages. Hmmm, I think he was born in a cottage on the village green, there was a school there but when I was evacuated – even that school had closed down and we had – we were bussed into a nearby village, but I imagine when he was a boy there were lots of children in the village because of the large families at that time.

Yes yes. And something of your mother’s background?

Well my mother was born in – in Belfast actually, her father was I believe in – well I think he was in the army and he had various postings and I think one of them must have been in the Belfast area so – but she was only a baby when she came to England and they I think lived at Woolwich, there was a big garrison [Woolwich Arsenal] there I believe which she was associated with. Again a large family, lots of aunts and uncles on that side of the family as well. Hmmm, and I think – I’m not quite sure how she came to meet my father because he was living in – in Wiltshire, she must have gone down – I think they had relations in that area, on that side of the family and she probably met him perhaps on holiday, I’m just surmising at the time.

Yes.

I’m not quite sure but that’s probably what happened.

I see.

And then they got married, they lived in Littleton Drew, we have actually been to the cottage where they were many years ago, I don’t know what it’s like now, it’s all been changed it’s only just off the M4 actually, but in those days of course it was very isolated and a very close community, but as I say they had to give up – because of the situation there, the money perhaps was very short and then he moved to London in the late 1920s.

And do you know anything of your paternal grandparents, it’s possible that you – you have direct experience or that you knew them –

Yes.

And if not stories of them?

Well it’s funny really, I – I only had one grandmother, granny as we used to call her, all the – the other grandparents had died before I was born, but she was very fine, she was my mother’s mother. Granny Mitchell, that was the – her – my mother’s maiden name, so you get the connection there, hmmm, she came – oh that’s right, I told you, she was living in Camden Town at – at Cliff Road near the church, I’m not sure how she got there actually [Mitchell family home, photo of my grandfather in garden] but, that’s how we came to live in London anyway, through her. And then later on of course it – she tended to travel around amongst the children, the daughters and – and sons, and she actually stayed with us for a while when we were living in Watford, my wife – my wife was born in Watford.

And what do you remember of time spent with her, with your maternal grandmother?

Yes, so she was a great lady, very knowledgeable, she had all these children but you mentioned a place, ‘Oh I’ve been there, I know about that,’ you know, she obviously – she read a great deal, read the bible every day, I don’t know how – what her education was but she was a very intelligent lady who delighted in her knowledge I think. Trying to think of

Is it – it’s asking quite a lot but do you remember doing any particular things with her in terms – you know, particular kinds of time spent or …?

Well I mean just the odd – she was staying at one time with my uncle at Wood Green and I don’t know, for some reason or other we decided to go to the pictures and I – I have this memory of walking with her to Muswell Hill where there was this cinema there and I think going to see a film with her, so that’s the sort of memory I have – I have of her. A very slight one I know but it – it’s in my mind. But, hmmm, anyway she was a very nice lady, very nice to talk to, very kind and well a very nice looking lady, that’s right, yes. I have some nice pictures of her, you know, and she must have been a very pretty lady when she was young.

And your other grandparents – and this is going to be sort of family stories of them because as – as you say they were – they died before you were born?

Yes, I don’t know.

You’ve mentioned a little bit about your maternal grandfather’s military service based in Belfast.

Yes.

Do you know anything about – else about his life and –

Well I have some – again he seemed to be a self-educated gentleman and I have some books with his writing in, one – one included I think in – a guide to spelling and proverbs and things like that, I can show you if you like, it’s quite interesting and it’s got his writing in, stationed at Barbados [Bermuda] so he obviously, you know, travelled around quite a lot in his military career and it – it seems as though again he was like his wife, the sort of person who was interested in items around and wanted to – to improve his knowledge as it were.

Hmm, and your –

Although he came from – I’m not quite sure of his background but he must have joined the army presumably when he was a young man. But I – I can’t really tell you much about that other – that side of the family except I have some of his books, you know, with the writing in.

Oh yes, I’d like to look at those later, yes please.

Yes.

[The Spelling-Book Superseded , by R. Sullivan, D. & J. Sadler & Co., New York, 23 Edition, 1851. Inscribed: ‘Gunner Samuel John Mitchell, Royal Artillery, St Georges, Bermuda’]

And your paternal grandparents, sort of stories within the family about them?

My paternal …?

Grand – grandfather and grandmother, both – I know they both –

No, I didn’t – I didn’t know those, my father’s mother and father who I just have a family tree, you know, with their names, one of my cousins has – he’s recently – recently written to me, we only used to correspond at Christmas with Christmas cards but he came up with a surprising letter quite recently and I think he and his son have been trying to trace the family history, and he’s been able to go back to the 1780s with that side of the family, with my father’s side of the family, the Kingtons and the Daniels and he’s found – which I didn’t realise before, I knew we had some connection but he’s found now that we have a common great-grandmother [laughs].

And were there any sort of stories of – of your paternal grandfather or grandmother circulating in the family, you know, perhaps in terms of your paternal grandfather’s service in World War I or your –

Well my father served in World War I in – in the army, he was involved with the operation against the – the Turks in Mesopotamia, now Iraq as you know, and even before all the recent events have occurred I remember him talking about the Basra and Mosul, never did I realise that these towns and cities would come into the news more recently, so he worked his way all the way through from the Arabian Persian Gulf, from Basra northwards to Mosul. I don’t think he was actually involved in any fighting as such, I – the – the story I have was that they [Turkish forces] were far in the distance, you know, and they didn’t actually come into contact with them as far as I know, but strange thing was that in Mesopotamia he actually met one of his friends from Littleton Drew who was serving in the army at the same time by a strange – strange coincidence that they actually met. And then I think when the war had finished they had to go over to India, I’m not sure the politics, Gandhi was involved and for some reason or the other they were posted to India and he didn’t come back, he was there until 1919 after the First World War had finished and we have some pictures of him at Poona, places of that kind and I’m afraid he was – caught malaria very badly and this affected him later on, all through his life and he used to have attacks which were the result of what had happened in the First World War, not from military action but from this malaria.

Hmm, just from being in that environment.

Yeah.

Do you remember at what age you were when he was telling you about his war service?

Well it would have been, you know, when I was a boy, 1940s, ‘50s 1950s I suppose that time. But I mean we of – we often used to reminiscent about these – I tried to find out more about what was going on at the time but those were the sort of main events that I remember, his time in Mesopotamia and also in India. So a bit vague I’m afraid, I should have asked him more, it’s the usual thing, you know, at the time but that’s all I know really about his activities at that time. But I – I always feel that he – he was a little bit disappointed the fact that when the – World War I finished they still had to carry on for another year or so serving in India for some reason or other, I’m not quite sure all the

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 7 C1379/33 Track 1 politics there but with the British Empire, you know, very much involved with India, that was the reason presumably.

What – do you remember what he said about India, about the sort of –

Not really no [laughs].

That’s fine.

I should have asked him more [laughs].

[13.41]

[Laughs] Yeah, your first – the first house that you remember is presumably – is – would have been the London?

In Camden Town, yes.

Do you remember – again I know that we’re starting with the sort of the most difficult bits to remember but do you – would you remember it in enough detail to sort of take us on a tour of that – of the first house?

Yes, it was a typical – I think three or four storey terraced buildings that are still in London today, in that area I think, you probably know, they’re all joined together aren’t they? But I think they had seen better days, you know, it had – I think the area, with all due respect, had gone down a little bit and these houses were now let out into flats and we had the sort of – the ground floor and I remember tenants on the second or even third floor above us, you know, so that led to a bit of friction at times I believe, erm, for one reason or another. But we had a nice garden at the back of Cliff Road, I think number twelve Cliff Road and in – in the front there was a huge reservoir with a public house on the four corners [No, my memory slipped here as the public houses were actually on each corner of the nearby Caledonian Market] and I remember looking out on this huge sheet of water, but later on for some reason or another this reservoir was turned into flats and huge blocks of flats were built opposite our house. But going back to the garden I used to have a great time because

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 8 C1379/33 Track 1 my mother and father bought me a little mot – a little car, toy car which you pedalled along and I used to go round all the little piles paths in the garden imagining I was a bus driver or something like that. So that’s another happy memory. Hmmm … Yes, well it was a nice time there, I remember coal being delivered, coal merchants with bags of on their – hundredweights on their – on their – on their backs, emptying it down the – these circular entrances holes [man covers] in – in the garden where they put it down to the cellar so we had a cellar below, you know, where we lived. And I think on the actual ground floor, we used to look out of the window and there was a – a garden in front, you know, didn’t have a direct view, it was sort of below direct ground level as it were and I think the cellar was even below that. So in past days no doubt there was an upstairs downstairs sort of atmosphere in this house, but that was before I – before my time.

Do you remember the layout of the interior, do you –

Yes, it was –

Take us round there?

Elongated, you know, you went in the front door and then there were rooms on your right, you went further into the sort of kitchen and, er, rooms behind which looked – overlooked the garden, but I have very distant memories of that I’m afraid. There was the front room which was on the sort of first floor above the area I was talking about which you couldn’t see out of the windows properly, but this window you could see right through to the – to the road in front. And my mother and father had a piano [made by the Camden Town piano manufacturer, Collard & Collard], they wanted me to learn the piano and I remember being taught the piano in that room, it was an upright piano that – I think they treasured it no end, made of rosewood I believe and I had lessons from, well we used to call her Madam Barker, I think she was quite a celebrated musician. She was the mother of one of my mother’s – no, no she was a mother-in-law, sorry, my mother had a sister called Jessie, I think she was the youngest in the family, the other members of family had to make – with their own way as it were but she was lucky being the last in the line as it were and I think she was doted on by her mother and father and she had lessons by this Madam Barker who became her mother-in-law, she married the son of Miss – Mrs or Madam Barker. But I think she was quite well connected with the musical world and she in – in fact pressed me

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 9 C1379/33 Track 1 to take an examination at the Academy – the Associate Board of the Musicians [Examination] and I took my grade one there, but I’m afraid I was very very nervous at the time and I – but I just scraped through grade one [laughs], I still have the certificate somewhere. But nothing like my wife who was [is], you know, a brilliant pianist and – but that’s the sort of memory I have of that time and her – she [Madame Barker] came and taught me in our house, so … and I remember going – no being taken up with her for the examination, in London.

[18.16]

And you mentioned the reservoir which you could see at one point over – over the house with the pubs on the.... [No pubs there, see above – JK]

Yes.

Could you tell me about other – that one as well but local sort of landscapes that you may have played in in London or urban landscapes –

Yes.

I expect but … you know.

I remember being taken by Mum and Dad as I call them to – there was a park, is it Regent’s Park, near Camden Town?

I don’t – I must say I don’t know London myself very well.

I think so – that wasn’t – you know, it was within walking distance [and a bus ride?] and I think that there’s a zoo there [Zoological Gardens], yes, I remember being taken to the animals, looking at the animals in their cages there, not far away so that in walk – within walking distance of our house. Hmmm, what else? A bit vague I’m afraid. The church of course where my father worked as Verger, I have quite vivid memories of that. That was in Camden Square, a more upmarket area of Camden Town [laughs] and not far away from where we lived, I don’t know if you – you don’t know that area but there’s a huge – we

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 10 C1379/33 Track 1 have been back there and there’s a huge – typical London square with a – with a church at one end and this sort of park area surrounded by these huge houses, hmmm … which I suppose the people could enter if – if they were living in that area. The church was quite high, had a high steeple but I – I know my father was always concerned that he was looking at cracks that are appearing in the structure and it didn’t actually fall down when we were there but later on we found it had actually fell down, it was a Victorian type church, built in a sort of gothic – semi-gothic style and I – I have looked on the maps of London more recently and some of the main lines, St Pancras and King’s Cross, they have tunnels in that area and I think that the vibrations of the trains eventually pulled the church down [laughs], tumbling down, and we have been back there and it – last time, many years ago now of course when we returned but there’s no sign of the church, but the churchyard was still there with the – the gates as well, but no church I’m afraid [laughs]. [Although tunnel vibrations may well have affected the building, the church was severely damaged by bombing in the Second World War.]

Are you able to describe that – the church as you saw it as a child at that – at that age or –

Hmmm, well the image I have of a very high church, not – you know, not high in religion but high in structure, with stained glass windows … not really much more I can tell you about that. There was a church hall outside where the scouts used to meet, people like that and they used to put on various events for the people in the parish. And I – because I was learning the piano that my mother and father wanted to show my ability off as a pianist and they decided that I should play at one of their events, but I was absolutely fearful about this and eventually got me down to play but would you believe I ran off at the time [laughs], all the way back to our house, because I was so nervous and so frightened of appearing in public. So I was a very – I was only child, very shy, very sort of well looked after by my mother and father and, er, I’m afraid that was – but a little bit too much for me at that time [laughs], but I don’t know how they explained my disappearance but anyway I remember vivid – vividly in the dark running back to the house and not able to cope with that situation [laughs] I’m afraid to say, hmm. Yes, hmmm hmm. And in fact as I’ve said, there was a stage and the people there waiting for the performance and they knew I was so nervous about playing in public so they said, ‘Well we’ll – we’ll draw the curtain so you can perform behind the curtain,’ but even that wasn’t enough [laughs] to prevent me

Did you –

I suppose these things you realise and then you try and do better afterwards, you know, and think well what a silly little boy I was [both laugh].

[22.31] [Two further memories of Camden Town: Mrs W.L. Lemesurier, my godmother, who was a leading member of St Paul’s congregation. She moved away from Camden Town and on a visit with my mother to her new London home she gave me one of her specially bound books of piano music which is now one of my treasured possessions. Miss Fowlers, our next door neighbours at Cliff Road, who, to me as a boy, had rather strange habits such as keeping piles of old newspapers and a man’s hat on their hall stand (I do not think there was anybody else living in this large house), but they were also very kind – on one occasion putting a bucket of coal on our adjoining wall to help out with our fuel bills.]

Now you – you left London in 1930 [No –JK] – well you went – you moved to Chiswick in 19 –

We went to Chiswick in summer 1939.

I wondered then before that time to what extent you explored London on your own to any extent?

Well I really – I mean I had a very sheltered life, mum and dad wouldn’t really let me out and play in the streets, but I did wander off one – on one or two occasions around the streets of Camden Town but I can’t really tell you much about it. Oh the main road, oh that’s right, what’s the name of the road now, Camden High Street [Camden Road] I think it is which runs down into the centre where the tube station is, etc, Camden Town, hmmm, I believe that there were trams, I’m not sure if there were trams running on that line but

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 12 C1379/33 Track 1 there were certainly buses, and I don’t know how true this is but I seem to remember the buses had – they weren’t – they were hard tyres before they brought out the rubber tyres but I think – this may be imagination, I don’t know, but I’m – I seem to remember that I – I have thoughts of London buses going along – trundling along with these hard tyres. But I mean don’t take that down as read, I’m not sure about that at all. [Yes, this must have been something I had heard about at the time - the tyres on London buses were actually changed from hard to pneumatic types from 1928.] Hmmm … I’m sorry, that’s about really all I can remember at the moment about Camden Town, I have fond memories of it, we have been back on one or two occasions. It’s called Camden now I believe, not Camden Town anymore, I’m not sure.

I – all I know about is I know that it’s been recently heavily gentrified and that it’s now quite a – a fashionable –

Yes, uh-huh.

Are in a – in the modern sense of the word, yeah.

Yes yes. Well that was the sort of story we had at those days – at those times, that it was a little sort of downmarket area and had seen better days, you know. But there were these odd spots as I say at like Camden Square where I think there – people there were living in quite nice houses still, not necessarily the same as where – where we were living in – in Cliff Road, we lived in Cliff Road.

[24.43]

Oh the schools, that’s right, yes, I remember going to the infant school which was called the Brecknock, that seemed to be the sort of local area name, that was my first school and then when I was suppose about – how old would I be, seven, eight, went to the next school up which was Hungerford [Secondary] School which was nearby which is a typical red brick building of sort of Victorian age I suppose, very high walls and windows. So that was my last school there before we moved to Chiswick.

What do you remember of teaching at the infant school, if anything?

Not really, no, hmmm …

And at the next one, do you –

It’s very vague I’m afraid that time.

Do you remember anything of teaching at the next one, at the –

Yes, I seem to remember sort of botanical lessons where they had beans and things growing in jam pots and things like that, and drawing lessons. I think the teacher was with all due respect quite ins – impressed with one of my artistic efforts of – of a vase of flowers with various colours in – in chalk and crayon, which was framed I think by my mother, I’m not quite sure where it is now but she was obviously very proud of it at the time. Hmmm, I don’t remember much else about that time, those lessons. Hmmm …

Any other teaching of sort of geography or nature study at that time, even science?

Not really, no. I remember the assembly in – in this Hungerford School, a huge hall to me at the time, we were all lined up in rows in our classes. But that’s about it I’m afraid, you know, it’s strange isn’t it, you can’t really recall some of these events properly.

[26.38]

And can – if we could just focus on your mother for a moment and then I’ll turn to your father.

Yeah.

We’ll use the sort of up to moving to Chiswick as – as a kind of block of time, what do you remember of significant time spent with your mother specifically in – in that time, in terms of things done with her, sort of –

Yes, well you are sort of striking chords here, the Caledonian Market, I don’t know if that still survives but she was a great one for going to the market, you know, browsing, they more or less sold everything there, so that was one of her great outings which I tagged along, I didn’t particularly like it but – so she used to take me there quite often. That was a huge area, I’m not – is it still there, I don’t know, I’ll have to look on the map [area later redeveloped as a housing estate]. Hmmm … going out I think with her for walks, but again I can’t really give you – give you any detail about that. I know the market really sort of – not a good word really, but frightened me really because of the masses of people there and all the events going on, stalls and what have you, all the hum drum, you know, of life at that time, a very busy time. But this was something that she liked doing so I was taken along. Hmmm … that’s about it I’m afraid, you know, yeah. [By the 1930s the Caledonian Market had become a popular off-street market with thousands of stalls selling all sorts of goods which attracted many shoppers and bargain hunters on Tuesdays and Fridays.]

Okay, no that’s fine. And – and time spent with her inside, perhaps things that you did with her in the house?

In the house? Hmmm … no it’s not – not very clear I’m afraid, I know she – you know, encouraged me with the music, saw that I practised with – from my various books that had been given to me for my, er, examination.

What about other kinds of books, did you read with her?

Hmmm, I – probably I can’t remember, sorry no.

Yes, that’s okay, and – and for the same period what – what would you say about particular things done with your father in and out of the home?

Well I used to like to go down with him to the church, you know, with his maintenance of the church, the cleaning and looking after the boiler in the stoke-hole where they had a huge – to me was a huge furnace which had to be used for heating the church. They had these sort of gratings, I think they had pipes underneath the floor of the church and these pipes were warm and they used to send up the hot air and he was involved with keeping it,

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 15 C1379/33 Track 1 you know, in good maintenance, good style and good condition, so I remember him – going down with him to the stoke-hole and feeding the furnace. And also helping around with the churchyard, he used to keep it all neat and tidy, keeping the lawns nice. Oh and then we had a little cat, that’s right, a black cat at home, going back to the actual house … hmmm … but I used to like going down with – help – ‘helping out’ [requests quotes] in the – with the maintenance and cleaning of the church, all the brasses and what have you had to be cleaned, you know, things like that.

What did your father – what did the – the maintenance of the boiler involve, what do you remember it involving, ‘cause because the sorts of things that you were mentioned there, you went into the –

Stoke-- hole.

Yeah.

Yes [laughs], underneath the churches.

Now these sort of – now not only are these sorts of things not familiar to me many of – many of the listeners won’t understand – could you – could you describe what he was doing there in the church and what it meant?

Well they used to feed the furnace with a coke I think, not coal, and he used to shovel it into the fire to keep the boiler warm. Besides that – of course besides that, your maintenance and cleaning, he was involved with keeping up the registers when people were married, he used to fill in all the details of the names of the people who were getting married, the bride and bridegroom and who was involved, and er, I don’t think it was copperplate writing but his writing was very stylish and he took great care in it and I think the – the vicar at the time was very pleased that he could hand this over to my father for keeping up the church registers, and he – I think he took pride in that and –

Do you remember anything of relations between your father as verger and, you know, the wider community, in other words the –

Well he was very well liked and when – when we had to leave they presented him with a – a mantelpiece clock and I can show you – the actual clock I’m afraid has got broken and we’ve had to get rid of it but the actual little piece that was put on the clock, ‘To our esteemed Verger Mr A. Kington,’ so they all – I think – I could – I think you could say they loved him very much, because he was a very nice gentle man, considerate and did as much as he could for the church, you know, that was his – one of his strands of life, brought up in that tradition of the Church of England and he took it very conscientiously.

To what extent were you encouraged to go to church yourself in that –

Well yes that’s right, it was part of our weekly routine, you know, attending church service and I remember after the church services we used to help and collect and all the hymn books and prayer books up and stacking them up and what have you and putting all the hassocks back in place which they’d be kneeling on. So yes it was – his church life was very much part of my childhood, hmm.

Leaving aside the fact that this must have seemed just normal to you because this is –

Hmmm.

Not only because it was widely done but also because this was just part of your life, but do you remember what your feelings about it were, what your reaction to it was at that age?

Well it was just the normal way of life, you know, that was the – the sort of culture that I was living in, especially with my father actually being the Verger of the church, and on Sundays he – he had a cassock I think, you know, a black cassock so he was very much part of the establishment, erm, of the people there. And I think he had very good relations with one particular vicar and – who retired and I think they [Mum and Dad] actually went to visit him in the West Country later on, you know. [I vaguely remember visiting a pretty cottage and garden with a croquet lawn in Bruton, Somerset.]

Did you and your mother, and perhaps your father, sit in a particular place in church because he was a verger, in other words did – did you have a particular kind of status because of your father?

Well I remember that at Chiswick more, that must have been the same at – at Camden Square, I’m sure, but I can’t remember that so well but certainly at Chiswick he had a special place, you know, in the congregation, and people coming into the church at Chiswick I remember sort of helping out, handing out books and what have you. And at weddings, that was a great event over the weekend, usually the weddings on a Saturday and I used to love going down and being involved with that, you know, putting a plate out for people putting their con – contributions in after the service, to make sure that it was in the right place and things of that kind. And going onto Chiswick I mean this was – I don’t know, do you know Chiswick at all, no? It was Anglo-Catholic church so there was a great ritual there with the priests, well and the curate, we had a vicar and a curate and the Sunday morning service was quite an event, you know, they used to have processions around the church and incense and at the end of that service the church was blue inside with the [both laugh] incense smoke and I was – I became a member of the choir there and that became even more than perhaps Camden Town, my way of life, going down for choir practice every week and then singing in the choir for morning and evening services. So very much involved again with the way of life of the Church of England at that time, but it was as I say Anglo-Catholic so that was a – a great experience for me, to see what happened on that side of the church.

Morning and evening services on a Sunday?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, that’s right, yes. And on Saturdays the weddings, you know, some of them were quite stylish weddings. I mean Chiswick I think today is quite a well thought area isn’t it, and I think I was very lucky to live at that time in this area, again I have very vivid memories of Chiswick, the Mall by the river where you have these very interesting houses, the 1930s style – one house has been built with a huge bow window in glass, you know, and that [the

Mall] was one of my favourite haunts after having played in – in Wiltshire, Chiswick by the river again became a very favourite place of mine and as soon as I could get out I went down to the river, because the Thames as you know with the tide you were never quite sure how high the tide is going to be, so it was always something different to watch by the side of the river, and Chiswick Eyot with the boat race and what have you. If the tide was out you could actually walk across to this long island and I remember walking right through and then glimpsing at Hammersmith at the other end, so I used to love that, but you have to be careful because if the tide came in you – you would – I would be cut off. Hmmm …

[36.10]

What else did you do down at the river then, this seems like a significant –

Well just watch the – the barges going by and the river police and what have you, all the activity, there was always something to see there, and the actual water itself, sometimes it was so high tide it actually came and flooded the Mall all along the river and, you know, the houses there were not flooded but had the water outside their front doors. But it was always interesting, I found it a very interesting place to go and see what’s going on. I used to go along – it was almost like a beach as it were along the river there, and picking up pebbles and various items along the sort of strand as it were.

[36.52]

And then going to school at Chiswick Grammar School [then called the Chiswick County School for Boys] and … hmmm, oh no that came later, sorry, when – when we first moved to Chiswick I wasn’t that age, I was nine in 1939 so I went to the local sort of secondary school which was called Hogarth School. Hmmm …

What do you remember of Hogarth school?

That was near the Hogarth House where the painter lived, so you had Hogarth Lane, Hogarth School, all these places named after the famous painter who lived in Chiswick in the 18 th Century. But there again that was sort of a typical red brick school.

[37.41]

[Happy memories of visits with Mum and Dad to cinemas in Hammersmith (none in Chiswick - perhaps reflecting past social-political differences between the two distinct but neighbouring boroughs). The Commodore cinema, a magnificent neo-classical type building, was a particular favourite only a street away from Chiswick; sadly, it was converted to a Bingo Hall in 1963 and demolished in 1982.]

Then what happened? Oh I told you I was evacuated at the beginning of the war, 19 – September ’39, because they thought London was going to be bombed, but nothing happened, I suspect you know – it was called the phoney war and so people drifted back, children came back to London and I came back I think in – in May 1940. But then of course all hell let loose because that was the time of the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz [I ‘slept’ in an Andersen air-raid shelter in our back garden] and so I was evacuated again [September 1940], but this time with the school officially, from this Hogarth School, and I went – I remember going by a double-decker bus with lots of children down to a village called Bierton outside Aylesbury waiting to be collected by a kind parent and I was very lucky, I – I think I was the last, one of the last people to be collected and I think this lady had wanted a little girl but there weren’t any little girls left so she took me instead, Mrs Miles. But that was another stroke of luck because again her husband and wife – her husband rather, they’d just been married, hadn’t been – I think she was about twenty or twenty-one and I had a very nice time with them, Mr and Mrs Miles who lived in Bierton, so that was a sort of continuation of my ten, eleven, period.

[39.09]

And then when I reached eleven I was due to go to a grammar school, I don’t know how this happened but it was decided that I should go to the Chiswick Grammar School which had been evacuated to High Wycombe before my time in – in the grammar school there. So I remember being taken by Mrs Miles to Aylesbury to the bus station, put on a bus on my own to High Wycombe and there I began my school career with the Chiswick school which had been evacuated to the Royal Grammar School at High Wycombe and we shared the school at that time, I think we went in the morning or afternoon and they went in the other part of the day. But it wasn’t very satisfactory because, you know, we didn’t have

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 20 C1379/33 Track 1 proper classrooms, we had to sort of have classes in the hall and places like that so eventually I think the authorities decided, again nothing much was happening with the bombing, after the London Blitz there was a lull again, and so the Chiswick School came back to their proper school – home in – in Chiswick and that was a lovely building. A fairly new building at that time and I have some very happy memories of going to school there which was in walking distance of our home in Chiswick.

[40.22]

And then I found that on my way there was an entrance – a big entrance gateway, I ventured in and it was Chiswick Park, Chiswick House, I don’t know if you know …?

Yes well I’ve heard of it, yeah.

Yes, this palladium style house with this lovely park which in those days hardly anybody was in it, I expect lots of people there are now, and I used to walk through there on my way to school and pass this lovely building on my right which at that time there was an auxiliary fire service station outside, you know. But … but then one of the classrooms in – at the school overlooked the park and you could look out the window and see these high walls and trees behind into Chiswick Park, so another vivid memory. And that was another hunt – happy hunting ground when I was out of school, I had a bicycle and I used to go on tours around – in Chiswick Park, touring round, find lots of places, because I loved the country and I was so pleased to find that in Chiswick there was a country area which was in – within the walls of Chiswick House and it was really delightful.

What did you – can you remember specific areas within Chiswick Park that you visited on your bike and what appealed?

Well sort of there were lots of trees and foliage and I used to go on the – finding out different parts of up and down, little hills as it were, there was a big lake there, and hmmm … well it was just delightful really for a little boy who loved going into the country, just to think that I was living in a town but I had the country more or less on my doorstep, beside the river, River Thames and so I had the Chiswick House gardens, again I have some very sort of striking memories of that time.

[42.11]

But then of course we had the flying bombs and the V1s, the V2s and things got very hectic again and I think the first V2 rocket landed in Chiswick [Stavely Road, 8 September 1944], caused a great deal of damage and loss of life and things became, you know, so bad that Mum and Dad decided, you know, we – we would have to go away so they found a position in – in Buckinghamshire, a village store in Haversham and, er, I can’t remember the actual details of how we actually moved but one memory I have is going to Willesden Junction station and waiting for the train, so anxious, to come along, you know, we wanted to get out of London as quickly as possible, there was a huge crowd there on the platform all, you know, wanting to get away from the – the bombing because I don’t know – I don’t think it’s – people realise there was this pandemonium, we thought the war had ended but then we had this attack by the – the flying bombs and the rockets and it was really a hard time and I think, you know, if that had gone on I don’t know what the outcome might have been [see ‘Operation Crossbow’ below]. Anyway we got away eventually and Mum and Dad set up home in Haversham, the village outside Wolverton near Bletchley, the Tudor Stores, general stores. So that was in 1944 I think [autumn 1944], before the end of the war.

[‘Operation Crossbow’ BBC2 Documentary, 13 May 2011: Documentary about the analysis at RAF Medmenham of V1 and V2 sites by aerial photographs. The programme showed how crucial this work was in reducing the effect of these weapons and the final outcome of the war.]

What did you –

So there again I had to change school to the Wolverton Grammar School which was in biking distance of our home at Haversham. But another nice school, quite different from Chiswick, much smaller, mixed school whereas at Chiswick we – we – there were girls and boys in separate buildings at Chiswick but at Wolverton we were put together, girls and boys and that was quite an experience [laughs] for rather a shy little boy, to be in this class with lots of girls [laughs]. And quite small, the classes were quite small. Er, that’s how I – I remember being interviewed by the headmaster and he decided I should go into form 4a, they were – for want of a better reason, you know, class –that we had a B form and an A

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 22 C1379/33 Track 1 form and luckily for me he thought I should go into the A form so [laughs] – so that was a good move. And made some very good friends there who I still kept in contact, one particular boy decided to have reunions and not until – until quite recently we had reunions at the – at the old school in Wolverton where we used to meet people I never thought we’d see again from those days, including teachers, hmmm, our maths teacher, English teacher, French teacher all came to one of the first reunions so it was a really – a pleasure to – to meet them again, you know, because we had all these members and as I say I – I thought well I’d never see these people again but there they were in life, real life. And, er, many of the teachers actually lived at Haversham in the village where we – where we lived so again I have sort of firsthand experience of – they used to come to the shop where Mum and Dad worked … and as I say this friend organised these reunions and our English teacher was a Miss Aileen Button and she was quite a well liked figure and she taught us, you know, English language and literature and Mr Cadman the maths – maths teacher, he came back to [our school] reunion and Mr Thomas the French teacher, he was also there so again we had some happy memories reliving those early times. Hmmm … yes, well then of course I took my school certificate [Oxford School Certificate] there in 1945 [1946] I suppose, when fifteen, sixteen years old.

[Results included: 3 Distinctions (General Science, Additional General Science and Religious Knowledge; 5 Credits (English Language, History, Geography, French and Mathematics; 1 Pass (English Literature); these results allowed me London Matriculation Exemption (1951)]

[46.17]

And in those days it was very rare to go to university so the main thing was to get a job when you passed your school certificate and there was a notice on the school notice board for people – they wanted people to become weathers – mete – Meteorological Assistants in the Met Office so I thought, well – I was always interested in the weather so I applied for that position, and going back, my father being a countryman had always been interested in weather and I suppose I, you know, I caught that from him as well, having an interest in looking at the sky and clouds.

[46.53]

Yes, I mean we’ve got to this point with the –

It’s a mixed up I’m afraid [laughs].

No, it’s fine, we’re – we’re – I’m going to go back and ask you about particular things that you’ve mentioned along – along that story, which is quite complicated because of all of the moves, but just because we’ve got to this point now and you’re looking at the – the poster on the wall that says Met Assistants.

Yes.

And – and then you said I’d always been interested in – in weather.

Yes.

But so in everything you’ve said so far I – I – has been no mention of an interest in weather [JK laughs] so I wonder whether – I wondered whether you could give – give me a sense of how that interest in weather developed, where it developed, through what relations, you’ve mentioned your father’s –

I think he was the main influence really, made me look at the sky and the clouds and I – he was very sort of – a farmer type person so he would have understood perhaps the weather lore, but I’m afraid I didn’t go into that with him at the time, but I remember him pointing out to looking at various clouds in the sky and …

When would he have done that and in what circumstances?

Well I suppose in – when I was a boy he – Chiswick, I think perhaps at that time, you know, those are my more recent memories, not earlier than that. I don’t – I don’t think – not at Camden Town but when we were at Haversham I think ‘cause because that was a country area then you see, we were back in the country again at Haversham, outside Wolverton and there were – there was just open area of country all around us there and – and one had a wide view of the sky, more than you would have perhaps in – in London so

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 24 C1379/33 Track 1 that – that’s the memory I have, you know, of thinking about weather and thinking about Dad and his interest in the clouds and weather. So I would say that that sort of period, late 1940s, hmm. And then this notice came up about the Met Office requiring people to be employed. I think during after the war a lot of the Met people were demobbed and so there was a great shortage of people for that time – type of work and that’s why they advertised I think for Meteorological Assistants. So that’s what I did, after leaving school. Oh I had one year in the sixth form, that’s right, but I didn’t really get down to any serious business, I was … well I think more interested in, you know, getting a job as it were. Only one boy interestingly at that time went onto university in our class, compared with what happens today, where sort of normal thing to do is to go to uni – [undertake] university studies, but we didn’t think of it at that time, you know, it was more a case of leaving school and finding a job [laughs].

[End of Track 1]

Track 2

And what I’m going to do in a moment is to take you back through the wartime homes and experiences and evacuations and various schools, but just before I do, could you say something of your mother’s employment of various kinds? You’ve – we know that your father was a verger and you went – you followed him doing various jobs in the church and that sort of thing but you mentioned in the break that your mother was keen on shop work and I wonder whether you could say something of what you know about that and possibly experienced of it?

Well I seem to remember that as a young lady, before marriage, that she worked in London in one of the big department stores which I think was called Shoolbred’s which I don’t think exists anymore but would be comparable to Fortnum – Fortnum and Mason’s, that sort of style of shop, big departmental store and I think she worked as an assistant, shop assistant at that sort of establishment, erm, before her marriage. But after marriage, again due to the lowly wages of my father, she helped out with the income by taking part-time work in shops. When we were at Chiswick for example she worked at a nearby general stores in Chiswick Lane, as a part-time employee, hmmm, I think we became quite good friends with the actual proprietor and his wife there [Mr and Mrs Brooks], I think they had a boat on the Thames and my mum and dad used to look after their dog and thing – things of that kind, you know, so became quite a close relationship. And she was obviously well thought of, as I say she was a marvel at mental arithmetic and she would do – take – you know, add up bills in the shop quite easily in her head [laughs] without any computer advantage, so that was one of her assets I think, you know, she could have probably done more with that sort of brain if she’d had the opportunity but there we are.

Thank you.

[02.07]

And could you tell me about the – the first – your first experience of evacuation which was at the start of the war and it was to an area in Wiltshire, could you tell the story of the – the –

Yes.

The first evacuation?

Well it became more or less immediate really because people were panicking that London would be heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe, so there was a great mass exodus of children and I was taken with my mother’s sister, my Auntie Amy who had a son Clive, and I went with Auntie Amy and Clive to Paddington Station where we caught a train to Wiltshire and there – I think I went first to another auntie who had a public house in Castle Combe for a night or so but I didn’t stay there long, I think the idea was that I should stay with another aunt on my father’s side, Auntie Annie and Uncle Maurice who was Dad’s sis – Dad’s brother and sister-in-law at the village of Littleton Drew which is quite near Castle Combe, and there I stayed with their families. I said, they had two sons, Bob and Jim Kington and I actually stayed with them for a few months, but those few months have become quite enlarged in my memory, it’s amazing to think back now how short a period of time it was but how packed it was with memories.

Could you describe those memories please?

Well as I say we had to go to school at a nearby village of Grittleton and we went by bus with another uncle who had a garage at Nettleton, a nearby village, and the school bus, we used to be picked up and taken to the school there where we stayed the day, so I obviously took a packed lunch with me. And it was a hard winter [1939-1940] and during that winter we had lots of snow and ice and the village pond at Grittleton became ice bound and – and we made an ice slide there and we had great fun, but I think I told you, I fell down quite badly and cut my chin and I still have the scar today to remind me of that event [laughs]. Then outside school, coming back to my auntie and uncle at Littleton Drew, The Gibb it was called actually which was part of the village, there was a very steep hill down to the brook and we used to have great fun exploring that area, well exploring as far as I was concerned, they knew it quite well. But during that winter, with the heavy snow the slopes of the brook were very steep and Bob, my cousin, and his friend Dennis, Dennis Wright, they made a sledge and we used to go sledging down the steep slopes, and that again was a happy memory of that time.

Now this is a sort of – a kind of positive outcome of war, do you remember what your parents were saying about the prospect of war before you were evacuated at this time?

Hmmm, not really, no I think – I think people realised that it was coming inevitably but what it would entail I don’t think people then really knew, but as I say with the experience of Poland and the bombing of Warsaw and Holland, the destruction of Rotterdam, people really thought that London was next on the list and so therefore there was this measure to get children out of London as quickly as possible and that’s why I was evacuated more or less straight away, in September ’39. Not long after the war started.

And then in – in the absence of any bombing or invasion you moved back to Chiswick and –

Yeah – yes, that’s right.

And went to Hogarth School.

Yes.

And I wonder whether you could tell the story then of the next evacuation which was a –

Well I remember that we had to meet somewhere, I think it was in Fulham Palace Road or somewhere like that which [laughs] reminds me of – HarperCollins headquarters are there now [publisher of my latest book, Climate and Weather ] so I – I know that road quite well, I think it was in that sort of area and we, erm, were collected and rode on this double- decker bus, I remember sitting on the top deck and being taken to Bierton which is a village just outside Aylesbury, to the village school there, late in the day, seem to remember it was quite dark, late in the evening, that would have been … that time of day I suppose, and people came from the village to collect the evacuees. There was an arrangement I think that people – I don’t think they were forced – or volunteered to have evacuees in their house and I – I think one of the last to be collected, I think the lady who came Mrs Miles wanted a little girl to look after, they had just been married and – but I was perhaps the only one left [laughs] so I was taken by this lady and it turned out to be a happy turn for me because they were very very kind and thoughtful couple and couldn’t have looked after me more than if I was their only child.

How did you feel bussing out on this evacuation?

Well quite apprehensive I think, I don’t really have any firm memories of the actual journey, just that it was a double-decker and an upper deck, you know, and we arrived in Aylesbury.

In – earlier in the recording you mentioned that you were quite shy by nature and that –

Yes.

And you – and in your estimation well looked after by your parents, I wondered how, you know, what was the reaction of such a child to –

Quite dramatic I think, yes. I think I cried a lot, but I – that – that’s further on actually, no further back actually when – the first evacuation, when my mother came with me to the school at Grittleton to leave me there and I was so concerned about being left behind I think I got – I cried my eyes out there [laughs], much to my embarrassment later I think. But there you are, that’s what happened, you know, so that was quite a major event, to be taken away from my beloved parents, you know, at that time. But anyway it all worked out on – you know what children are like, they soon get over these events don’t they and I was quite happy staying with my aunt and uncle at – at Littleton Drew with their two boys. Well Bob was a boy but actually Jim was called up and he served in the RAF during the war as – in aircrew and I remember him coming back in his uniform but … so I didn’t really have much to do with him but I’d had a lot to do with Bob who was just a few years older than me and I used to tag along with him and his friend Dennis around the country in Wiltshire.

And waiting in Bierton as you were to be picked up.

Yes.

Do you have a sort of visual memory of Miss Miles – Mrs Miles rather.

Mrs Miles, yes.

Arriving to – to collect you?

No not really, I have more firm memories of actually in – being taken back to her house and –

Oh yes tell me about that.

Would you believe we were evacuated from the bombing but during that night or not long afterwards there – there was a bombing raid in – in that area, I could hear – or you could hear the sound of the Luftwaffe aircraft, I don’t know if you know they had this – I don’t know – I think they tuned their engines to make this [distinctive throbbing noise] [makes deep humming sound] which was I think sort of a psychological effect, you know, which brought fear into your mind that there was an enemy aircraft overhead, and in fact bombs were dropped in – around the village of Bierton and I remember being taken in Mrs Miles’ – she cuddled me at the time, you know, to comfort me at that time because I thought, oh no, I’ve – we thought we’d got out of the bombing but there we are being affected by it in – in Buckinghamshire, hmm.

What had you seen in terms of the sights and sounds of war in London before this second evacuation?

Well the sound of course was the most effective sound, that whining [air raid warning siren] which you’ve probably heard on the radio or television, that really brought fear into your heart and then the all clear after bombing, they thought the – the raid had finished and that was a welcome sound, a welcome sound, so even after the war if that – if you – if I heard that siren sound it would send shivers all through me, I was so badly affected, I think people were, you know, psychological warfare as it were.

And what did you see of bombing itself?

Hmmm, not a great deal, Chiswick wasn’t badly bombed but there were some incidents, I remember going to school at Hogarth School, walking along the streets and picking up

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 30 C1379/33 Track 2 pieces of shrapnel, that was what boys did in those days, rather than collecting pebbles or whatever it was we collected bits of shrapnel and they were prized ornaments, you know, prized possessions. So there was – I think Chiswick was bombed but not too badly affected but later on of course the V – the first V2 landed in Chiswick [in Staveley Road, less than ¼ mile from the Grammar School I attended (see later)] and people didn’t know what had happened, they thought a gas main had exploded but that was what had happened, but that came later. But during the first part …[the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, 1940] I dreaded seeing buildings being damaged I think in Chiswick, buildings I knew and loved I didn’t want them to be hurt in any way.

The buildings themselves you were worried about rather than …?

I can’t remember it actual – in actual events, you know, but now when did – let me get this right in my memory. Yes, I came back to London after Wiltshire because they thought nothing much was happening and then it all happened of course, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz of London and mum and dad had a – an Anderson shelter but we only had a small garden, about half the size of this room I suppose, we lived in a terraced street, Balfern Grove but we had this little patch and Dad agreed to have an Anderson shelter there. Being my father he had plants and grass all over the top, you know what the shelters are like, these sort of round structures, so he made it into a sort of – a garden area and he – he built benches inside where I went to sleep, or tried to go to sleep, during the war – during the raids. But it wasn’t very nice, it was rather damp and gloomy, we didn’t have electric light of course in there, candles I suppose, but there was one particular raid I remember quite vividly where I heard a – what do you call a whole line of bombs coming down [stick of bombs], you know, the – the sounds they made, one after the other but fortunately they missed our area but it must have been quite nearby where the actual bombs exploded. So that was a vivid memory, in sound anyway, the sound of the whining bombs being dropped, about four or five of them I suppose, one after the other. I can’t think of anything else really dramatic.

Were your parents in the shelter with you when you heard those successive –

Well my – another of mum’s sisters, Amy, Auntie Amy and the one I went down to Wiltshire with, they lived in Tooting and they used to come over and share – share the

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 31 C1379/33 Track 2 shelter with us at the time, but I don’t remember Mum and Dad coming – they more or less stayed outside I think and took the risks of bombing and not within the shelter, but I suppose they did come in, I can’t really remember it vividly but they made – they made me go in at any rate and they had a little bench and made a sort of bed for me inside with Clive my cousin and my Aunt – Auntie Amy. I think they used to come over regularly from Tooting, in the evening before the bombing started because they [the Luftwaffe] were night bombing in those days, hmm.

Thank you.

[14.28]

And could you tell me about time spent with Mr and Mrs Miles?

Oh yes, that was delightful, they were a young couple, she was only twenty-one or so and I think he was his mid ‘20s, Herbert Miles the husband. I think he – he I think worked on the – as a builder or something of that kind in Aylesbury, I used to see him coming home on his bicycle, but they were very happy together, he was keen on motoring, he had a vintage car would you believe in a garage nearby, I don’t know how he got the petrol but every so often he used to take us out for a little ride in his old fashioned vintage car, so you understand what it was like living with them, and she was a really kind person. And I mean they – they treated me as I say like – like their own flesh and blood. Hmmm …

Do you have memories of things done with them outside of – apart from the car journeys?

Yes, mum used to come down occasionally from London to visit us in Bierton, Mr and Mrs Miles, and Mrs Miles had a – a sort of a poetic idea of having a picnic in a field so we went out one day and laid, you know, out the picnic on the grass in one of the nearby fields with – with my mother at the same time, so that was an interesting event which stuck in my mind. But – and when I used to go – Mr and Mrs Miles, they had – their parents lived nearby – in nearby villages, away from Bierton, I think I actually stayed with them on one or two occasions, so it was all really a very happy time, you know, and – and the school was quite nice, the village school there. I can’t really remember too much about the actual lessons but sort of typical village school with just one teacher, perhaps an – an assistant,

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 32 C1379/33 Track 2 that’s all, teaching all of us together in a big room. And there was a – a green outside and we used to play there before going into school, sort of boxing and wrestling matches on the grass [both laugh].

[16.43]

And that’s about it really, but then as I say that came to an end because I was – had reached the age of eleven, ready to go to grammar school so then – I don’t know how it was decided, I think it must have been decided when I was at Chiswick at the Hogarth School. I seem to remember one of the teachers called Mr Fox, I think he must have had some dealings with my parents saying that, you know, when the time came I should go to a grammar school, erm, so I must have had a scholarship because in those days, I mean if you wanted to go to grammar school you had to, you know, pay but there were a few scholarships allowed and I think I must have been one of the lucky ones and this was [maybe due to] Mr Fox, I don’t know how true this is, but I think perhaps he saw that I should be the sort of calibre of person to go to grammar school and I was fortunate enough to be picked for one of these few scholarships, so that’s how I became involved with the school at High Wycombe.

Yes.

Which was evacuated there with the Royal Grammar School, we shared the school buildings together.

What do you remember of the teaching at science at the High Wycombe site?

Not so much there because as I say we had to [share the school building] – we didn’t really have proper classrooms and it wasn’t very satisfactory, I can’t really remember the lessons much at all there, it was when we got back to our main school, our proper school in Chiswick that I have my better memory.

Yes, well let – could you then describe the teaching of science at the Chiswick Grammar School?

It was very good, most interesting and in – in physics for example we had to do actual practical experiments with lenses, and part of our homework was to make a kaleidoscope and a periscope, you know, with actual mirrors, I’m afraid I was never very handy with my hands but my father could turn his hand to anything and he made a periscope for me which I took to school very proudly, but I used to like the section in physics on light, experimenting with lenses and such like, finding out the dif – ways of focal length and what have you, so that was one of my favourite lessons I think. Another one was geography of course where again we had a special room, but physics of course was in a special physics laboratory at Chiswick and the – for geography we had our own room where we used to go line up outside before going in, and it was sort of an amphitheatre seating arrangement, not lines – lines of desks, we all sort of sat round in a semi-circle with the teacher in the middle and I used to love that, looking at maps and what have you there. So then another favourite lesson, another good lesson was the history lesson, again there was a special room in the school where we all used to congregate, again a very good master, can’t remember his name now. So yes it was – I think history, geography and physics were my main interests, not so much – I can’t remember so much about mathematics or languages but –

Chemistry, was that –

No, I don’t think we did chemistry there, it was just mainly physics I think, light, electricity, that sort of field really.

Biology of any kind, life sciences?

Hmmm, no, I remember that more later at Wolverton Grammar School.

Could you then say, if you can describe any particular memories of things shown or taught or experienced in terms of geography classes in this special room that you mentioned?

Hmmm, not really, no, I think you know we covered regions of the world, I can’t remember anything about weather or climate unfortunately, just general geography I suppose, regional geography with maps and had a big – [the teacher] had a big globe on his desk which was fascinating and they used to have, erm, sheets which were issued – you

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 34 C1379/33 Track 2 know, didn’t have photocopies in those days but they had special machines where they could turn out sheets of information.

How were maps displayed given that you were sitting in a semi-circle?

I think they had large wall maps which they could roll down from the blackboard … yes, I know also in history I think – I remember – I don’t think this was Chiswick, this was somewhere else, perhaps prior to Chiswick, the history, I remember the teacher coming in and saying we were doing – going to learn about whatever it was and he’d have map – a roll map coming down from the blackboard. So that seemed to be one of the main devices they had in those days, rather than, you know, other means than which they probably have today, I don’t know.

Did geography or perhaps other subjects involve fieldwork of any kind?

Any, sorry?

Fieldwork, outdoor learning the –

No, not – not in those [times], no, not –

No?

I don’t think so. That came later at college, university, there were fieldtrips then of course from Birkbeck College.

And the science laboratory, I wonder whether you could briefly describe the science laboratory at Chiswick Grammar School?

Well it was on an upper storey, I remember it was very light, it used to look out over the playground area, quite large benches, stools rather than chairs sitting, with the blackboard in the usual conventional place but these long stools [benches] parallel to one another and the teacher at the end. That’s about it really [laughs].

Thank you, that’s great. And then there was another – a move but not connected – not an evacuation this time but a move to Haversham –

Yes, that came –

At the end of the war?

Towards the end of the war when we had the doodlebugs [flying bombs, V1s], you know.

Ah, so it was connected with fears again?

Yes, that’s right.

Yes, okay. Could you tell the story then of that – that move?

Well I mean they became very intensified, the actual bombing, I remember we used to go to visit an uncle of mine, Uncle Eber, I think I told you, who had a bakers shop in Battersea, used to go there quite often because dad had a – his day off was Saturday because he had to work Sundays with the services and what have you in the church, so we used to visit relations in Morden, my Auntie Florrie there and Uncle Eber at Battersea bakers shop, that was a good experience, we always came back heavily laden with various cakes and bread from his bakery. Hmmm, but I remember one day coming back late evening I suppose it was and seeing an actual flying bomb, you know, going across the sky, and they were very frequent at that time, they intensified no end … and of course the fear with those bombs was the – the noise that they made, like a – a – a motorbike, as if coming over the sky and then silence and you knew that the bomb would be – would be dropping very near your area so that was quite frightening really. Whereas the V2s you didn’t know anything about those, they just landed, they came at the speed of what it is, 18,000 miles an hour, no, don’t take that as read, no wasn’t that [both laugh] – wasn’t that fast, but very very quick, you know [super-sonic, about 2,000 mph], and people living here [Norfolk] we found out afterwards saw the trails, we can see the flight path paths [of aircraft] going into Schiphol airport [Amsterdam], nowadays by the contrails and people have said that they could see the actual contrails of the rockets being launched from [occupied] Holland and

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 36 C1379/33 Track 2 then coming over and landing. Quite a few [about 40] landed actually around the Norwich area, the V2 rockets, but not in Norwich itself thank goodness. So anyway going back to the story, with – the bombing became so intensified that people again evacuated themselves out of London towards the end of the war, 1944 time, and that’s when we went to Haversham near Wolverton and a change of school again to the Wolverton Grammar School.

Could you describe your Haversham home and it’s its –

Yes.

Surroundings?

It was a general stores in the village, well not the actual village itself, a new estate outside the village of Haversham, Haversham Estate it was called, but there was a shop on the corner of this area, Tudor Stores it was called, mock Tudor type style house and we lived above the shop, or around the shop rather and Mum and Dad became the proprietors there of this chain of stores where they sold tins of fruit and all sorts of things, you know, general grocers shop … for the community at Haversham Estate. So that was quite interesting, used to have the travellers [commercial] coming in, one came from Watford and one came from Northampton with their various items what they were selling.

[25.34]

Now you’re about fourteen at this –

Yes, that’s right.

Stage and I suppose at this sort of time you become your – or have become aware of your parents as – as adults and I wondered whether you could give me a sense of your impression of the relationship between your parents?

Well a very loving one, yes, very attached to one another, helped one another each – and my dad then of course became – helping out in – in the stores with – with my mother, they

– they shared the work together. Hmmm … that was it really. Can’t think of anything else of interest really.

Do you – do you have any memory of the sorts of things that your parents did with each other when not working but not with you if you see what I mean, in terms of interests they shared and –

Yes – yes, I can now you’ve jogged my memory that they were very fond of whist drives, so they were great fans, in fact they used to have whist drives in the actual house where we lived above the shop where people from the village or the estate used to come regularly, and they had a set of tables and chairs and that was quite an event really, yes. And – so that – I think that was their common interest, playing cards, which my father was excellent at it, he had a marvellous memory, he could more or less memorise all the cards in the pack, you know [laughs].

And do you – did you have any sense at this age of your – of the kind of – the political affiliation of your parents, the kind of – how they voted and their views on events, national and international?

Well I think Conservative party … which later was a little surprising to me but I think that was sort of, you know, a way of life really that I don’t know exactly how to explain that, but I think they were both sort of … not party activists but they would have voted Conservative I think in any elections.

What gave you that impression then at that - you – at that age – oh well you said that later you found that surprising but at the time –

I wondered – no from a sort of working class background why it wasn’t the – the Labour voters that I can’t really explain, would you be able to think that out?

I don’t know … there’s actually been a – a radio programme on – on – on recently that I – called The Working Class Tory Vote.

Hmmm hmm, working class Tory, yes.

Yeah, and the – there’s various sort of theories about certain kinds of deference but also certain kinds of aspiration but I wondered in – in – I don’t want to sort of lead you but do you have any sense of why – of your parents particular kind of Conservatism, do you – do you have any sense of that? Even looking back on it now, not necessarily wanting to put you in a fourteen year olds shoes to – to –

No no, I don’t think I would have had any idea at that time but looking back, I mean their livelihood depended on the landowners who obviously would have been Conservative, so I suppose that’s, you know, where they leant their support presumably in their – in their way of life because they – their livelihood depended upon that sort of activity. Hmmm … the farmers in Littleton Drew no doubt would have been of that category, and Dad would have worked – I’m not sure where he actually worked before moving to London but I’m sure he was a – an active farm worker. I don’t think I told you but on our holidays before the war we regularly went back to Wiltshire to his home ground and he loved to get his hands on a plough with horses and that’s obviously – that was his way of life before moving to London, farm worker, no doubt tracing generations back and back to Anglo-Saxon times, you know, because the name Kington is an Anglo-Saxon name. So I think apart from that move to London no doubt his family had lived in that village for generations after generation, because there was little movement outside of villages in those days, I think on that family tree you’ll see that several of my aunts and uncles were cousins so it was a very close-knit closed community.

Well I suppose one way of exploring this would be to ask what were your parents’ sort of wider views on right and wrong ways to behave or proper and improper conduct, what would they say, for adults and children but what would they say about, you know, right ways of being human, you know [laughs].

Yes, well I had to be well behaved outside with company, you know, otherwise it was acknowledged when I got home, you know, well I don’t think I was a badly [laughs] behaved child really because of my upbringing, hmmm, so I don’t really – I don’t think I had any experience of that really, it was just the – the way of life that I had … it was as I say very sheltered and homely loving family life.

Do you remember your parents talking about other sorts of people in a positive way or other sorts of people in a negative way?

Not really, no [laughs]. If they did it wasn’t in my earshot, no [laughs]. I’m sure they didn’t but … I – I really don’t know, I just took it for granted, you know, that was the – those were the conditions that we lived under. I always remember – I mean well during the war of course we were great supporters of Churchill, you know, like many of us were and then after the war in 1945 we all thought Churchill would become Prime Minister again and I think we were quite shocked when, you know, they [the majority electorate] went to turn the other way, due I think mainly to the – the people in services, I think their vote counted and I think they wanted a change of their way of life to what it had been before the war, they wanted perhaps a ‘fairer’ [requests quotation marks] society [laughs]. So I was quite surprised and I can’t really say shocked but surprised anyway that Clement Attlee became Prime Minister and we had a Labour government, because we all thought that wouldn’t happen but there we are, that’s the – how events turned out.

And I know that your father was a verger and the family practice was to go to church, but could you say something of the level of – level and extent of your parent’s actual faith, their religious …

Well I think they were quite – you know, well founded strong in that – in religion of that kind, yes, regular churchgoers, Mum at Chiswick was a member of the choir, because, you know, the young men were called up so they had a shortage of male voices so they recruited ladies and I think she enjoyed that, she was – she liked singing so that was her musical side. So very much involved in the church community, Mothers’ Union, people of that kind, you know, and Dad used to help out with all sorts of activities, he was a – a great person to mix in with people, a great mixer and as I say at Camden Town they really loved him and what he did and I think were very sorry we had to go due to – I can’t really explain what happened but, erm, it wasn’t really worth his while to – to stay there, you know, the living was so bad salary wise [laughs].

Hmm. And how did your own religious faith develop as a – as that became of an older child?

Well I mean it’s very strongly affected, I was confirmed at Chiswick Church, I think [by] the Bishop of London I remember being confirmed by him there, I was a choirboy in the Chiswick – Chiswick Town Parish Church. They had a very strong musical connection there, I think we had a – quite a – a leading organist who’d come from Ealing as our church organist, I think he was well sought after in the musical world, he had an assistant organist, a lady, I think her name was Ena, not quite sure. And they used to make films of course, Ealing Studios was nearby and I seem to remember that she had to – they – they filmed her playing the organ, her hands were filmed, you know, for some film where somebody else no doubt was seemingly playing the organ but it was her hands, so erm, she was the assistant organist there. Another nice lady, used to walk back with her after – after evensong along the Mall, she lived in Hammersmith, within walking distance, so that’s a memory I have, walking along with Mum and Dad and Ena. And the organist, he used to take us for choir practice in the little vestry off – off the – off the – near the – in the church building, little piano there, used to go through the hymns and psalms for the coming services [laughs]. And we had two very good songsters in the choir, Jones brothers I think they were called, hmmm, but they had a very bad reputation for behaviour I think [laughs] and [there] was one occasion, during the sermon, I don’t know if I should tell you this but they had little booklets to keep us amused and they used to hand these round, we were sitting on either side of the – you know, in the chancel and these used – books used to go from boy to boy whilst the vicar was preaching his sermon [laughs] but we all – weren’t always as quiet as we should be and at one occasion I think that the vicar got so annoyed with the choir he had a – he took us all out, we had to go all out and sit in front of him in the actual body of the church [laughs], and that was a most shameful incident. I don’t think I would have done that on my own with all due respect, you know, but you know what boys are, you know, being led astray by one or two leaders [laughs] and I think the Jones boys were quite naughty, but they had – they sang well [laughs] so that’s why they were tolerated.

And can you tell me about church attendance at Haversham?

Yes, erm, I was learning the organ, I used to play – help out with playing the organ at the church services in Haversham Parish Church. The actual village was an old English village with a parish church and the buildings nearby, farms and pub and what have you, and where we lived was quite a little way away, the Haversham Estate, new estate which had

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 41 C1379/33 Track 2 been built I suppose between the wars, new buildings in those days, you know, new houses, so I used to go regularly to church there, play the organ, sometimes for morning service. The organist couldn’t always attend, I don’t know, for one or other [reason] in the mornings and I used to have messages, frantic messages, ‘Will you come down and play the organ for us?’ [laughs] during the morning so – so that was one of my activities and Mum and Dad of course went to the services there. That was a – you know, an old fashioned Middle Ages type church, hmm.

And were there significant outdoor landscapes in – in Haversham that you –

Yes, it was –

Played in>

On the River – River Ouse and Haversham Estate where we lived was on one of the banks of the Ouse, quite high up and the view from our window, we could look across the valley and to the railway viaduct, a very high viaduct which went from Wolverton to stations beyond in the north and I can remember the trains steaming across backwards and forwards on this huge viaduct which had many arches over the river, quite high. And the Grand Union Canal was also nearby and that went over the river on this aqueduct I think they called it, so that was quite interesting. And the river itself, used to go swimming there with one of my chums from school, from Haversham. Er, and then one day – one season we had – I think I it was again after a bad winter and there was a great thaw and the rivers became flooded and that whole valley floor was covered in water and we were completely cut off from Wolverton which was where the – the school was, on – on one occasion we just couldn’t get into school because of the flooding, very bad … hmmm, but the river again was quite – a source of interest to the people living in the – the boys and girls living in the village.

What sort of other things did you do with the friend that you mention, apart from swimming in the river?

Hmmm … well we – I mean you know what boys are like, used to go on trips around the – the – the fields, exploring, climbing trees [laughs] … can’t really remember any other

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 42 C1379/33 Track 2 events really, I mean just enjoyed going out and walking around the country, you know, and had some very nice woods there, I remember on one occasion – I used to go out on my own quite a lot, exploring, finding parts of the country which I didn’t know anything about. On one occasion I actually met the headmaster and his wife and they had two children in the actual – one of the woods, I was quite surprised [laughs] to see him there, I don’t know what I – what I said to him but anyway it all went off quite amicably. And then the – because the rationing, we had ration books and one of my duties was to take the – the coupons into the food office at Newport Pagnell every week and that involved a journey across country, across the river into Newport Pagnell food office which I quite enjoyed. Again because of my nature I didn’t get involved with the actual serving in the shop I’m afraid, I left that all to Mum and Dad though I – I quite liked going on my bicycle doing errands one way or another. So that was one of my tasks, taking the food coupons into the food office in Newport Pagnell. Another task was going to Wolverton where I had to collect various items from the shops there to take back to the stores, such as cartons of cigarettes and things of this nature, which I picked up from the shop in Wolverton. So that’s how I sort of helped out. And they also had a little library in the shops, Foyles Books I think it was and I used to help out with putting the covers on and making sure the books were in order and what have you, so I quite liked that. That – in – pleased me more than the actual serving of the shop, serving behind the scenes I suppose you’d say, that was my duty.

You said you didn’t serve on the counter because of your nature, what do you mean?

Well because – because I was so afraid of meeting people I suppose [laughs] and I – I didn’t really know if – if I was asked a question I thought to myself I wouldn’t be able to answer it and things like that, but Mum and Dad of course were much more outgoing so it’s strange really that I had this nature from these two outgoing people but there we are, I suppose because I was an only child and didn’t have any brothers and sisters to mingle with.

And as you’ve mentioned the arranging of the books, do you remember what you were reading at this time for –

They were all sort of light novels I think, you know [laughs].

Yeah, I mean but –

Mysteries and crime and things of that kind.

But these – that you were reading yourself, the books –

Oh no, I mean these were the sorts of books that were in the – in the – they had bookshelves in the – in the store, it was quite a big shop and the people used to come in and browse and choose a book and … like a little library really.

What did you yourself read at home at this age?

Oh the books that were set at school I suppose, I mean, hmmm, reading sort of Silas Marner and Shakespeare, oh that was a thing, we had, erm, [to] buy our own Shakespeare, I’ve still got it actually, for studying English literature and had to memorise certain speeches and things of that nature I think, my – my time with reading was taken up with school homework really, reading the prescribed literature. And on one occasion we made a trip to Stratford-on-Avon from Wolverton by train to one of the plays being given there. That was quite an event, going on the train from Wolverton, went to Bletchley and then cross country to Stratford-On-Avon but I can’t remember what the play was [laughs], but it was quite a nice event, you know. And that was a thing that Wolverton Grammar School, the people – the headmaster, I think he was very outward going and he wanted to – to do things outside the school, I think on one occasion the – the film, Henry the V was being shown in one of the cinemas in Wolverton and we all went there for a morning performance. But no, not really any field trips as such, not until later at Birkbeck College.

Could you – go on –

[43.40]

This is nothing to do with schoolwork but at the time, Bletchley Park, which you’ll know all about by now won’t you, [laughs], we didn’t realise, you know, what was going on there, nobody did but we had – Wolverton School had a – quite a large catchment area,

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 44 C1379/33 Track 2 people came from Olney, Wolverton of course, Stony Stratford and Bletchley and they came in regularly by train and, er, so little did we realise what was going on at Bletchley Park, that only came later. But some of the big houses round Wolverton, there were quite – quite a few, they were places where the people [who] worked at Bletchley Park were housed during that time. [Bletchley Park was the wartime code breakers’ ‘Station X’.]

Does that –

But that really didn’t affect us at that – oh no we’d had no inkling of what was going on.

You’d – what – did you have at the school children of parents who were working at Bletchley Park then?

I don’t know, no. But it was very hush hush, you know, if they did they wouldn’t have known anything about it, it was amazing how – how that was kept under cover all that time, nobody knew anything about it. And yet they must have seen the buses of people going in and out of Bletchley Park, and they were housed – they were lodged in Bletchley as well presumably, so yes the – the parents of some of the boys and girls may have had people who worked there, I don’t know, I can’t really say but it’s highly likely. But I mean, you know, with all the information coming out now one realises what, you know, what an important place it was, and some of the people – oh another thing was that besides Bletchley Park there was another place called Hanslope Village Park and there was a wireless station there and I remember that was quite – on quite a high area going – cycling there and these huge masts which no doubt were picking up information during the war from continental Europe. And again, I know for certain that we had people in the village of Haversham who worked in the Diplomatic Wireless Service but we didn’t know what they were doing, but they were certainly at Haversham.

How did you know that – did you know that at the time?

Well they – they obviously told us I suppose, I mean that was no – that was an open secret that they worked – it was known that this was a Diplomatic Wireless Service station but obviously they didn’t tell us what they – what they were doing there but we just knew.

They were strangers to the community, people back from London who didn’t really – who wouldn’t have – who would not have lived there otherwise apart from the fact that they were working at this special station.

How were they recognisable as outsiders in that way?

Oh I can’t really say. I – I don’t really know but I know we had people who were living there, I’m sure who worked at that station … but I – I don’t think I can go into any assumptions on that [laughs].

[46.40]

Wolverton School, grammar school, could you tell me about the teaching of science there?

Yes, again it was very enterprising. We had one teacher, a teacher of physics, Mr Long, Reggie Long we called him, but – and they all had nick – nicknames of course, he – I don’t know how they did it but – with the petrol rationing, he came in from Brickhill I think, which was near – quite a long way away and he had a little Austin car I think it was, and the geography master came by car also, he had a – an Opel, a German car, which was parked outside the gates of the school every day [laughs]. But we often wonder now how – I suppose they had a special ration presumably as they were teachers, hmmm … and Mr Cadman, he was our mathematics teacher, he was very good, he lived at Haversham, he used to cycle into school like we did, and Miss Button the English teacher, she cycled in from Haversham, Mr Thomas the French master cycled in from Haversham, hmmm … hmmm … and the physics master, yes, going back to Mr Long they were all interesting lessons. I remember he had one experiment which he had outside with a huge block of ice and he had a wire on weights on either side of this huge block and he showed the actual pressure of the wire gradually – because it lowered the freezing point and it gradually went all the way through this block of ice, you know, right down to the bottom, so that was quite an interesting experiment. And I think he made us do a lot of experiments in physics, electricity and things of that kind, you know.

Do you remember those?

Well not really … no but it – we had the sort of the main physics lessons and theory lessons and then in the afternoon, I think usually in the afternoon there were practical lessons with these various experiments that we had to work on in electricity and what have you. But that wasn’t really one of my main likings, I was more into the theoretical side I think and again due to perhaps not being all that – all that good in, you know, doing things with my hands I didn’t like that quite so much, but one had to do it, you know, and make the best of it.

And the teaching of other sciences, chemistry?

No, no no I didn’t actually do chemistry for some reason or other. I did – it’s interesting, at Chiswick I did German besides French, which I quite liked, but I didn’t think – we didn’t think anything about the fact that we were learning the language of a – of an enemy, but it just came natural, so we had French lessons and German lessons. But unfortunately when I went to Wolverton German wasn’t taught there so one couldn’t carry on with that which was a great disappoint – disappointment to me. Hmmm … you asked me a question.

Yes, sorry, biology, any – any of that?

Yes, we had very lively biology – biology lessons in a special lab which was on – we weren’t on one level, we had sort of desks, you know, almost like a theatre as it were with the teacher in the front demonstrating, and again yes we had lots of interesting experiments with frogs and things of that kind, you know, finding out how they worked and the nature of various mammals. And again he was a great one for churning out these lists of information, you know, showing you the – the life cycle of a – an amoeba or things of that kind, you know, he was – yes, he was a very good teacher. I remember now one of his pet sayings was, ‘The green leaf is the factory of the world’s food supply,’ and that’s always been in my mind ever since, the fact, you know, that we depend upon the chlorophyll in plants for producing vegetation upon which the animals feed on, so that gives us, you know, a support supply of food. Yes, I used to like biology and I used to study that quite hard. So that was another science; biology, physics, I think there were two physics, mathematics, French, English, geography, history, about eight or nine subjects all together. And architecture, oh that was another point, yes, which I used to like very much, the

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 47 C1379/33 Track 2 teacher there – we had special lessons on architecture and I think I’ve still got the notes from that time, and that appealed to me no end.

Can you say why?

Well I don’t know, I mean I was always interested in buildings, I mean I liked drawing and painting, I don’t do anything like it now but some of my pictures I look back on and think, oh well that’s quite amazing what I did in those days, so that really appealed to me. We had to draw pictures of the Norman arch and the early English and the types of – the way the ar – architecture changed during history, Stonehenge and things of this kind, so that was one – one of my favourite lessons really, history of architecture. And I even thought before going into the Met Office that I would like to pursue that career but I’m afraid that didn’t … come to anything.

Hmmm, it’s interesting because earlier you mentioned that in relation to bombings that what you were concerned about most or a lot was –

Yes.

Buildings being damaged?

Buildings being damaged, yes, that’s a good point, I hadn’t thought about – about that, yes, the buildings I’d seen in Chiswick, I was so concerned that they would be damaged [laughs], hmm.

Were you drawing – were you doing drawings of places before you did this architecture?

Yes, oh yes at Chiswick I – again we had a good [art] teacher, he had a special laboratory [art room] outside the main part of the building at Chiswick School, and again that was a very interesting lesson which I liked, and he taught us quite a lot, how to make etchings and things of that kind, the process involved, and I showed him one of my – my drawings which I had made of the house opposite where we lived. I took it into him and he showed me how to improve the perspective of it and what have you, so that was quite fascinating. I think one of the etchings was made of St Paul’s Cathedral, I’m not quite sure, I don’t think

I kept that but … yes I found that most interesting, you know, so that was a line which, you know, was one I was involved with. And I liked drawing, chart drawing for example, weather charts [laughs].

So as a child – as a child, left your – left to your own devices what did you tend to draw?

… I hope I’m not upsetting your recording.

No no, that’s okay.

[Laughs].

You’ve just – you’ve just reached for a book which is your … New Naturalist book.

And photography of course, these are my own pictures in here, I – I went around with a camera everywhere I went taking pictures of clouds.

At what age were you taking –

This is when we were living at Watford, hmmm … this in fact is near Watford and that’s a holiday in Wales.

What age are you taking these?

I’d be in my twenties when I was at – I worked at Stanmore, at the Training School [Meteorological Office Training School] where I was an instructor at Stanmore and I lived at Watford, that’s where I met my wife Beryl, she was born in Watford and that’s how we came to meet each other. And then when I was in the Met Office we were posted abroad, went – not long after we were married we were posted to Bahrain and then they had a special scheme where we took holidays in Africa, and we went to Africa and this is a picture near the Great Rift Valley, we saw this boy with her herd of sheep or goats and the lovely clouds in the background. So the whole mixture, this is in Watford near where we lived, picture of a cumulonimbus cloud, thunder cloud. Holiday in Wales, Watford again, stratocumulus. So I never thought that these would ever be used again, they’ve been stored

These photographs are on page 114 and 115 in your new book, Climate and Weather , just for the listener’s benefit.

Showing the ten basic types of clouds. This again is in Bahrain, that’s from where we – we lived near a date garden which had – had various houses in and this is the view from our back window as it were, and fine cirrus.

When did you first start taking your own photographs?

Hmmm, well I suppose in the early 1950s, at – oh there we are, this is a picture of me at the university when I was working full-time in the university drawing the charts, this is one of my charts here.

Right, so – so what I need –

So this is – I enjoyed, you know.

Yes.

It had – it had to look good [laughs].

Yes, what I’m trying to sort of pin down is as a child, before you looked at the poster, you know, which took you into meteorology really, as a child and you weren’t being taught by a teacher and being asked to draw a particular thing, what just left to yourself would you tend to draw? What were you motivated to draw left to your own devices?

My – well there’s one picture in – in colour which I took drew when at Haversham from our house, looking across this valley at a spectacular sky and I made a – a sketch of that in colour, so that interested me. Again drawing and the clouds coming together before I was able to photograph it, I wanted to be able to capture that image one way or another, so that’s what I did.

And this was at Haversham, this –

Yes.

Colour drawing?

Yes, from our – our house there, looking across the river valley where this viaduct was, and one eve – I think it was in the afternoon, there was this spectacular cloud display which I wanted to, you know, keep in my memory. Hmmm, I like drawing pictures of people, I had a craze for drawing politicians I think, you know, pictures from the paper and making my own impression of what they looked like, you know, sort of people in – in the government. Aircraft, I liked drawing aircraft this is my interest of aviation coming in, I used to love drawing aeroplanes [laughs]. Hmmm –

From life, were you able to see them in – in –

Yes, I mean when – when I was evacuated to Wiltshire, at Littleton Drew and Grittleton during our playtime we used to – there was a large field where we used to go out and play ball and what have you, but very often you’d have aircraft flying overhead quite often, and they were coloured yellow and that meant they were training aircraft, a lot of training going on in that part of the world, training the pilots to be bomber and fighter aircraft [crew], and I could recognise all the types of aircraft, you know, going – I couldn’t do it today but I could then, I could tell you all the different types, the Harvard and the Blenheim and Avro Anson, Oxford aircraft, just see the aircraft and that’s, you know, what that is.

Where were you getting that knowledge from that, you know, the aircraft identification?

That’s a good point, I –

So –

I don’t – I don’t really know. I … hmmm, perhaps –

Your mum or your dad, were they?

No I don’t think so, no. Must have been from fellow pupils perhaps, you know, from my cousin Bob who I lived with at Haversham – [Littleton Drew], but we could tell all the aircraft going over, er, so it’s always been an interest. So that’s why I come onto the books there with aviation.

And when did you first get a camera then so that you could move from drawing to –

I think it must have been as I say early ‘50s, I – I bought myself – I think it was a Zeiss camera, 35mm.

Thank you.

So I could take 35mm slides.

[59.53]

And – and as I say I was working at the time at Stanmore at the training school, Met Office Training School training Met Assistants like I was when I first joined, I instructed them, and also the forecasters coming there on their forecasting courses. And we had to take them out, we had special sort of places where we could climb up and look at the clouds and I took my camera with me and I used to take pictures there, of any interesting cloud structure. So I think it all stems from that time really, early 1950s, oh well 1950s in general.

Thank you.

[01.00.36]

The teaching of geography at Wolverton School.

Hmmm, yes.

How was it taught and what was taught?

That was Mr Marvin, I remember his name now, he was the one who came in his Opel German car, I think he must have perhaps toured Germany before the war no doubt [laughs], I don’t know, I’m just surmising. Yes, I can’t really remember any detail but … not so much as Chiswick, that – that’s more vivid in my mind, geography lessons there, I – no, I can’t really tell you much about that, except he was a good teacher, I used to like him. He was one for fieldtrips, oh that was another thing from Wolverton, yes, it was decided that we should go on a forestry fieldtrip for one – for a week or so and we all volunteered [laughs], oh dear. So we went to somewhere in the Cotswolds I think it was, cutting down would you believe beech trees, I don’t know why, but we had a crash course in cutting down trees with an axe and a saw and I remember he [local farmer/tree feller?] told how you had to cut the – you know, the tree with the – so oh I can’t – the trunk rather, you had to cut a wedge in the – [trunk low down] with your axe in the direction it’s going to fall down and then on the other side two of us used to use – have a hand – a saw, sawing away until it finally went over and we were divided up into various teams and we sort of, you know, had a competition about how – how many trees [laughs] – how many trees we could cut down, something like that. But, erm, I didn’t really enjoy that, camping out under tents in this makeshift camp. But Mr Marvin and his wife, they obviously liked that sort of life and they were the sort of leaders of it. But I was so glad to get home again [laughs], I caught – I caught impetigo I think there, you know, quite badly, I don’t know for – for some reason or other, but not a very nice experience but anyway, at least we were taught how to cut down a tree [laughs]. I don’t know for what purpose but there we are. Boys and girls, we all mixed, we all went down together in different tents of course and the girls did all the cooking and we had these big marquees where we used to go in the evening and have our evening meals, it was quite an experience really. And I think VJ Day was announced at that time so that was quite an important date, so that sort of gives you an idea of when that was, which VJ Day [VE Day] was in May [8 May] wasn’t it, ’45, and VJ Day must have been later that year [15 August 1945]. We thought the – we thought the war was going on much longer, of course with the – the bombing of Japan by the atomic explosion that finished it just like that, and I think VJ happened when we were away. Yes, that was quite an experience, I think went by train but then we had to get to this place where the camp was by – we had to take our cycles with us so we all had our cycles on the train. Amazing in those days how you could get around the country [both laugh].

And finally for Wolverton School could you tell me about significant friends and even relationships, I know that this is the first school at which girls appeared.

Yes [laughs] yeah.

So, you know, friends and relationships possibly there?

Yes, well as I say it was quite an experience for me, I was – when I – I joined the form – I was put right in the front desk, I think some of the – the girls were quite forward – they came round, you know, and sort of … not huddled me but, you know, tried to make an impression on me which was quite embarrassing [both laugh] for this young lad who hadn’t mixed with girls before [laughs]. I think there were some relationships, you know, boy and girl relations within – within the form, but I – I didn’t really participate in that [laughs]. Bt they were all very friendly, very nice and as I say when we got together in our reunion a few years back it was so nice to see them again, you know, and make contact with people who I hadn’t thought I’d see ever again and, er, we all got on very well together. It was quite a small form, only about twenty I suppose, something of that kind, you know, so we had some good times together, yeah. And as I say we went to Stratford-on-Avon all together so that was one trip and a forestry trip was another one which I didn’t quite enjoy quite so much, but anyway, good experience [both laugh].

[End of Track 2]

Track 3

Yeah, I understand today that you’ve been thinking about some of the things that we talked about on the first session and you’ve got a few things that you’d like to add to the recording at the beginning of this session?

Yes indeed, I was thinking about housing differences at the time, both in Chiswick and also at Wolverton where we moved later and the thing that struck me at Chiswick was when I went to school, walked to school from our home in Balfern Grove I went through a district which was quite different from our, for want of a better word, middle class type of road which was terraced housing but at least we had a – a small front garden, but these houses were very closely packed together, no front garden and the front door was straight onto the pavement and I was struck by the fact that the ladies of the house – houses scrubbed hard the front paving piece to make it look white, or as near white as they possibly could, in other words they considered that to be their front property and I used – I think I remember walking very gingerly around these paving stones on my way to school. So that was the one thing that struck me and at the time, as a ten year old I thought, well perhaps this is what it would have been like in the East End of London and that’s the sort of comparison I thought was likely. And then again when we moved to Buckinghamshire during the course of the war, to Haversham, going to school again, this time by cycle and on a – on my way to school I used to go along a long street called Creed Street which is no longer there, it’s been taken down and again the houses were similar to ones that I had experienced in Chiswick, just a long line of terraced houses with no front garden and the front door straight onto the pavement. I don’t know would that be a suitable point to start from?

Lovely, yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

[02.04]

Now last session we’d got to the point where you were in the last year of school and there had been a notice on the school notice board concerning Met Office invitations for applications for Meteorological Assistants, we’ve – we stopped there and I wondered whether you could start today by telling the story of the – the process by which you moved from being a pupil to being a member of staff at the Met Office?

Yes, certainly I think I told you that I went in the sixth form but really that was simply marking time, I didn’t really have visions then of going to university and I may have mentioned that in that class only one boy actually went onto university at that time, this was considered to be normal, so we were sort of hanging around as it were and then this notice appeared on the school notice board and with my interest in weather I thought, well this might be a good idea, so yes I applied and, er, this led to going to London with my father to the Air Ministry and I don’t remember – remember an actual interview, I think we more or less went straight into the training course and my father left me there, but we had made – he had made arrangements for me to stay in London with a – another uncle and auntie who lived at Clapham Common so that was more or less decided as far as my accommodation was concerned. And so I started there in the Met Office training school which was in an Air Ministry building I think in Kingsway, on a – I think a six week course which involved learning how to make weather observations, going onto the so called Air Ministry roof and taking temperatures, looking at the clouds and also being able to plot weather charts, this was the practical side but we also had a theoretical, erm, side to the course which involved lectures given by some of the senior staff there on – and I still have the books and I don’t think I’ve shown you those but they’ve been carefully kept up in my study on the whole process of the theory of meteorology as far as that level of understanding was required, thinking about water vapour, pressure, temperature, how all these items are measured and so forth. And then – oh another item which we did from the top of the roof was sending off balloons, pilot balloons as we call them, using theodolites so that we could actually track the – proce’, the path of the balloon and – and you could work out from the azimuth and the elevation readings the actual speed of the wind, so that was another important aspect of the practical side of this course. And then at the end of that period you were then posted to one of the meteorological stations that required people of this kind, making weather observations and plotting weather charts, and my first posting was to Cranfield in Bedfordshire which was about ten miles from Wolverton, Haversham where I lived with my parents and I was able to cycle to and fro. But this didn’t last too

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 56 C1379/33 Track 3 long and eventually after a month or two I was posted to Air Traffic Control [Centre] Uxbridge, hmmm, which I think was quite important base during the war but had still carried on to give information to the civil aviation people and I stayed there for some time, I was then – let me think, seventeen, approaching eighteen and my work there consisted mostly of plotting charts there, we didn’t actually make weather observations at this particular station, it was simply a forecasting centre for the air traffic control people. So we had quite a busy time, night duties, etc, twenty-four service, and during that time I stayed at RAF station Stanmore and we bussed with the RAF personnel who were stationed at Uxbridge to and fro for our various duties, night duty, morning duty, etc, that was interesting because a – we were allowed with our particular standing … grade I suppose you’d call it as meteorological assistants, status of sergeants but I think this really applied to the people who had been in the war, older people than these young seventeen year old youngsters out of school and I sensed there was a little atmosphere between the sergeants, the NCOs and the warrant officers to have these young schoolboys using their mess, however they tolerated it and we used to travel along quite happily to our work. But there came a time, I think a crucial point, I think – I don’t know if I’m doing it wrong but the warrant officers didn’t actually – they weren’t very happy about this and we were downgraded to airmen so that meant we had to vacate the sergeants’ mess and eventually we were living in the airmen’s mess at Uxbridge itself which was quite a shock as it were to the system at that time.

[07.35]

But anyway it gave me good – a good idea of what was going to come during national service which came quite quickly, eighteen year old boys as you know were called up at that time to do National Service, it was at – eighteen months at that period of the post-war period and that’s another story, I don’t know if I should stop there and continue with the actual …

Very good, yes that’s been – that’s fantastic.

[08.02]

Yes, I’ll now take you back over various points of that, starting with if you could provide it a description, physical sort of description of the exterior, interior of the training school which you said was it Kingsway?

Kingsway, Air Ministry House there, yes.

What do you remember of it as a place at –

Well it was a huge, to me, building; I think it must still be there, do you know Kingsway?

No.

These large blocks of offices, quite impressive, and we simply went in one of the – the main doors off the main road, off Kingsway up the stairs to various rooms and offices where the actual lectures took place in quite large rooms there, and then as I say for weather observing we went up onto the roof and made our observations there, in the same building. Whether or not this is so called famous Air Ministry roof I don’t know, but anyway it would be in that same area, hmmm.

And what was the view from the roof, given that this was –

Well just a general view of London I suppose, I don’t – I can’t really recall that, but these – these observations became [not my observations] but they became quite famous I think in the post-war period, observations made from the Air Ministry roof, I don’t think they apply now, I think that’s all been changed, but that was a sort of standard place for the observations to be made and quoted in the press, you know, what it was at this time on the Air Ministry roof was that level, hmm.

And how many recruits were you training with?

Well there were quite – several classes, I should think about twenty or thirty at each class I would imagine, I can’t really remember exactly but quite a – you know, quite a large number of people, like a school class.

And can you give me a sense of the status and background of the instructors, who were these instruct –

Well we were very – I was very impressed by the – the – what they were telling us, you know, and we looked up to them with quite awe – a great deal of awe I think at that time, young schoolboys out of school with these professional meteorologists, and I remember one particularly well, Mr Drinkwater, his name comes back to mind and I – as I say I have his notes upstairs which I still look at from time to time, very comprehensive course in meteorology.

Had you any sense at the time of what these instructors had done before this point?

Not really, not with my lack of experience but later on I – I would have realised they must have been senior forecasters, yes, working at various offices and places, you know, during the – perhaps during the – obviously during the war I expect, yes, but now in civilian street.

We’ll come back to the – the practical elements of this training course in a moment, I realise we’re talking about a six week course and I’m asking for incredible detail on a six week course but – so just whatever you can remember, the notes are something that I think we’d need to look at and perhaps use to illustrate your recording but without them what do you remember of the – the theoretical content, in other words particular images, ideas, theories that were presented to you in that part of it?

Ah, well one of the main items would have been a lecture on air masses, the different types of airstreams that affect the British Isles such as polar maritime, tropical maritime … features of this kind, the way they influence our weather, the characteristics of them, where they originate from, how they get changed from where they come from to when they arrive over the – over the British Isles, is that the sort of detail?

Yes.

And also frontal analysis where you have air masses of different kind coming together, forming a cold front or a warm front, if the cold air is advancing you have a cold front, if the warm air is advancing you have a warm front, and at that line you have a great deal of

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 59 C1379/33 Track 3 weather occurring, clouds, rain, snow, etc, due to the fact that the cold air is undercutting the warm air and the warm air is forced to rise, it’s usually very moist and so you have clouds forming, rain and snow falling from that frontal cloud and these form a particular pattern, the polar front as it’s called, the polar front is the boundary between the cold air and the warm air and that’s not usually a stable region because normally you have instability occurring, you have waves forming along the front and these waves – they usually turn into a – a frontal depression with their own warm and cold fronts and they tend to move along the polar front and affect the British Isles accordingly. And then you have a lifecycle, we were talking about this, the lifecycle of a polar front depression, the actual wave on the polar front, how it develops into a full blown depression with its – with its own cold and warm front and then another feature we were told about was the occlusion which is another type of front. Because the cold front is always moving faster than the warm front and so eventually it – it catches up with the warm front, overtakes it and you have an occlusion being formed and that’s indicating the dying passage of the depression, and again it has – an occlusion has its own characteristic weather, cloud, etc, so all these things we – we had to take down and note – in our notes, drawings, etc, warm front, warm – by – a red line, cold front with a blue line and the occlusion with a purple line, a mixture of the warm and the cold. Hmmm … I’m just trying to think of any other aspects of the theory. Oh theory of winds of course, how winds occur, the polar … the jet stream, how that’s very important to – for the passage of fronts, how the jet controls the movement and the direction of depressions and anticyclones and then that leads me on of course to the fact there were lessons on the different types of depressions, they’re not all frontal depressions, some are non-frontal and then you have anticyclones, various types of anticyclones, warm and cold, permanent and semi permanent and so forth, so it really was a very comprehensive course which lasted as I say about six weeks. And then we had a – an examination at the end I believe but I can’t remember too much about that but then we were sort of tested on – on the information that had been given to us.

Do you remember anything of how they taught it, and that would include what they showed and how they were able to show it to you?

Hmmm hmm, well it was like a – like a schoolroom really with a blackboard, I don’t remember any other pictorial items, but there was a lot of blackboard work, you know, just like they teach you at school, with writing and drawing the actual fronts and depressions,

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 60 C1379/33 Track 3 anticyclones which we all rel – religiously took down in our notebooks. So I had a set of notebooks for theory and a set of notebooks for practical work, and the practical notebook would be about how to measure wind and clouds, different types of clouds and so forth.

Could you – I haven’t asked you, I know that you went to a mixed grammar school, was this a mixed training course?

Ah, good question. I don’t think so, I think they were all boys or young men.

And the instructors?

They were men too, yes, but there were lady forecasters at the time and lady Met Assistants, so they must have had some training but perhaps it just so happened they were very few and far between, you know, at that period.

What was the role of females in the building, did you …?

No, I wouldn’t know, it was all pretty, – all male instructors I’m sure, yes.

[16.23]

And now then if we can turn to the practical aspects of the course and I’ll mention the methods that you mentioned earlier but if I miss any out perhaps you could come to those, could you tell me how they taught you how to measure temperature?

Well I think we were taken up to the roof again, to the Stevenson Screen where the thermometers were housed, dry bulb, wet bulb, maximum minimum temperature thermometers, a thermograph and a hygrograph which the thermograph would give you a continuous record of temperature, it has a drum with a pen which marks the trace of the temperature as up and down, the drum goes round and so you have a continuous record of how the temperature rises and falls. Hmmm, the actual element is a – a bimetallic strip which is sensitive to changes of temperature, you have two pieces of metal welded together and due to the different rates of expansion and contraction, so that operates an arm which goes on the drum with a pen and – and the hygrograph would measure the changes of

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 61 C1379/33 Track 3 humidity and the element there was I think a – a Goldbeater's skin I believe, not quite sure about that, better check up on that [actually human hair; goldbeater’s skin was used in upper-air recording hygrometers], but anyway it was a piece of material which was sensitive to changes in humidity and again that operated the pen which moved over this drum with a – a chart on it which could be changed once a day, so that became one of our duties actually in the morning at nine o’clock to actually change the charts on the thermograph and the hygrograph so that you’d have a continuous record of the previous twenty-four hour temperature and humidity changes. Nine o’clock observation was very important because that was the sort of climatological period time when you had to measure the – not just the temperature dry bulb and wet bulb, I should explain I suppose the difference between the wet bulb and dry bulb. The dry bulb [temperature] is simply the normal temperature that you hear being talked about on the weather forecasts, the wet bulb is a similar – similar thermometer but the actual bulb is surrounded by a piece of muslin and threads hang down into a small ink bottle with pure water and as the muslin dries out it’s – it brings up the water so it’s continually moist, and that means there is evaporation going on from the bulb of a thermometer which cools the – the thermometer down, if it’s very dry you have a great deal of difference between the wet bulb and the dry bulb temperature, but if it’s very humid then the differences are not very great. So that gives you another measure of humidity which you had to make a note of, you measure the temperature of the dry bulb, temperature of the wet bulb, put them in a little pad, put them on a piece of paper and then you take them back to the office and you have a – a slide rule, humidity slide rule, you feed in those temperatures and you can – you can read off the relative humidity, so that was quite important. What else? Oh then you had to read the rainfall of course, this would be on the same plot – plot of ground where the Stevenson Screen was, which is simply a box painted white with louvered sides so there’s air flowing through to give you a representative temperature and then surrounding that – well not on the Air Ministry roof but at a normal met station you would have this on a grass covered enclosure and then you’d have to measure the rain gauge which would be planted somewhere nearby, a cylinder which collected the rainfall. So you’d have to look into that, take out the container where the rainfall had collected and have a – a glass of – a funnel or tube with graduated inches or millimetres, pour that in and you could measure the rainfall during the twenty-four hours. So all that was done at nine o’clock in a morning and then you had to measure also the grass minimum temperature to show how the [ground] temperature had fallen overnight in order to find out whether there’d been a ground frost or

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 62 C1379/33 Track 3 not, and that was on a – another thermometer which was on a – two pegs on the grass and the thermometer was between these two wooden pegs and you had to make sure that the actual bulb of the thermometer was in contact with the grass as it were and that was another instrumental reading you had to make. And then the wind of course, you had to measure the – the velocity and the direction of the wind from an anemometer, you simply have a – a vane going round and you could determine that – the direction of that from another instrument, the – anemograph, wind anemograph I think it was called, I’ll have to think about this more carefully to be – give you the actual details, that’s quite a complicated instrument. But again it could be continuous, you would have a drum again and this particular instrument which was called the anemograph, that’s right, and it would record the direction and speed of the wind on a graph and so you could look at that and determine what the wind had been. Clouds of course, that was very important, had to make visual observation on the clouds simply from your eye which you’d been trained by the instructors at the training school on various types of clouds, whether it was cumulus, cirrus, stratus and what have you, amount, you had to determine how much of the sky was covered by each of the different types of clouds. And you could actually measure the wind – I don’t think it’s done nowadays but what we had – what was called an Nephoscope which was like a big comb on a mast and you could by pieces of cord turn the actual prongs of the comb so that the actual cloud elements, it’s usually on high cloud, you could actually move – time it [cloud element] from one prong to another with a stopwatch and you had to assume that the cloud was at a certain height, usually about say 20 or 30,000 feet, it was cirrus, and from that you could sort of, not guess, but estimate what the wind direction and the speed was at that height, so that was another measurement we were taught. That I think covers most of the elements.

Balloon launching, could you describe that?

Yes, that’s right, yes, they were not regular, just occasional when the forecaster needed it, where you would fill a small balloon with hydrogen, you know, a special shed where the hydrogen cylinders were, up – and then you had the various system of weights, so the balloon was suspended I think on some sort of system where you had various weights and according to the weights that would – and [control] the amount of hydrogen you could put in that would determine the – the rate of ascent of the balloon. And then it was sealed of course and you simply had a stopwatch, launch the balloon and then you’d wait to see it

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 63 C1379/33 Track 3 going into cloud, and it was assumed that the balloon would be going at a certain rate so you could determine the height of the cloud, that’s besides actually measuring the wind direction by means of a theodolite, that would be a more complicated process. Oh and then at night-time you could determine the height of a cloud with a cloud searchlight, I don’t know if they are still available at met stations or not [laughs] but each met station had a – a searchlight which was beamed – you could turn it on from your office as it were, it would beam a vertical light and – onto a cloud, if it was low cloud and then you had a special instrument which you called a – an alidade I think it was, on a mast and you could measure the actual angle of the spot on the cloud and by trigonometry you know this distance and you know the angle so you could would by trigonometry [determine] what this height was, with the right angled triangle mathematical formula [laughs].

Were you actually there in the evening then in order to do that, or even at night?

Not at the training school, no, that was – this is simply daytime, nine to five work, you know, trainee, but at the Met station it would be twenty-four watch usually.

And could you describe the teaching of the production of weather maps, I don’t know whether this would be – I don’t know at this stage they were teaching you how to forecast but –

No, we were simply observing and –

So taking observations and the theory, but at this stage any teaching of weather map –

Oh yes, definitely, yes, you were taught how to plot a weather chart, with all the information coming in from the different stations, in those days I mean the British Isles was covered by scores – or hundreds of weather stations at all the various aerodromes, airfields, and all these observations would be made at a certain time, hourly observations on the hour. So that was another thing we were taught, you had to go out prior to the hour, about say, fifteen, ten minutes before the hour so you had to collect all the information to send off to your headquarters and they would send it to the Central Forecasting Office which in those days was at Dunstable, and then Dunstable would retransmit – retransmit this information by teleprinter to all the outstations. So a short time after the hour all the

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 64 C1379/33 Track 3 outstations would have information from all over the British Isles, in code, five figure code. That’s another thing I didn’t mention, the fact that you had to code your observation up into five figure groups, the standard international code, I can’t give you – but it would involve the station number and the temperature, pressure and so forth, in five figure groups. And then you’d have the teleprinters tapping all this out automatically from Dunstable, to all the stations, and then you could go to the teleprinter once it had got a few stations you could tear it off [the typed paper sheet] and take it to your desk and start plotting the information on the weather chart at the various stations which had been marked in the circles, they were printed on the charts, each weather station had its own number and station circle so you could locate your station and then start plotting the information on the chart. And we had to plot by pen and ink, red and black and so you had a double barrelled pen as it were which you constructed yourself with two pens as it were, a pot of ink red, another one blue or black and then you’d – I think I still have the sort of mark there, I’m left-handed, where you plot the information around the station circle, black and red, depending – the temperature was black, dew point was red and so on, high cloud was red, low cloud black, etc, and then you – in the actual station circles which are about that size [indicated by hand] you’d actually put marks to show the amount of cloud, if it’s fully cloud you have four marks, no cloud, station circle vacant. And the wind, your station circle you plot the wind according to the direction and the actual wind speed you mark on with feathers, if it’s gale force you’d have four feathers and so forth, if it was calm you simply put a ring round the circle and then you’d try and get this information plotted as soon as possible to – to pass onto the forecaster, and if you were really rapid you could get all those observations for that hour on the chart for the British Isles within an hour, within the next hour, so that the forecasters have a good idea what the weather was an hour ago as it were.

Were you taught at this stage how to link up the observations at each of the stations in order to –

No.

You know, constructing lines and –

No, that was the forecaster’s job, yeah, we weren’t trained to – no, do that, that would be the analysis made by the forecaster, so we sit – we were simply the people employed to

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 65 C1379/33 Track 3 plot the charts and make the information available to the forecaster. Bes – besides these charts for the British Isles then of course you had much larger charts covering the Europe, Atlantic, right across to America and Russia, huge charts where you plotted all these observations for that one particular hour. There were major synoptic hours which is midnight, 6, 12, 1800, those are the four main charts of the day, major synoptic hours where you had a complete coverage from northern hemisphere on – so the forecasters would have a complete idea of a synoptic situation over a wide area. And then you’d plot charts for the intermediate hours, so you would have to plot a chart [charts] at 3 o’clock, 9 o’clock, 1500, 2100, so all these charts – depending on the type of station of course, not all the stations were a forecasting for wide areas but if you were –at an important station like Uxbridge was then you were liable to – to be able to plot these charts as well.

Was – does that mean then it was – at Uxbridge that you first produced these larger scale plots?

Yes, that’s right, yes yes.

So in terms of the training, the six weeks training course it was a British Isles – you were plotting up the British Isles?

No, it would have been others as well, yes, I think so, yes, but it’s an international code you see, there’s no language barrier, all the observations are in code so it does make – if it’s Russian, American, Spanish or German, they would all be in the same code and you could plot –

You just simply need a bigger map for the –

And plot them on the appropriate circles on the map, that was the beauty of it.

Did you have particular base maps then, so you had a –

Yes.

A national one and a – and then ones at various scale.

That’s right, yes, they were like different – different sizes and different scales. And the large ones were a very small scale, British Isles like this size [indication given], you know, but covering a wide area. And I remember I think in order to speed things up sometimes we’d have two people plotting the same chart and being left-handed I would take this side and the right-handed boy would take the other side in order to get the chart done more quickly, so that’s the way we worked, it’s all done automatically now of course, you know, but those were the days [laughs].

[30.31]

Now you’ve given an extremely good description of the – the practices that you were learning and also the – the kind of drafting work and the theory work, could you give us a sense of what sort of – sorts of things went wrong? In other words you’re dealing with piece – pieces of equipment on a roof, chart readers and that kind of thing, could you give us a – give us a sense, well not necessarily of what things went wrong but the difficulties of maintaining and – yeah, keeping a sort of weather station going of this kind?

Well thermometers of course were liable to be broken, especially the grass minimum temperature thermometer but that didn’t happen very often, we were very – very careful, with all due respect, you know, I can’t think really of anything major interruptions in the flow of observations. I think things mainly went quite smoothly really. Hmmm … no, I think, you know.

Perhaps it was the simplicity of the equipment, you’ve got chart readers I suppose but –

Sorry, chart?

The chart readers, that – that all – you know, the pen recording on a drum.

Yes, on a – on the – on the drum.

What was involved in sort of keeping that going if you like?

Well you had to make quite sure that, you know, the pens had – were inked, but you – you do that I think automatically really. No, I – I – again with all due respect I think things moved on quite smoothly without many or any interruptions, quite a smooth operation and we were well trained I think in that – in that line of work.

Thank you.

[32.11]

So – so could you then talk about your – in more detail about your first posting which is the Cranfield [Met Office outstation]?

Yes, that’s still there today, that’s right, yes.

Yes, perhaps starting then with a description of that particular outstation, would it – is outstation the right term?

That’s right, yes indeed, yes, well I suppose you would say it was a typical outstation, on a small airfield in those days, which I think is still there now, I think it’s Cranfield University or something of that kind. But the Met Office again typically was on the ground floor of the control building, control tower, and the Stevenson Screen would be a little bit outside on a suitable site, an enclosure with grass on the ground. Would have been – would have been a large room, it was a large room with a forecaster sitting on a – not a – on a stool and the actual bench would be sloping as it were, so you’d have a good view of the charts on the flat surface, and the – the – the person plotting the charts of course would be similarly seated, perhaps side by side, one plotting and then passing over the chart to the forecaster on the same bench we called it, that’s right. And in – oh yes, inside, as well as the forecasting procedure, you had to make observations of the pressure and this was from a – a mercury barometer, which would be in the forecast office hanging on the wall, so it would hang – hung vertically, erm, and that would be part of your obser – observation for the daily reports where you had to measure the height of the pressure in a mercury column in the – in the barometer, Kew pattern they were called because a lot of the developments I think were carried out at Kew Observatory. So that was quite a – what shall we say, hmmm, you had to be very careful about how you measure the pressure, you had – I think

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 68 C1379/33 Track 3 there was a special device where you had a screw as it were and you had to bring the actual level that you’re measuring down to the top of the mercury which was a meniscus that – that sort of size [demonstrates], rounded meniscus and you brought your level down and then you could lead – read off the actual pressure on the side of the barometer, 1012.3 millibars [for example], whatever it might be. And you had to be very precise about that because the pressure [reading] was the most important to get it very accurate.

And how was this office staffed, you’ve mentioned a forecaster and an assistant sitting alongside?

Yes, well I think you’d only have one forecaster– at a particular out – small outstation, one forecaster on duty and perhaps two or more assistants, one plotting perhaps and one observing.

And so you were one of those assistants at this outstation?

Yes, that’s right, yes.

How were your duties arranged, were you just plotting, were you observing and plotting?

Well I was very much I think under training then, I think I had senior people there showing me the ropes as it were of how to plot and how to measure the temperatures outside and measuring the pressure inside and what have you, so I think that’s, you know, part of the training as it were. But as I say I didn’t stay there very long, I think the plan was, ‘We’ll send this boy here for a few months to make sure he – he’s happy he’s near his home as it were, but then we’ll post him somewhere further afield,’ which was in London, Ux – Uxbridge and that was quite a change of plan as it were. As I say, Cranfield was near home, I used to cycle backwards and forwards, ten miles each way [laughs] but there we go.

Do you remember your parents’ reaction to this particular career choice and its development at the time?

Well not really, well I think they were interested and pleased that I was doing something which I liked, hmmm, but I don’t really know that – their inner feelings about it, you know, they put on a – a brave front and were quite happy. I mean they were always pleased to see me when I came home, obviously, which I did as often as I could from Uxbridge, coming off night duty usually. We had sort of – I think the roster was two afternoons, two days and two nights and when you finished the two nights then you had perhaps two days off as it were, something like that, not quite sure, but off that night duty I remember walking down from Uxbridge Met station down the road to the tube station, catching a tube to Watford Junction, get on the steam train there and get back to Wolverton and then walk back home. [Laughs] Invariably though one was so tired after a night duty, I made – certain to myself every time, ‘I’m not going to go to sleep’ but invariable I did, usually I woke up in time to get off at Wolverton station but there was one occasion where I overslept and I went on – onto the next station [laughs], to Castlethorpe and had to walk all the way back from there which was quite a distance, anyway there we go.

And how did this training affect the way in which you looked at landscape, looked at place, looked at the sky obviously, out of work?

Well yes, that’s a good question because I was thoroughly involved with meteorology by this time and even at home I couldn’t resist trying to keep up to date with the weather, as I do now on the internet, you know, every day I go into the charts from the Met Office, five day weather charts which I’ve just looked at this morning, but the weather is gradually changing, we’re going into a more un – unsettled period by the weekend, anyway that’s by the way. But what I did then, no television of course but radio, and we had at that time a radio station called AIRMET which was dedicated to weather forecasting, weather obs – observations where you had forecasters and people actually telling you and reading out the weather reports from the various stations, you could take them down by hand, which I did, and you could plot your own weather chart which I used to do at home to keep up to date with the weather then. But sadly that – that was decided that it wasn’t worthwhile. People still hanker after it, even in the Weather magazine which I get – like I say, you know, wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a dedicated radio station, I don’t – I don’t suppose it would ever happen but at the time the excuse was that the – there were too many stations, you know, and they had to dispense with AIRMET which they did eventually, but that was a very interesting service and you had an actual forecaster talking to you, giving you the

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 70 C1379/33 Track 3 information about the weather and then somebody reading out all the reports, so you had to be pretty quick writing it all down but eventually you could and then I had some – I don’t know what charts I had but I had some weather charts at home presumably on which I could plot the information and keep up to date. And I remember doing that in the sort of front room at home at Haversham. And so that’s how, you know, I kept up to date even though I wasn’t actually on duty.

Very interesting. When did AirMet – can you remember roughly when AirMet you think stopped?

Well it was – this is what period, we’re talking about when I was seventeen, ’47, I think 19 – perhaps early 1950s it was disbanded, something of that – of that kind, but I mean don’t take that as read but it didn’t last all that long unfortunately.

Thank you.

[40.15]

So the next outstation is the Uxbridge –

Uxbridge area.

One.

Yes, that’s right.

And you’ve mentioned that this had sort of two phases really, the phase where you were considered a sergeant and the period after that.

Yes [laughs].

So perhaps that might be a – a useful break and we could talk about your work before the move into the airmen’s mess, so in other words your – your sort of work routines in that first part?

Yes, uh-huh, well I mean to be – to be honest the airmen’s mess was a very short period because at that time I was due to be called up and that didn’t last very long, but at least it gave me an idea of what the airmen’s mess was like, more – many more people of course, you had to – we were all – slept together in a sort of huge dormitory, this was [RAF] Uxbridge overlooking the square I think there, I think this is maybe still where they have the RAF band and they used to parade outside on – on a huge courtyard there, but that’s by the way. But it was mainly living at [RAF] Stanmore in the sergeants’ mess there where we had, for want of a better – I think billet was the term they used, we had our own areas, room, where three, four or more of us Met Assistants were in together in this room where we slept, but then for meals we went over to the sergeants’ mess and were catered there, where they had people waiting at table [laughs] which was quite an experience, I don’t know what they thought of these young boys but – where they had to bring meals on for us but anyway that – that’s the sort of situation it was. There were two waiters, very nice area, tables all set out for you and then on the other side – on the other side of that building there was quite a large sort of place where they had armchairs and newspapers and what have you where you could relax and duly, hmmm, take your leisure time. So this was at Stanmore. So that –

Could you describe you – the working environment then, at this stage you were taking a bus to –

That’s right, we called it – I think they had their technical– not the technical name but the RAF called it the Gharry, that was the sort of – well like a school bus as it were, you know, which took us to work in order to be on duty at the time across North – North West London, from Stanmore to Uxbridge, RAF driver and what have you and RAF grey coloured, blue covered sort of bus.

And I don’t know the – the Uxbridge site at all, what – what was there when you were there then?

Well it was in a – like many places during the war it was in the grounds of a large house, Hillingdon House I think it was which had a – you know, big park around it, very pleasant, you went through quite large gates into the area, and also in the grounds you had various

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 72 C1379/33 Track 3 huts which we – we were in huts as it were, Met station, it wasn’t actually brick – brick built building and it was on a slope going down to the sort of valley area, but it was all wooden, but the house itself of course was a stone structure, the original building, the villa or whatever it was, for some particular family I suppose who were taken over by the RAF, or Air Ministry at the time. And it was interesting, bes – besides the Met Office where I worked which was Air Traffic Control Centre, ATCC Uxbridge, there was another Uxbridge [Met Office] which was 11 Group and I found out afterwards, I didn’t realise our – at this but this was an important centre for the Battle of Britain forecasting … 11 Group I think which was responsible for the Fighter Command in this area around London and south England, so – and that was not quite the [whole story] – they had another Met Office there but it was slightly different from ours, you know, but I couldn’t really tell you much about that because I didn’t actually work there but – so there were two separate Met Offices at Uxbridge, 11 Group and ATCC.

And if this was still considered part of your training to some extent, was it this posting or was this your first –

Really fully fledged by that time, should be.

This is your first –

Yes yes.

Posting as a –

Yes.

Okay, could you then talk about the kinds of things that you were learning there that were different from the skills that you had learnt on your train – in your training, in other words what were you learning sort of on the job as a proper but junior met assistant there?

Ah, well besides the actual plotting of charts which was standard which we had learnt in the training school, being an Air Traffic Control Centre you had to collect reports, I think it was what they called, oh … a special room where you went – when you went on duty you

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 73 C1379/33 Track 3 were allocated – the person in charge of the assistants, the chief assistant as it were told you which duty you were going to perform, whether you were going to plot charts or this that and the other, but one particular duty, I think it was the UCO room but don’t take that as read, where you had to collect observations from the, er, aerodromes around London, London air – Heathrow, Bovingdon, Northolt, etc, Gatwick. And I’m not quite sure how they came here but they all came in on the hour as it were and you had to put it all down on a pad of paper and then that information was then sent to another place in the building for the aviation – for the people actually controlling the aircraft, because it was an Air Traffic Control Centre for the London area so they would want up to date information on what the weather was like in that particular area. So that was another special duty as it were at that office which would not be typical I don’t think of a normal Met Office, but it was such an important centre you had to do – carry out that duty, and you were in a special room with a telephone and what have you, cut off from the main forecast room, next door but separate. But I can’t really remember too much about it, I think there was sort of a little place where you could communicate between one another, you know, like a hatch way, as it were, something like that. A bit vague. But one thing I do remember, actually reporting on my first time at Uxbridge to the Met Office and the forecaster on duty looked rather surprised, you know, because they were all engaged on their work and I was not really on the shift by that time so he said, ‘There, you can go out and watch a football match now can’t you?’ sort of thing but [laughs] I didn’t, I think I stayed on but that’s the sort of, you know, cheery attitude there was at that time, Mr Martin his name and he was one of the forecasters there, many forecasters at that station of course. I think there were two or three forecasters on duty at the same time, one would deal with surface observations, one with the upper air and then you’d have the Senior Met Officer who had his own office in this building, SMetO as we used to call them, Senior Met Officer, Mr [John H.] Brazell and then there was an admin office before you – his [SMetO’s] office was sort of the inner sanctum as it were, you had the forecast room and then the administration office and then beyond there the Senior Met Officer’s office, a Mr Stevenson I think it was, he was the one in charge of admin, he would tell us, you know, what our duties were, he was – he was the one who worked out the rosters.

And forecasters, were they former Met Assistants or had they become forecasters through a different route?

I think they would have been university people with degrees.

Could – could you say something then of the – of relations between Met Assistants and forecasters?

Very good, yes, very happy, very friendly. There was one I recall, Mr [Frederick H.] Bushby who later on became quite a high level person in the Met Office itself at the Met Office headquarters and at the time I had … I think … taken the opportunity of taking a civil service examination and he was very – very supportive of that, although at school, you know, I didn’t have great ambitions to – to improve my education but I realised later when I joined the Met Office that in order to get on you had to improve your qualifications, get what – I think it was called Higher School Certificate to get into the next grade, because the Met Assistant was the lowest grade and if you wanted to become a forecaster you had to go into sort of the officer grade as it were and the lowest of that was the Assistant Experimental Officer, AEO and I had dreams of becoming an AEO, you know, but I had to pass an exam and as I say Mr Bushby was very supportive, he sort of, you know, he prompted me or encouraged me to take on that line.

[49.58]

And I think – I think I got through but then of course, this is another story, call up came, National Service and I remained as a Met Assistant during that period, but after coming out – I don’t know, should I go onto the after?

Yes, please yes.

Oh well National Service of course when I was eighteen, called up, but since we were in the Met Office we naturally went into the Air Force, erm … oh that’s a point yeah, I – actually [as] I was studying for my qualifications, I was deferred for a while, although I became eighteen when I was – in May, I don’t think I was called up until September, something like that, owing to a deferment. But that was another shock to the system of course, I don’t know how – if I can put this in order but you had to report to the ‘square- bashing’ [military slang for barrack square drill] unit [laughs] which was at [RAF] Padgate in Lancashire [Cheshire] and you had all these raw recruits turning up in – we went there

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 75 C1379/33 Track 3 by train, collected in a truck, taken to Padgate which is a huge RAF camp, which I suppose had been used in the war, lots and lots of huts, all round, big open squares and I don’t know how they did it but they put us into one of these long huts – was it a Nissen hut? [wooden hut actually]. I’m not quite sure, it may have been, anyway long rows of beds on either side and a – a stove in the middle, and there we were, all mixed up together from all different parts of the country. But I don’t – I don’t know how much detail you want on that [laughs].

Yes, please if you could – yeah, I mean –

I mean it was quite a shock to the system that was, as you can imagine can’t you? Being all herded together, higgledy-piggledy and then at the end of the room there was a little office which was [for] the man in charge, corporal … and well, you know, [you] feared him like anything really because your life depended on whether you could do what he said. The drill – and you had a drill sergeant [and a square] where you had to go out on parade and learn all the various elements of drill, marching, had rifles, being able to put it on shoulder, round, down on the ground [shoulder arms drill], etc, [including assault course, bayonet training and firing range] hmmm … anyway that took six weeks but by the end of it you had a passing out parade and you had all the officers of the unit of that sort of standing or sitting in the area and that was how you were sort of passed out, literally [laughs].

When you say that it was a shock when you were brought together in that way and you also said that of the non-sergeants’ mess at the Uxbridge place.

Yes.

Could you say … what was particular – what was new to you, what sorts of things were you seeing there, what sort of experiences were shocking?

Well I suppose it was, you know, being put together with a group of people you didn’t really know anything about and having to sort of mix together as it were and making the best of the job, which we did, I mean because we were all together, not against but, you know, having to make quite sure that we didn’t get into trouble with the NCOs, the Non- Commissioned Officers, hmmm, and you had to make your bed in a certain way with the –

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 76 C1379/33 Track 3 all the blankets and sheets folded in particular patterns so it made a nice sort of rectangular pattern at the end of the bed … you had to have your boots as shiny as possible, and that was a routine, I don’t know how we did it but I think we did something with the heating from the stove where you sort of, you know, these army boots you had with very sort of big toecaps and they had to be highly polished, oh I can’t remember the actual process but there was some business with heat that you could make it even brighter and blacker than it was when it was – when it was first issued to you, so we all sort of, you know, mucked together on – on that sort of process. Hmmm … oh then of course in the camp – it wasn’t all ‘square bashing’, you had lighter moments. The canteen, that was a bit of an eye- opener, I mean the food was dreadful really to me but that was it [laughs], but there was a NAAFI where – now was it there? I’m not quite sure … hmmm, no – no that was another place [Larkhill], quite – not quite sure what happened at Padgate, anyway we survived but it was … quite different from home food shall we say, put it like that [laughs]. Oh then the lighter moments as I say, there was a library there which I attended went and enjoyed, and the education officers, you know, they were more – more gentle shall we say than the people who were training us how to march and drill, so that was a pleasant … hmmm … interval. Had a nice library, I remember reading books there and then there was – oh then they had a record club, that’s right, so they obviously knew that we could – should be treated a little more gently shall we say in our … other moments and I went to hear records being played by – I don’t know who they were, some of the education officers I suppose, and I think that’s when I first heard Mozart for example, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was played which I enjoy very much. So that was a good introduction to classical music, which I had before of course but perhaps not on records. Hmmm … and they had church services I believe, although I don’t remember too much about that. But you had all these other sides you see besides the actual training to make you into an airman [laughs]. Hmmm, our grade was Aircraftman 2 nd Class AC2 which is the very lowest rank of an airman, I don’t know if you know the ranks, you start off as AC2, AC1, Aircraftman Grade one [1st Class] and then Leading Aircraftmen, corporal, sergeant, etc. Oh that’s a good point, because we were trained meteorologists and being trained meteorologists meant that we had a trade straightaway in the Air Force so we were promoted to Leading Aircraftmen straightaway and that didn’t go down very well with the rest of the troop because they were all AC2s you see, being paid at that particular rank and we had a little bit extra because we were then Leading Aircraftmen. So anyway, that was our privilege.

Do you remember your – apart from the – as you say the fear of the – you know, the chap in the end of the room and –

Yes.

And the enjoyment of – of other aspects, do you remember your feelings at that time?

… Well it was – it – not a prison, you know, you weren’t allowed out during the six weeks training, you can not – that’s not the right term but confined to barracks as it were, but I think at the end of the course and we I think went to in – into Warrington I think is the town nearby, I think we went on a bus and we went to a – a show I believe, you know, as a light relief, but that was right at the end of the course, but during the actual course itself it was very intensified and so the training was, you know, six weeks which really isn’t very long to get you being able to march properly and salute and what have you, so that’s how it happened. But yes, I do remember – I don’t know how – when this was, towards the end presumably, was – we were allowed out of the camp and I remember walking around Warrington, finding a bookshop and browsing, that was a great pleasure, you know, I actually felt as though I was back in civilian life again then because you – I felt very much, you know, being in uniform this wasn’t really my forte but I found this bookshop and I think I’ve still got books upstairs, one by Robert Louis Stevenson [Virginibus Puerisque] which I bought there [laughs]. So that made a little bit of a change [laughs].

[58.39]

And then what happened after this six weeks training, what’s the next stage?

Yes, good point, what did happen? Well then you were posted to – back to a Met station again and I was posted to, hmmm … oh what’s the name of the place, 21 Group it was – oh dear … oh something Hall … Mor – Morton Hall or something like that but I’ll have to check up on that [Morton Hall is correct].

Yes, it’s easily done, yeah.

And again it was a nice house which had been requisitioned by the RAF presumably, lovely grounds, and then we had our, hmmm, garris – Nissen huts they were within the grounds of this big house and it was inside the house where the actual forecasting was carried out, in a nice big room so the [laughs] RAF were very lucky to have this very pleasant country house for their duties. That was near Lincoln and I think on one – there was a bus service and I think on one occasion – oh you went into Lincoln, you know, for any outings as it were, I didn’t actually get to the cathedral but perhaps to the cinema or something like that. Hmmm, but there again I was, you know – was anxious to get home if I could, Mum – Mum and Dad were then of course living at Haversham in North Buckinghamshire which wasn’t an impossible distance to get to so at the weekend I – I think it was – I don’t think we worked over the weekend, I used to go home. I’ve often wondered how I did it [laughs], it’s strange isn’t it, memory is so very good on some instances but not so good on others. But anyway I got home, presumably on Friday night, but you had to get back to camp Sunday night, I think I remember going back more readily, I took up – there was a bus from Haversham which went to Wellingborough I believe and then I could catch a train from Wellingborough to a station near where I wanted to get to [Newark] and a bus from there to the camp, but for the life in me I don’t know how I ever did it, to get there back in time, but that did happen. I’ve looked on the map recently and [laughs] I’m amazed by the – the way that one was able to connect from one place to another on a Sunday afternoon [laughs]. But you had to report back to the camp and you had to be on duty the following morning presumably, so that’s the sort of thing I did, but again I wasn’t there very long, Morton Hall 21 Group which was a training command with lots of outstations nearby for training pilots and navigators I believe, such as RAF Manby, I’m not sure if it’s still there or not, but that was one of them nearby. Anyway that didn’t last all that long, I mean eighteen months was my period in – in the National Service, I mean that soon goes by nowadays so I’m surprised how much I put into it really. Cranfield, Morton Hall, and then I was posted to Larkhill on Salisbury Plain, and that lasted for the rest of my time as a National Serviceman. And that was quite a different station, that was a radiosonde station … which I reported to, hmmm, not quite sure what month it was but I got there by bus, by train presumably to Salisbury and then Salisbury by bus to Larkhill, which I don’t know, there’s a big army camp there because of Salisbury Plain, to do with exercises there, still today I think don’t they, where they train people going out to Afghanistan. Hmmm … again two Met offices, one was the radiosonde station, which I went to, which was involved in sending out, not just pilot balloons but huge

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 79 C1379/33 Track 3 balloons into the upper atmosphere which carried a radiosonde transmitter which transmits the pressure, temperature, humidity on the way up, and one of our jobs was to make a rig as it were, you had to blow the balloon up in a balloon shed, like a small hanger, and then at the end of the balloon there was a parachute and then on the end of that a radiosonde and then it had to be launched outside very carefully depending on the strength of the wind, and that would float up into the atmosphere transmitting pressure temperature and humidity. And in the actual office you had a radio receiver, the actual radiosonde would be transmitting this information in terms of little bleeps, beep beep beep, depending on the frequency you could turn the frequency into a value of temperature, pressure or humidity and you plotted it on – on graph paper. And you actually watched the screen, a cathode ray screen, hmmm, you fed in a signal from another piece of – I’m not really able to tell you the technical side of it, but the actual … pattern had to be a smooth pattern and then you knew you were getting the frequency of that signal and you put that down on the piece of paper. Something like that anyway, very rough and ready, that – that description I’m afraid. But anyway then the balloon would go up as – up to the upper part of the troposphere, eventually it would burst and then the parachute would take over and take it down to ground level again. And you plotted the wind, there was a special radar van outside the main office which had these huge … dishes [parabolic antennae] as it were and they could send out a – a signal, radio signal, oh that’s another thing, on the actual balloon [rig] there was the balloon, the parachute, the radiosonde and a big wire net thing [nylon- mesh radar target] which was able to reflect the radio waves back again to the person in this radar cabin. And that was another of our jobs, you had to watch radar tubes again and – and you were able to tell [the range] by the distance [time] it [radio signal] took to go backwards and forwards and the angle of it, because they were so [designed] – it was like a – a radio wave as it were with these two big [dishes] … like they have on television [transmitters] today, you know.

Hmmm, dishes?

Dishes, that’s right, yes, and they were able to turn those round to follow the balloon and get the direction in that way so you could get the direction and the wind speed from the balloon ascent. And this of course was much higher and longer distance than these little balloons that we sent up from the ordinary Met station and there were these radiosonde stations scattered around the British Isles, one at Larkhill, another one here [in Norfolk], at

Downham Market, another one in Scotland, another one in Ireland, etc, and so this is the upper air information which was then transmitted back to the forecasters in a different form to the surface observations. So that was quite interesting because we had to prepare all the equipment, radiosondes had to be tested, etc, all the radar tar – oh radar targets, that’s what they were called, you had to unwrap them, unpack them and assemble them and what have you, you know, with the parachutes, blow the balloon up and then actually launch it, but that was usually done by the senior Met person in charge, you had a group of Met Assistants like myself and you had a senior man who was in charge of the actual launching of the balloon, because that was quite a tricky operation … hmmm, is that too much detail? [laughs]

No, not – not at all, it’s perfect. And having written down the – the numbers that you’d got from the, erm, cathode ray tube as the thing was going up, you managed to convert the – the sound into a value and it went down –

Yes, the actual frequency, yes.

How did you – sort of how and where did you write those things down and having written them down what did you do with them?

I think – again I – I’ll have to press my memory a bit harder, I think there were two people on duty at the equipment, erm, one was watching the cathode ray tube and he had to get a – a stationery pattern for each signal and he did that by having a big arm on another piece of equipment [local oscillator] which had all the numbers, frequency numbers and he would turn the arm around until the cathode ray tube [signal] was a – a circular pattern, a steady pattern, and he knew then that that signal, that was the frequency of that particular note and then he would pass that onto the person by his side who then plotted on a piece of graph paper, long sheets they were with the frequencies down one side and the time going along here and you’d actually put a dot, and you’d have three sets of dots, one for the pressure, certain frequencies which would be more or less the same, wouldn’t change a great deal and the temperature also and the humidity, and you had to be quite sure you didn’t get them mixed up so then eventually you’d have a continuous line of pressure, temperature and humidity on these long strips of about that size I think they were graph paper.

Sort of half – half – the width of a half a piece of A4, yeah?

That’s right, something like that and then you could put them all together and get a continuous record of the ascent. So that was quite interesting. Yes, there must – there would have been two people doing that. And then you had somebody on a – a large table, much bigger than perhaps where the pianos are [indicating those in recording room], who got the signals from the radar van and he would then – the station position would be in a circle – in the centre rather and he would plot the dots which of course one were the speed and the direction of the balloon and you have a continuous line of the trace of the balloon and from that you could tell the speed and direction of the wind, if they – if there were large distances between each dot as it were, every minute, then you could, you know, infer that was a strong wind blowing from [for example] a south-westerly direction and then all that had to be turned into again a code, the upper air code, different from the surface oscillations, and that would perhaps last an hour or so, get it all coded up and then you’d have to be sent again, like the – the surface observations through Dunstable down, the ascent for Lark – Larkhill, used to make them … twice a day I think it was, there was the midnight one and the twelve o’clock one I believe, something like that but I’m not quite sure. I think in earlier times there were four a day but I – there may be only two at that time, but I’d have to check up on that [correct]. And so there again they would be send by code to Dunstable and then the forecast – oh then the Met Assistant at Dunstable would be able to plot those results on a special T-Phi gram as we called it which would show the temperature and humidity with height, and you’d have a trace on your graph and from that the forecaster could tell what type of atmosphere there was over Larkhill at that time, whether it was unstable or stable and whether there was an inversion or not. You could forecast what the cloud might be from that trace and so you’d have these all over the country and that would give them an idea of what the atmosphere was doing aloft.

T- did you say T-5?

T-Phi, those are the axes, temperature against phi which is entropy I believe.

And grams, T-Phi gram.

T-Phi gram chart, that’s what we called it, T-Phi, P -h-i.

Ah, yes I see.

Those are the axes so it wasn’t – not horizontal and vertical, it’s something like that [demonstrates].

More acute, yeah.

Yes, that’s right.

Okay.

And they would be plotted on these special upper air charts and the forecaster would then have a trace of the temperature and the humidity with height over Larkhill.

Yes.

Going up to 20, 30,000 feet, depending how high the balloon went, hopefully about 300 millibars or more.

And what tended to be – within all of that process, which you’ve described extremely well of the balloon and the – the data coming back from it and then the plotting of that data.

Yes.

What tended to be your particular role within all of that?

Well you took it in turns I think, that was all, you know, depending on the person in charge, he would allocate like in the ordinary Met Office, you do this and you do that and so forth, but it would be overall you’d have to know exactly what to do in all those various forms.

What were the differences between … I don’t know, being a Met Assistant in the ordinary Met Office, as you just put it, and in this kind of National Service Met Office experience, what were the differences between those two roles?

What between the surface and the radiosonde station?

Oh no, between being a Met Assistant in the Met Office and being a Met Assistant as part of National Service, was there any difference in –

No, no. Once you came out of Padgate for any, erm, ‘square-bashing’ you could forget all that and I –

Oh okay.

You then became back to your civilian role, but in uniform of course, we were as I say posted to Larkhill which is a big army base, but we – just a few contingent of RAF personnel like myself and we had our own little hut as it were. I don’t think the army knew quite what to make of us [laughs] but we weren’t involved in their training or their commitments but we shared their facilities, shared one of their huts, shared their mess, which was the airmen’s [army] mess, I remember going up there, I remember the officer coming down, ‘Have you any complaints?’ you know [both laugh], nobody of course replied otherwise they’d get into trouble [laughs]. Hmmm … oh this is the time when – again the food wasn’t all that hot I’m afraid and what we used to go, do in the evening was go to the NAAFI, you know, the NAAFI.

I don’t know, what –

Well it was the sort of canteen, run by the NAAFI, I’m not quite sure the abbreviation, N- A-A – N-A-A-F-I, but I could find that out for you [Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes], but these – these were all – at all the various stations you see and they were manned by civilians and in the evening you would get a … you know, a good meal, what we thought was a good meal of chips and tomatoes, eggs and bacon and what have you, you know, and that was really good and we used to enjoy our – ourselves going to the NAAFI and meeting our friends there, great bonhomie. So that made up, you know, for the actual official food [laughs]. They might have been working arm in arm together I suppose really [laughs], making sure that we spent our money on – on the NAAFI but that – I don’t know, that’s not probably true, anyway it was very pleasant and that was another side of it. And we met

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 84 C1379/33 Track 3 some of the army people there as well, we could have friendly contact with them. But it was a – a huge army base and it probably still is I expect, covering Salisbury Plain and they – they fire – they fire – have a firing range there don’t they and that was – oh that was another thing, the – there were two Met Offices again, one where I was, the radiosonde station which was purely for the Air Ministry, but the other station was for the army and they had – they sent up their own balloons, not the radiosonde balloons but the balloons I described earlier, to find out the upper winds for the, hmmm, guns, because the actual firing would depend on the upper winds, their targets and what have you. But we were quite near to one another, to the offices and got on quite well, I remember playing cricket on a little bit of the grass there with the boys from the … army cam – people who were serving in for the army. And the actual office was there – in their building as well and the Senior Met Officer had his office there, again in that section, Mr Britton [Charles E. Britton*] who I didn’t realise at the time but he’s quite a big figure in – in the – in the Met Office for his research into history of meteorology [laughs], which I found out later when I started doing research so it’s interesting really to – to have seen these figures, you know, in the flesh. He was very remote I think, one didn’t actually see him very much. [* Author of A Meteorological Chronology to AD 1450 , HMSO, London, 1937]

[01.15.29]

Do you remember any particular Met Assistant friends or – from this period, particular colleagues that –

Well yes … yes, yeah there was one I think, hmmm, can’t remember his Christian name, his name was Wilberforce, we used to call him ‘Willie’ I think it was, but he had a bicycle on the camp at Larkhill and I remember making contact in – later at Watford and we got together there and he came back on a motorbike then so he had gone up one grade but – and also when I was at Stanmore, when I was at Watford, I think I told you I worked at the Met Office Training School as an instructor and he came – that’s probably how I met him, he came to the Met Office Training School for a course so we had, you know, contact there again, talked about our experiences in the RAF, so he was sort of one friend or colleague anyway. Hmmm … yes, I – I think I met another person who was in the same hut as me at Salisbury – Larkhill rather, again on the Training School so it’s amazing how a small group it was, you know, of Met people, you often came across people who you met on other

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 85 C1379/33 Track 3 stations quite often, being at the Training School of course a lot of people went through and I have that means of contacting them. I don’t know if you want any more information about this Met Office Training School, I mean I started off as a [Met Assistant] – a train – like a – like when I first joined the Met Office [in 1947], [in early 1950s] I became an instructor to train Met Assistant originally.

Yes, well we’ve got now to the end of the – the Larkhill which – which takes you to the end of military service, to the National Service?

Yes, that’s right, I was demobbed from Larkhill, we had to go to another station to get all our equipment checked and ticked off, etc, at [RAF] Boscombe Down it was, I don’t know if you’ve probably heard of it.

Yes, I have heard of it.

Big RAF station I think, so I mean Larkhill was army so we couldn’t get demobbed there so we had to go to Boscombe Down to be officially demobbed [laughs].

[Promoted to RAF Corporal prior to being demobbed.]

[01.17.46]

And – and then what – where was next then in your – in terms of you then returned to – at – to the Met Office?

Well then I was then able to take up my higher grade as a – an Assistant Experimental Officer [AEO] which I couldn’t do in the – in the RAF, I still remained as a Met Assistant, so then I was posted as an Experimental Officer to … Dunstable.

So –

To – which was the Central Forecast Office at that time, it’s now Exeter but it was at Dunstable in those days on – near the Dunstable Downs, well I got there by bus I think, again from home, not far from North Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and I had to report to

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 86 C1379/33 Track 3 the, hmmm, come on … oh dear … [laughs] … would you believe it, I can’t remember the name, but anyway it was the thunderstorm location unit [SFERIC Unit] … perhaps it’ll come to me in a moment, again a special unit like the radiosonde station, that was in a small hut outside the main office at Dunstable, the Central Forecasting Office, where I remember going into this hut and seeing a lady – she was a lady Met Assistant, again on one of these benches like I’ve described before, with a map in front of her. But instead of plotting she had, hmmm, drawing pins for want of a better word on a long thread as it were, metal thread, different colours and each of them corresponded to one of these cathode ray tube stations [SFERIC stations], for want of a better word, and these observations were done I think every hour, again using radio or cathode ray tubes and they were able to detect thunderstorms by the act- [of lightning] – had another cathode ray tube and you had – a thunderstorm was picked – was picked up by [two frame] aerials in another – another hut next door, at right angles [N-S and E-W directions] and that [signal] was fed into the cathode ray tube and the thunderstorm signals, if this is the cathode ray tube centre there [indication], would come out as flashes and you had degrees all the way around, nought to 360 degrees, and Dunstable was the controlling station and when you saw a large, particularly large line corresponding to a lightning flash, you say, ‘Now’, and the other stations, there was one station in Scotland, Leuchars in Fife, another one in Ireland, Northern Ireland [Irvinestown], another one in Cornwall [St Eval], and our station at Dunstable, I think those were the four and they would all be watching this tube at the same time and of course the lightning flash direction would be different. If it was over the Midlands for example you’d have a different direction from the one in Scotland, and the one in Ireland and the one in South-West England and then they would read all these numbers, degrees out and then transmit this to another person who was on the telephone taking down this information and then this would pass on, in this particular case the lady was plotting, and she would plot this information with these pieces of metal on the tube [threads] and where they intersected that would be where the thunderstorm was located, and they did this for about ten minutes I suppose and got all the principle forecast – thunderstorm locations on that particular – that particular time and that was coded and put down on paper and then you’d have to take it across to the Central Forecasting Office in – at Dunstable itself, into the forecast room and that would be useful information for the forecaster … so I was there for a while getting up the – getting experience in that line of work which was quite different of course from anything I had done before and then I was posted to – to Leuchars, the actual [SFERIC] station in Scotland.

So the dates of the Dunstable posting, just so we’ve got those, when did you join – when did you come out of the army RAF and go to –

Well when I was demobbed, let me think, September – September, would be about March [1950] wouldn’t it, eighteen months, [from] September [1948], November – would be March, so I joined up in September 1948 … end of ’48, ’49 1949 that complete year and then I was demobbed in ’50 … spring I suppose, spring ’50, aged twenty, coming up to twenty – my – my birthday’s birthday is in May. So yes, would be sort of nineteen, approaching twenty.

And you were there until – what sort of dates were you at – at the Dunstable [Met Office]?

At Dunstable not very long again, just to get the idea of the working – although I wish I could remember the actual name of the – what they called it [laughs], it’s the first time I’ve forgotten it really [SFERIC Unit]. But having picked up how that station worked and the operation they posted me to Leuchars and – in charge of the station there as I was now an Assistant Experimental Officer … hmmm, but again, I mean this is typical of the Met Office, you – you are posted around right left and centre and that didn’t last very long either [laughs]. So after, hmmm, I think I was there until – through the spring now of 1950 until I suppose summer, autumn 1950. I was then posted to Harrow … hmmm, to the Instruments Branch [MO 16] there looking after the – oh we were responsible for preparing the specifications of – I didn’t actually do it but there were senior people who were developing instruments and they – they had to then write out a specification, I think my job was to actually put it into the normal form, you know, that was acceptable to be sent out to the people who were going to make the instruments, so that was quite interesting. MO16 that was, all the different branches of the Met Office by the way – I don’t think I mentioned this, were numbered, so the Instrument – Instrument Development Branch, that’s what it was called, MO16 … so I was there for a while. I don’t know if I’m right but I think they liked people to be [older] – I mean I’m still not forecasting, although I’m in their forecasting grade, I’m still doing these other jobs as it were, tasks, duties, but when I reached the age of twenty-three then I went on a forecasting course at Stanmore [laughs] Training School. And that made me very happy to think I was actually now going to become a forecaster, that was my ambition so again another course, this lasted longer than

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 88 C1379/33 Track 3 the Met Office – the original forecast course – the Met Assistant course at Air Ministry in London, and that was most interesting. Again we had instructors for practical and an instructor for the theoretical side of meteorology, but this time of course aimed at making you understand how the atmosphere was working in more detail in order that you could actually forecast the weather, hopefully [laughs]. So …

[End of Track 3]

Track 4

I wondered today whether you could start by telling me about – well it’s – it overlaps with your next appointment at Stanmore but it’s the 1951 to ’53 – it’s a part-time course I think which was at the Harrow Technical College involving geography and maths, I wondered whether you could tell me your memory of that particular course which led up to I think your degree proper?

Yes, it’s rather vague, as I have said I was posted to the Met Office Instruments Branch [MO 16] at Harrow and it became obvious that in order to improve my qualifications I would have to pass the Intermediate BSc examination before taking a degree and there was a – a technical college at Harrow which I went to … I’m not sure what basis but it was regular lessons or instructions in Harrow – I’m not quite sure of the actual address but it was sort of a typical technical college where people went part-time to … have instruction on these examinations, I remember simply a large room with lots of people … and listening to the instructor but I’m afraid the actual detail is – is passed at the moment. That’s all really I can say about that particular....

Yeah.

It didn’t make any firm impression on me at the time but it was something I – you know, I had to do.

Yes, I see, so a stepping stone.

To qualify.

Yes.

Hmmm hmmm.

[1951-1953: Harrow Technical College passed Intermediate B.Sc. examination in Geography, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics (Met Office approved subjects for part- time study).]

[01.56]

And could you take us then to Stanmore which then was the Met Office Training School and you went there in 1953 for the Initial Forecasting Course, could you start by describing the – the site?

Yes, it was near Canon’s Corner which was on a trolley bus route from Edgware, and there was a roundabout there where the trolley buses used to turn around and go back to London. It was a very pleasant site on not a green field site, I think the actual buildings probably had been put up during the war, typical sort of one storey huts for want of a better word, quite a large site. The Met Office Training School was not the only establishment, there were other civil service people working there on various administrative duties I believe … and you walked along from Stanmore Broadway, I think the name of the road was Honeypot – Honeypot Lane, past a tube station, Stanmore tube station which was a terminus in those days, a few hundreds yards I suppose to Canon’s Corner and this is where the Met Office Training School was set up in one of these small buildings, just one storey. And you went in, there was a long corridor and on one side you had the offices of the instructors and the admin, on the other side you have a – a series of classrooms, and this was quite a long corridor and at the end of the corridor there was a place where they could show films for instruction … that’s about it really.

Thank you. And what then do you remember of the content of the course, of the – this was your first training course specifically in forecasting.

Yes.

And I wondered whether you could give a sense of the content of the – of the teaching, I mean what did they do in order to teach you to be a forecaster there?

Well then again I would have to refer to the – the – the notebooks, we had two elements to the practical side and the theoretical side, we had an instructor for each, Mr Hinkel was the person who taught us the practical side of forecasting and Mr McCaffrey - McCaffery the theoretical side, and we had lectures during the course of the day, in the morning and

Would you like to just flick through them while you recall it –

Yes.

I think that might be quite good. And for the recording these are notebooks which you’ve kept from not only that course but even right back to your earlier courses, the 1947 ones discussed in earlier recordings, and these are small exercise books on the front of which in capitals we’ve got, ‘Royal Air Force,’ on the top right some numbers, ‘Naval number S400, RAF form 619,’ sort of administrative codes I would have thought for this particular notebook. Top left corner, ‘April 1953,’ in your writing, April 1953 that was, and then underneath the capitalised Royal Air Force, ‘Notebook for use in schools and in general education scheme classes,’ and you’ve recorded in your own writing, ‘Mr Hinkel’s lectures,’ so these are – this is Mr Hinkel who taught the practical side –

That’s right. Yes.

And yes, perhaps you’d like to – as a way of refreshing your memory about the content of the course, flick through and point out any notable – anything –

Well these are the notes that I made from his lectures, and we start off with a talk on air masses and the features of air masses, the source regions, the various types of air masses, the changes which undergo as they travel towards the British Isles, tropical maritime, tropical continental, polar maritime, etc, the various terms used to describe the different types of air masses that affect the British Isles and their properties. And then there’s a series of talks on fronts which occur when two air masses come together, you have the warm front and the cold front, quite detailed drawings here of the typical – typical characteristics of the warm front, the types of cloud and the rain and the actual slope and the wind and the temperature and pressure changes, as also with the cold front. And then going on, diagrams showing the interaction between the warm and cold air masses, the way in which these form a depression, a frontal depression with warm and cold fronts and how they develop and move and how the warm front and the cold front come together to form

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 92 C1379/33 Track 4 an occluded front, again diagrams showing the occlusion process, showing how the depressions move and their fronts. And then we have talks on aircraft icing, the different types of icing that – and can affect aircraft, how it occurs, where it occurs in clouds, and again further talks about different types of icing, where it can be located. And then we have a talk on the Form of Forecast, how it should be set out, the route, the date, the winds, etc, and the general weather. And then further notes on snow and ice and radiation and so forth, and various laws which one should know about how these elements occur. I’m just going through quite quickly showing how the various factors affect the weather, such as radiational cooling at night-time, forming fog or dew. Then we have a series of talks on the T-Phi gram which is a very important item in forecasting where the result of upper air ascents are plotted and you can then determine whether the air masses are stable or unstable. And then forecasting winds and fog and so forth. And that seems to be getting to the end of this particular notebook, radiation fog again and the conditions for advection fog, another type of fog which can occur and that is more or less the end of that particular notebook, and then some practical notes at the end about forecasting.

And then –

So that was one notebook.

Lovely, and then the second book is the –

This is now –

The second theory book is it? Oh sorry, no that was the –

That was the practical.

That was the practical, yes.

That’s right, and now we come onto the theory.

Right, this is taught by Mr McCaffery [William D.S. McCaffery].

That’s right, his lectures, I have two notebooks here, one –Theory 1 and Theory 2, and these are headed, ‘May 1953,’ it’s a long time since I looked at these so I [both laugh] – I don’t know if I shall still understand what was being taught here, it’s quite complicated about the geostrophic wind, how it affects the wind flow for one place to another. And the gradient wind is another theoretical wind which one had to have knowledge of, and equations of motion, gradient wind, ageostrophic motion, how the winds always tend to change character according to their movement, hmmm, mathematics of ageostrophic force and motion, as you can see it’s quite complex. Curvature effect and the isallobaric affect, changes to pressure. Going into an anticyclone, the anticyclone, how the wind – how the air rather ascends in a cyclone, hence cloud and rain and how it descends in an anticyclone, dispersal of cloud and rain. Thermodynamics, the composition of dry air, the various gases, seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty-one percent oxygen etc, and how water vapour is one of the most important factors as far as meteorology is concerned, the three phases of water, solid, liquid and vapour, which determine the types of weather we have. The notes on units being used at the time, such as millibars for pressure, the standard pressure, 1,000 millibars, the gas laws, Charles’ law, Boyle’s Law, this all brought back memories of school physics actually at the time. Hmmm … quite complex equations being set out here. Molecular weight, again very much physics at school type of instruction. First law of thermodynamics … and so forth. And here we have a – a picture, an actual T- Phi gram.

Yeah, tucked inside here is a – is a folded up – well it’s – it looks like printed graph paper that people will be familiar with except that it’s much more complicated, it’s got lines running across and diagonally across it in various ways, different kinds of line hatching and strength and it’s called – at the top right it says, ‘Air Ministry Meteorological Office TEPHIGRAM ’ could you explain what we’re looking at here?

Yes, what we called a T-Phi gram.

Ah sorry, not Tphigram, T-Phi gram.

That’s right, and these are the axis, the temperature against Phi which is temperature against entropy, so these are not horizontal, vertical axis so you have – these are the lines of pressure and these are the lines of entropy, it’s – I really can’t explain the origin of why

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 94 C1379/33 Track 4 these diagrams are so important but they are – they were the ones that used – probably still are used for plotting the results of – the results from the radiosonde stations where you plot the temperature against the pressure, so the lines here in fact give you the results of a – an ascent through the atmosphere with a radiosonde balloon. So at 1,000 milibars you’ve got the temperature, these are the temperature lines here, and these are the pressure lines [indicates on diagram] so it’s essentially a graph with temperature against height where the pressure is at the height and the temperature is the changes – changes as the balloon goes [ascends] in the atmosphere and from these lines you can tell – you can determine the state of the atmosphere, whether it’s an unstable or stable air, if it’s stable then you only have stratiform clouds, if it’s unstable you have convection clouds and cumulonimbus and thunderstorms, etc.

Would you remember what this one [actual T-Phi gram] indicates in terms of stability or instability?

Well it looks as though it’s unstable in the lower air and then becomes more stable with height so you would expect cloud formation perhaps in the lower part of the atmosphere up to a certain height, so this diagram would – you would be able to determine the base of the cumulus and the height, how far it would extend into the atmosphere. If it was unstable to a great height then you would expect the cumulonimbus to build and form showers and thunderstorms, whereas if the lines show stability you would only expect stratiform cloud and, hmmm, a different type of precipitation.

And how far in advance in time does that give you predictive power? You were talking about what you might expect, does that mean what you might expect for the rest of that day or the next two days or …?

Well you’d have to make a judgement because these are actual ascents, which were made at that time, on that day. And then you would have to look at your synoptic weather charts to determine whether you thought those conditions would prevail or not, and if they didn’t then you would have to have another set of T-Phi grams which were made later in the day to determine how the weather might change. So it’d depend on the synoptic situation.

I see, yeah …

[Flicking through papers]. And then turning on in the book, again about entropy and about adiabatic processes, which is a very important process in the atmosphere where you have the idea of air rising and it’s like a – a, hmmm … it’s conserved as it were, the – there’s no change of temperature [exchange of heat], it is in theory between the [rising] air itself and the surrounding air, so you can imagine it’s like a parcel of air rising in the atmosphere and it expands and cools and eventually it cools down to its dew point, you have cloud forming, that’s the sort of adiabatic process where there’s no exchange of heat between the actual air rising and the surroundings. And I think these are all notes concerning that process …

We’ve got a mixture here of writing, words and equations in pen and then drawings in pencil, occasionally a coloured crayon, was this a – was this a kind of style that was in – that was set – or was insisted upon if you like by the instructors or was this something hat that you devised, this is your own style in terms of pen for writing, pencil for drawing and a bit of crayon?

I don’t think so, I think it might have been the general policy of the Training School, that was, you know, the way that things should be set out in your notebooks on … and that’s the first theory book and then theory two, again with Mr McCaffery, quite a comprehensive set of notes, again I haven’t turned these pages for years. Oh here we have the stability and instability on the T-Phi gram and he’s showing exactly if it’s un – unstable atmosphere, if you have a ball on a bowl as it were, if you – if you just touch it it will roll down, it won’t go back to where it was, so that’s instability, whereas if you have a stable atmosphere that the ball is at the bottom of the bowl and each time you push it it’ll go back so that’s a stable – that was the analogy as it were of the atmosphere. So these factors are very important as to whether the air is unstable or stable and it varies according to whether the air is dry or wet. Variation of pressure with ascents, so these are still notes about the upper air, adiabatic processes, barometric – oh I can’t read that, altimetry.

Yes, I think you’re right.

Hmmm … I’m sorry, I can’t really explain that at the moment [laughs], force of gravity and geopotential so – I’d have to look up my theory notes again I think to give you more detail about this. Variations, heights on the T-Phi gram, another diagram, oh further T-Phi

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 96 C1379/33 Track 4 grams here by the look of it, yes, T-Phi gram of aerological observations. So this is obviously a very important factor in the forecasting, geostrophic wind, how the wind varies according to its movement. Pattern of thickness lines, this is [a] theoretical con –idea in forecasting, where the thickness is essentially the difference in height between 1,000-500 millibar level and if the air is cold you have a small thickness, if the air is warm you have a large thickness and then you plot these lines of equal thickness on charts, and the – these patterns are very important because when you have a – a feature like this [reference to figure in Theory 2 notebook] and a cold pool, as it’s called here, you can have an interesting set of weather conditions. And here we have thermal steering [again reference to Theory 2 notebook] because it has – it was shown that the thickness lines on the charts determine the speed and direction of depressions and here – here you can see a warm and cold front of a depression and the thermal steering, it actually controls the movement of depressions, so if you have these thickness lines on your charts they were very useful. This was all brought into the training and forecasting by one of the principal advocates at the time, Professor Sutcliffe, Robert [Reginald C.] Sutcliffe [Director of Research in the Met Office] and his papers on this subject were very important. And here you can see the, how– the thickness lines associate – associated with various features of the atmosphere, yes, patterns of thickness lines, so you can see further pages illustrating how important these were in the forecasting. You have different patterns according to the actual weather situation, here we have a – a low and here we have an anticyclone. And the changes in the thickness pattern of course would be important for forecasting days ahead, and that seems to be the end of that notebook.

Thank you.

[20.41]

What could you tell us about the – I suppose the different backgrounds and – and the status of Mr Hinkel and Mr McCaffery respectively, so Mr Hinkel did the practical side, what might his have – background been, in other words his route to where he was?

I really don’t know, he would have – he would have been an Experimental Officer in that particular grade, in other words the forecaster …

Likely to have been a graduate?

He – I’m not sure about that, I mean to be a Scientific Officer I think you would have to have a degree from a university, but not necessarily as an Experimental Officer, I think you would be able to work your way through the office as I was intending to do in getting past the exam – examination to the Assistant Experimental Officer, that was the first step as it were on this grade of Experimental Officers, and then you – if you proceeded with that you became a Senior Experimental Officer, a Chief Experimental Officer and so forth, so these – this was the forecasting grade for people who didn’t – who probably didn’t have a university degree. But then the Scientific Officers came straight I think from university into the Met Office with their qualifications and they stepped into the Scientific Officer grade, so you had these three grades, the Meteorological Assistants which I started off as, experimental – Experimental Officer and then the Scientific Officer grade, and I think the Scientific Officer grade would have been the top grade as it were and they eventually perhaps would be in charge of a – a station or a group of stations, and eventually perhaps even the Met Office as a whole.

And Mr McCaffery, what would – would he have been a scientific officer?

He was a Scientific Officer but I – I should imagine he would have been a Scientific Officer, you know, in a higher grade, not – not straight as a Scientific Officer from university, he was well experienced, I’m sure they would have been in the war forecasting at stations at that time. But I can’t really tell you any more about their background I’m afraid, no.

And you said there was a film – a room in which they could show films at the end of the corridor.

Yes.

Did they ever show films as part of your forecasting course?

I can’t – can’t recall actually films on those courses, I know we showed – when I became an instructor we showed films to our classes but I don’t remember films being shown to us when we were pupils [laughs].

And what – what was –

But there may well have been, I’m not sure.

[23.29]

And what did practical work involve, I know you’ve been through – you’ve been through the notebooks that have covered the practical side but –

Yes.

It seems from looking at the notebooks that for some of the time at least you were sitting in class writing notes on lectures in the rooms either side of the corridor, presumably that you’ve described, but what did you do in terms of practical work, in terms of doing given that this was a forecasting course?

Well I seem to recall that they would have a whole set of charts of weather situations in the past, and these were issued to us and we had to make judgement as to what the forecast weather might have been. I think there was one particular example where on these large synoptic charts, I think what I showed you before, was all plotted data on the fronts and depressions and anticyclones, and there was a fontal system I believe moving across the British Isles and we had to estimate, you know, what the weather would be in the future, and I believe now that it was a typical situation of a blocking high where the actual depressions were being blocked by an anticyclone, perhaps over Scandinavia and one had to, you know, assess the situation in view of that type of air mass. So I think it – this was the sort of practical work that we did, looking at charts and making forecasts from these previous synoptic situations, I hope that’s clear.

[24.59]

Yes yes. And could you say something about the – the other trainees at this time in terms of – I don’t know, their – their backgrounds, their gender, their age?

Well we were all young people at the time, in our twenties I suppose, quite a – quite a small class I seem to remember … let’s see, well about half a dozen I suppose, something of that kind, you know. We had I think somebody from South Africa I believe who was on the course, I’m not quite sure what his background was, I can’t remember his name even I’m afraid. Two or three people and then there was a lady as well, training to be a forecaster. Yes, I meant to show you the fact that there were quite a large number of ladies involved in the Met Office at that time, I think I said that our – our course at [the Air Ministry] – the original course I think they were all boys as it were, but the ladies also were involved and their pictures in – I’m not sure where the book is, especially in the war time and there are lots of pictures of ladies launching balloons and watching the radar, etc, etc, [Here is the Weather Forecast , E.G. Bilham, Golden Galley Press, London, 1947] and this is another example of a lady being trained in forecasting, but – and I believe she went onto higher things but – at the Central Forecasting Office, but that’s all I can tell you I’m afraid. And I don’t know the names unfortunately but it was of a small select group shall we say of people, which we thought anyway.

Thank you.

[26.50]

Now the next stage that I’d like to explore is your university degree which you took at Birkbeck College between 1953 and 1959, could you first tell the story of the – I suppose the origin of the application to and enrolment on that?

Well this occurred when I was an instructor at the Met Office Training School, between ’53 and ’59 I think it was and again it came to me that, you know, that this would be the best thing to do really to improve my qualifications having got the Intermediate B. Sc. and the Met Office encouraged people to – to take this line of action, and they in fact allowed you time off to go to the university. And I was able to – whilst being an – an instructor I think I had an afternoon or a day off which allowed me to travel into London to Birkbeck College for study and lectures, I think there was in fact a day off completely where I remembered –

I was living at Watford at the time, I don’t think I’ve told you that, and I remember travelling by tube to Goodge Street and then walking from there to Birkbeck College in Malet Street, spending time in – in the library there at Birkbeck College and then attending lectures in the evening, because as you know it was a part-time college, people went there who had – who were working at the time like myself and the lectures started perhaps at six o’clock in the evening up until nine o’clock … I don’t know if there’s any other detail I can tell you about that.

And who – who were your lecturers in geography?

Well we had – I think the head of the department in geography was Professor Gordon East [W. Gordon East], and then we were taught geography by a Dr [H.C.K.] Henderson, I seem to remember, and meteorology by Tony [J.] Chandler, who later became a professor at University College London. And then we had other lecturers of course, I can’t recall the names at the moment. But there were quite a number of them.

Yes, and you – and you had subsidiary or ancillary subjects?

Yes, geography was the main subject for my degree, but before … partaking in that I had to pass in ancillary subjects, mathematics and applied mathematics I believe. Did I mention that on the notes, I’m not sure … [checking papers] [pause]. Yes, Birkbeck College, part- time study, mathematics and physics, sorry, it was mathematics and physics as in ancillary subjects and again we had lectures at Birkbeck in both these subjects, in another department, I seem to remember that that was on the ground floor and the geography department was on the second floor [laughs] if that’s of any use to your recording [laughs]. But I’m sorry, I can’t remember the names of the – of these people in mathematics and physics, but it was quite a – quite a comprehensive course. The physics I think you had to pass in practical experiments and I seem to remember going down on Saturday mornings to the laboratory and seeing all the experiments being set up and you were told, you know, you had to make experiments with this that or the other set of instruments, yes, that was Saturday morning trip, so besides in the week that was another feature. And I – yes, and I’ve got my book upstairs of my – of the experiments which I carried out in order to pass this part of the course for the B. Sc. But that didn’t – I think that only went – went on for about a year or so, once you passed that then you concentrated on the main subject,

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 101 C1379/33 Track 4 geography. But they were most interesting, I think I remember the physics course, being taught about Newton’s Law and things of this nature and … the properties of light, etc. But I’d have to look at my notes to give you more detail about that.

And taught by Gordon Manley at this time as – as well or –

Yes, that came in the geography and naturally being in the Met Office I wanted to specialise in meteorology so it was suggested to me, I think by – ah yes, and I seem to remember Dr Henderson, he was very – well helpful to people there, suggesting things, you know, directing us as it were in different approaches and I think it may have been due to him that he thought I should attend lectures by Professor Manley, who then was the head of the geography [Geography Department] at Bedford College, that was a ladies’ college at that time and I went along there perhaps for a morning or afternoon. That was very pleasant, very nice building, and I think I shared the time, it was just two of us, a lady and myself who had more or less one to one tuition from Professor Gordon Manley in his study which was delightful. He was a very kind man, another very thoughtful person who, you know, tried to do the best he could for the students that he came into contact with and I had a very pleasant time there being taught climatology by this – I didn’t realise how – how important he was at the time, but one of the leading figures in historical climatology and … his series of temperatures, which go back to 1659, he was I think establishing at that time which is now a classic reference for climatologists and he must have been establishing it at that particular time. I think I remember him showing us some of the results of this – of this work. [Professor Gordon Manley, creator of the renowned Central England Temperature series from 1659]

Could you describe his study?

Yes, it was quite a large study with all his books and papers around him and desk and sort of he sat there and the two of us sat on the other side of this table, it wasn’t a sort of formal lecture, it was very sort of informal and that was very … very pleasant part of the course. Again I have his notes elsewhere but it was essentially a course in the historical side of meteorology, which he of course was an expert in.

And who was your fellow student, the – the female student?

No [laughs].

Had she come from –

She had come from another college in London, not from Birk – I’m sure not from Birkbeck but from another – one of the other colleges and obviously specialising like me in meteorology for her degree, but I’m afraid no more detail about that [laughs].

[End of Track 4]

Track 5

We’ve been talking about your degree at Birkbeck College and you mentioned the subsidiary courses in physics which involved Saturday morning practical work and you found some records of those practical classes into hard backed notebooks, and I think if I could ask you to look through the – the notebook which covers session 1954 to ’55 and ’55 to ’56 and see if it jogs any memories about what you actually did on Saturday mornings?

Well I’m afraid I – I will just have to read through what the titles were about some of these experiments, the first one is an experiment to determine the refractive index of a glass prism, µg, by finding the minimum deviation and the angle of the prism. I’m afraid I can’t really tell you any more than simply reading through which would be rather boring I would have thought, but anyway just skipping on, that was obviously something to do with the physics of light which I always found interesting, even at school I liked that side of physics, dealing with prisms and lenses. And here we have a diagram of a prism and the passage of light through the prism, how it’s split up according to the refractive index. And further experiment here but no date given, I missed out the date and was corrected on that, the optical level experiment which I’m afraid I can’t really give any details about that at the moment. And then we come onto another side of physics, experiment to measure the variation of the saturation of vapour pressure, [of] water with temperature, that’s more to do with meteorology I would have thought, quite important. And here we come onto another side of physics, the velocity of sound in air using the Kundt’s Tube, oh that was quite fascinating, where you have this long tube and you’re able – I think you put particles inside and by some means – or [other] you rub this rod here with a leather – presumably and the vibrations set up movement and the particles tend to concrete in certain positions which show you the wavelength of sound. Yes, here we say – I’m reading from the text – the book rather, ‘the rod was vigorously stroked lengthwise with the resin cloth so that it sounded its fundamental note … and the compression waves were emitted and these waves travelled down the tube, and you had the distinct nodes were set up and the distance between extreme nodes was measured and that gave you the wavelength and the frequency of the note’, so that was quite interesting.

Rather like blowing across the top of a bottle but being able to see how –

Yes.

Being able to see the wavelength of the sound produced.

Yes, that’s right. And then we had another experiment going back to the specific heat of a solid, so there’s all aspect of physics here, sound, light and other factors. Again there’s a mark here from the lecturer, 16 th of May 1955. Then we come onto session ’55 to ’56 , further experiments, again a sound experiment here to verify – verify the laws of the – of the sonometer four tuning forks of various known frequencies were used here apparently. Hmmm, again sound waves, and more information here. And then we come back to another – another side of physics, experiment to determine the surface tension of a liquid by measuring the – the rise of the liquid in a capillary tube, again it’s all marked here with a little note from the lecturer dated the 28 th of November ’55. And then going back to sound again, experiment to determine the speed of sound in air, using a resonance tube and one tuning fork, and with interesting diagrams showing the length of the wave … and then we have experiments to – oh to determine the speed of sound in air using a resonance tube and several tuning forks again, [and a] specific heat experiment. I’m not really sapping my memory, I’m just reading through what it says I’m afraid.

Do you remember who you were doing these experiments with?

Well they had laboratory assistants in Birkbeck, presumably they were students who were doing this as part of their course, not the actual lecturers I think, I remember going down and seeing these sort of people in white coats in charge of the – of the laboratories and telling you which experiments you had to do, etc. And so for the – oh then we come onto light again by the look of it, specific gravity of a liquid … and so forth. Turning pages over very rapidly now, experiment to determine the field of magnet, oh yes that’s interesting, I – I can’t really tell you what I felt at the time but I expect as you know – this is going back to school again where you have a bar magnet and you have iron filings on a piece of paper and you – you – I think you tapped it and you – the actual iron filings would go into piles showing you the lines of force on the magnet, that’s quite interesting – I found that interesting, I like sound and light, I wasn’t particularly happy with electricity experiments.

Why’s that?

I don’t know [laughs], hmmm … perhaps it’s the – the practical side coming out again, that you had to deal with actual – I really can’t say but that’s – that’s the feeling I had, light and sound were my favourite subjects in physics. Hmmm … I think I told you, I’m really not – not a practical person, not like my father who could – he would delve into all sorts of subjects, despite the lack of education, to do with electricity and features of this kind, but I was a little afraid of that topic, changing fuses and things like that, he was a dab hand, etc. Going on anyway with the notebook, experiment – comparison of the EMFs, of a dry and – and Leclanché cell, using a potentio’ – potentiometer, I can’t really give you more details about that and there we come to the end I think of the notebook, yes, so those are the two notebooks I think – have we been through the first one?

We haven’t, we could just – perhaps if we just look at the – I think the first experiment concerns a spectrometer doesn’t it of –

Uh-huh.

Which is 1954 to ’55.

Yes.

Perhaps it’s the second one.

[Looking through papers]. Again … refractive indices of glass and water, experiment to find the latent heat of vaporisation of water, dated 10 th of January 1955, expected to show the change of state in a substance and its affects on temperature. Magnification of a simple astronomical telescope.

Do you remember building that telescope or is it – when reading this, is this surprising almost that you see that you’ve done this?

I don’t think so, no. Hmmm … this – this must have been I think part of the apparatus at the college. [looking through papers] Experiment, the internal resistance of a cell … and so on, I don’t know how much more detail you want Paul here. Hmmm, experiment to

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 106 C1379/33 Track 5 determine the difference in frequency of two tuning forks, of nearly equal pitch. I suppose the idea was that they would set up a – a beat where you have two signals coming very close together. [reading] At A they are almost in phase and reinforce each other giving a period of loudness, at B they are exactly out of phase and cancel out each other giving a period of softness, so that was quite interesting. Again experiment in sound and now we come back to physics again, another branch of physics I should say using an experiment to find the real coefficient of volume expansion of mercury using Dulong and Petit’s apparatus. Further experiment with light, experiment to determine the refractive index of water by method of total reflection. Moments of inertia, and torsional vibration experiments. And then I come onto session ’55 to ’56, electricity, bridge circuits, experiments to determine an unknown resistance using a – a meter bridge and a post office box … earth inductor, determination of the angle of dip, earth’s induction … determination of earth’s horizontal magnetic field using the Schuster magnetometer.

Did you – do you remember whether you used that actually in the field or whether it was used in the laboratory?

I think these were all in the laboratory at Birkbeck, I didn’t – I don’t think my – I don’t remember doing field experiments on this side of – it was all the –

So you were finding the magnetic field of the earth below the laboratory using that equipment presumably?

Presumably, yes [laughs]. And that seems to be the close of that book.

That’s been very – that’s given us a very useful flavour of what was taught, I mean it’s difficult for interviewees to remember, you know, precisely which experiments they did and, you know, they might give a general impression of the physics that was taught at a particular time but the notebooks I think have actually given us an insight into the actual experiments that you were doing.

Yes.

What do you remember of the teaching of – of geography by Gordon East in terms of what he – what he showed, what he said, what he …

Well he was very much – I think, I might be wrong, a political geographer, I’ve got some of his textbooks about the geography of Europe, very – I found them very useful, quite recently in fact with the – the book I have written about climate and weather. He – I think very well respected geographer who was the head of the department and I think we had occasional lectures from him in his study, as it were, and I remember sitting around a sort of – a round table with him in charge, but I can’t remember the actual content but I realise now that it was a very important session we had with him, but it was more to do – not so much with the physical geography but the social and political geography, I think those were his specialities. But he was – I mean I’ve read recently he was also an expert on the history of meteorology and climatology and I’ve given one his quotes in – in the recent book about the – the change from the middle –Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age and he – he gave an excellent description of the change in climate.

But you don’t remember at the time him [doorbell chiming] lecturing on that and –

No, no I don’t – I think that was given more by Dr Henderson and Tony – Tony Chandler, who dealt with the more physical aspects and regional geography side of the course.

What do you remember then of Dr Henderson’s lectures, we’ll leave aside the field course because I think we’ve agreed to discuss that another time, once I’ve had a look at your notebooks, but what do you remember of the lectures from Dr Henderson, if anything of – on –

Well they were very good, very comprehensive lectures, on regional geography, I think of America, United States … I can’t remember any other subjects but very worthwhile and valuable. In the evening at Birkbeck I remember, you know, sitting in the lecture hall – lecture room, quite a number of us attending that lecture and the actual people taking that course, so more a number than I’ve indicated with meteorology, just one or two [?], sitting, you know, in these long tables on stools [laughs] with Dr Henderson in the front on a raised platform. So I think he dealt, you know, with quite a number of topics in regional geography. And then we had – shall I go onto Dr Dury [G.H. Dury] who was mainly to do

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 108 C1379/33 Track 5 with the physical geography, geomorphology, that was his topic, I think he was one of the leading experts in the field of geomorphology and they were very interesting too about the earth forms and the ice age and changes in the structure of the earth and things of that nature. [G.H. Dury: later Emeritus Professor of Geography and Geology, University of Wisconsin- Madison, U.S.A.]

What did he show in lectures?

The illustrations? I can’t really – I think it was mainly, you know, verbal, maps and things of this nature, I don’t remember any slides being shown, which there could have been I suppose but I think it was mainly of that kind.

And Tony Chandler, Dr – would –

Tony Chand – Dr Chandler, yes, I call him Tony because, you know, we got to know him very well, hmmm, he was very – I think he was – at that time he was a junior lecturer but he was the one who dealt with meteorology and climatology and gave us a comprehensive course on – on those subjects.

How did his course, being part of a university course in geography, differ from the ins – the teaching in meteorology that you’d had in Met Office training schools?

I think it was more basic really because it was essentially aimed at geography students, teachers who were going to take that – so it wasn’t a main subject as it were, it was one of the constituent parts of the geography course, regional geography and meteorology. But they were quite comprehensive, they – I mean he had synoptic – synoptic charts which he showed, I think on one occasion I think he showed us a series of charts to the students and we had to discuss what sort of weather would occur with that particular situation, things of that nature. So it wasn’t really a so – not so comprehensive as what I was – had been taught at the training school [Met Office Training School] as a forecaster.

This raises the question then of why – why did you do this – why do a degree in geography, I think I know why Birkbeck, because you were employed at this time as a Met Office

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 109 C1379/33 Track 5 trainer yourself and so it had to be a – a – a university set up for that situation, but can you explain why you selected geography as opposed to anything else?

Well it was the subject in which meteorology would have been included so that I think was the reason, as that was my trump card as it were [laughs], being a meteorologist, and … it came out of course the fact that then I was allowed to attend lectures with Professor Gordon Manley, as I was specialising in that topic, meteorology and geography.

And could you have – given the freedom to go to any university at this time, could you have applied anywhere to a course specifically in meteorology, were there depart – what I’m asking really is at this time were there departments of meteorology specifically in British universities which you could have attended?

I don’t think so, not as a part-time student, you’d have to go full-time to Imperial College or University College and places of this – King’s College for example, where I later went when I was studying for my M. Sc. but I think Birkbeck is – is or was unique at that time for part-time study for people who were at work, at – I don’t recall any other college in London. I don’t know if that’s true or not but Birkbeck was the leading college for that sort of tuition, they specialised in that and I think the people who were lecturers there took advantage of the fact that they gave lectures in the evening and the rest of the day they could apply their studies in their research, whereas people at the other colleges of course would be teaching during that period, so that was a – an advantage and they had some very good people I think who went to Birkbeck as lecturers.

What was your impression then of the status of geography as a subject in relation to others?

Well I think it was one of the main topics, I mean there was a whole floor devoted to the department of geography at Birkbeck and so it was obviously one of the main features I think of the college.

And geo –

And a very fine library as well, you know, with – which we were referred to.

And geography as a subject, sense of itself as a science at that time?

Yes, that’s a good point. It was sort of between the two I think, between the arts and the science, I think you could take it either as an arts degree or a science degree; if you took it as a science degree then I had to do – as I told you, ancillary subjects in mathematics and physics, but if some of the people perhaps on the course were taking geography as an arts subject they would have taken other subjects more akin to that field.

And what was your experience of – you’ve said to me a little bit about this off the recording but what was your experience of the teaching of mathematics?

High class, it really was, I found it – honestly quite difficult, you know, as a subject at university level, but we had a very good lecturer, I think – as I think I told you, Dr Edge I’m sure his name was, or Mr Edge, I can’t remember exactly, but they were most comprehensive, you know, going into university mathematics which was quite a jump ahead of uni – of school mathematics, and that was a difficulty I had. Anyway, I got through eventually with a struggle [laughs].

And the teaching of – of –

But it wasn’t my favourite subject I don’t think, no. I’m sorry.

And the teaching of Gordon Manley at – at – at Bedford College, you’ve described his – his office and – and the fact that there were just two of you.

Yes.

Do you – given that this is the field that you eventually went into yourself, would you be able to say – are you able to remember what he showed you at that time in terms of what was historical climatology at that time, what – what in those sort of additional sessions was he showing you or telling you or – or teaching you about this particular field do you remember?

Well I think in fact I – I have his notes again somewhere so – but off the cuff I mean it was essentially historical climatology, going back into the past and finding out what the past climate of Britain and Europe was in ages gone by. This was his field, historical climatology, he was the pioneer, the expert on this – on this side of climatology, not simply regional climatology but the climatology of past ages going back to the ice age and middle ages and features of this kind. Which he had of course gathered a great deal of material on, he had collected a mass of material of data which enabled him, as I think I’ve told you, to construct this temperature series, the Central England Temperature Series from 1659 which is a classic reference, even today is quoted. Unfortunately they don’t always – they don’t always call it Manley’s, that annoys me intensely when it’s simply called the Central England Temperature, it should be, you know, Manley’s Central England Temperature because he was the originator of that very important series.

And you say that he’d collected that data, presumably from various kinds of historical sources, do – was there any evidence of that data in his office, did you see any of it?

I can’t really – can’t really – it may have been, yes, he might have shown us old diaries and manuscripts of that nature from which he obtained data. But he had a marvellous collection of historical weather data, climatological data. And he … oh that was his prime object really, to collect such information in order to construct – reconstruct the weather and climate of the past.

Did he set you going on any project at – of your own at that time in relation to this extra tuition?

Well yes he used to set us, hmmm, not field experiments but essays, again I have the records somewhere and … I – I think one – and again I was able to bring in my meteorological knowledge on one particular essay that he wanted me to write about the cold winter of 19 – now let me get this right, one of the cold winters, this is ‘50s isn’t it so it must have been one of the cold winters of 1940s I believe where I was able to show – I think charts illustrating the reason why we had such a cold winter with blocking highs and the westerlies being cut off, and things of this nature together with the upper air information and that’s one particular let – essay I remember which I presented to him and

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 112 C1379/33 Track 5 he marked. But that’s the sort of thing, you know, that we were set, besides the actual lecture we had these essays to write.

And to answer them was it necessary to go anywhere, in other words to go to an archive or to go to a library of some kind, or to go to –

I don’t think so.

A record office?

I think it was mainly, you know, information that I had at hand, hmmm.

Thank you.

[25.00]

Now you said that at the time you were doing this you were living at Watford and I don’t think we’ve – we know why and –

Now that’s [laughs] another story isn’t it? Now, let me get the origin of that. Well Watford of course was very convenient for Stanmore – oh that’s right, my parents who were living in Wolverton, at Haversham, a village outside Wolverton they were keeping a store, a general store, have I told you that?

Yes.

And there came a time when they decided, you know, that they wanted a change, hmmm … so they were thinking of various locations and perhaps it was because I was located at Stanmore, yes it was, that they decided to come into that area of North West London, and I think first of all I was in digs at Edgware with a lady and I think my mother and father actually came there and from there that was their sort of place where they were able to find or look for other more permanent accommodation, and they found this in Watford in Kingswood, outside Watford, and so they came to reside there, and of course with me working at Stanmore I then lived with them again after having various, hmmm, lodgings in

Harrow – at Harrow I was in a lodging there and at Edgware I was in lodging as I’ve just told you, but then I was able to live with my parents again in Watford which was very convenient and very nice, so I used to travel from there to Stanmore by bus, by Greenline bus, every day and back. Is that enough information?

Yes, yes.

And that of course is where I met Beryl, I think I went to – I think I had a cousin who knew Beryl and they were arranging music club meetings and I was invited along and that’s how I came to meet – my wife and she was – of course had been born in Watford and that was how contact was made. And eventually of course we – we were married there at Leavesden Church in – in Watford in 1959, more or less at the end of my time at the Training School, because by that time I had passed the advanced forecasting course, and then was eligible to be posted abroad and we got married in October ’59 and were sent overseas in the following year, to Bahrain. So that’s another story, so I hope that’s enough detail Paul, yeah.

And what happened at the music club evenings?

Well we listened to records of – of classical music and then I think members of the club also had meetings in their own homes, I remember one we had in my own house in – in Watford, with Beryl of course coming along as well. And I had at the time realised that I had mainly orchestral music on record and I don’t think I’ve told you, Beryl is a pianist, she’s a concert pianist and so I decided I should have a – a record of some piano music so I bought a piano concerto, the name escapes me at the moment, so that was played at the time [Schumann’s Piano Concerto].

And what do you remember of the – the development of your relationship with Beryl, you know, in the early days?

Well I mean we were – we matched very well and we were engaged in that year and married in the autumn of that year, hmmm. So that was a very happy time, and her parents lived quite nearby and we got to know them, my mother and father made friends with Beryl’s mother and father and became close friends for the rest of their time. Hmm.

And apart from listening to records what sort of things did you do with or without Beryl at this time when you weren’t working?

… Well used – I mean Watford in those days, I don’t know, do you know Watford, I know – I mean it’s changed like many places near London considerably now, and it was a delightful place, you could go out in the country quite quickly, I had a bicycle and I used to go on cycle rides and round about St Albans and places of that kind, Hemel Hempstead. Hmmm, I don’t like to keep on dwelling on – on my drawings but I remember going and finding a beautiful view of Hemel Hempstead, the old town, and I have – I don’t think I’ve – have I shown it to you, I’m not sure, so I went out and did my sketching [laughs]. That was one aspect. And I was interested in nature, wild flowers and things of that kind, I collected a whole set of wild flowers, I had a book – the New Naturalist series which I bought on wild flowers. So I hope that gives you sort of an idea, it was you know a delightful place to be at the time, and with my interest in aviation, Leavesden on the edge of Watford, on the edge of the greenbelt as it was then, there was aerodrome there and from our home at Kingswood you could see the aircraft landing and taking off not far away, de Havilland aircraft. So I went for – used – I think I used to go round and sort of make a circuit of the airfield [laughs]. But lots of interesting things to see, and – in that area at that time. Hmmm … I – I think I could go on if I had, erm … more detail in my mind but I can’t really remember too much detail at the moment.

Did Beryl come with you on these outdoor –

Not at that time I don’t think, no. I think I went in – at an earlier stage. And of course Watford was – I used to think it was – had everything in Watford without going to London, there was as I say various cinemas and there was the town hall which was a con – had a concert hall inside, used to go to concerts there, the London Philharmonic Orchestra came regularly. So that would have been a common interest. And also I went with Beryl to London – to London to the Festival Hall to concerts there, which was quite easily done in those days, getting on the tube no problem at all, coming back late evening. But the line of course – this is ram – rambling a bit [laughs] from the Festival [Hall] to Watford on the tube is the Northern Line, it stopped at all the stations so it took a very long time but anyway that’s what we did and didn’t think anything of it, you know, if there was a concert

[32.04]

And could you now tell me about – well two things really which I think are probably linked in time and that is your – your period as an instructor of Meteorological Assistants at Stanmore and attendance on the Advanced Forecasting Course.

Yes.

And also at – at Stanmore which involved then a promotion to Experimental Officer.

Hmmm, yes.

So really the rest of your British meteorological experience, leading up to but stopping before the end – posting abroad, so could you cover those two things, the – your – your period as instructor and your Advanced Forecasting Course ?

Well I think what happened was, I mean I stopped being an instructor and became a student again and I had instruction from the people there who were teaching advanced forecasting.

And who – who was teaching advanced forecasting at that stage?

Well we had, hmmm … there was the head of the school, hmmm, Mr Gordon, Adrian Gordon, he instructed us and also the deputy head who was Mr Rowles [H.B. Rowles] who again would have taught us on the theoretical side and then on the theor – on the theory, sorry on the practical side there would have been other people. Hmmm … just trying to remember the name on the … no, it escapes me at the time, but – so there were again this division of theory and practical. And that’s what happened and then having passed that course then I was eligible to be posted from Stanmore, hmmm, to Bahrain.

How did advanced forecasting differ from forecasting?

Well one aspect was the study of upper air charts, you know, being able to draw charts of this kind both … hmmm, contours illustrating the wind flow and thickness lines and being able to match them together to forecast on future conditions. I’d have to refer to my notes again about that but it – it would have been more complex obviously than the initial forecasting course, more detail.

I think it might be useful to refer to them, especially as I’ve noticed that they include specific instruction on tropical weather forecasting as well.

Yes.

Shall we have a flick through and then as an aide-memoire for this advanced forecasting.

Yes.

And then that will lead us into your posting abroad.

Yes, that’s right. Right okay, the initial course, these are advanced course, that’s the early ones there, advanced course and the tropicals [tropical course], that’s right. So shall I look at the advanced course?

Yes please, yes.

[Advanced Forecasting Course, 1958, promoted to Experimental Officer]

So obviously we had an essay here being set, cloud forecasting from the synoptic chart which I haven’t got evidence of there, that’s probably on another piece of paper. Hmmm, well it’s a heading about the motion of air, the forces involved and the dynamics, forces acting on air such as the pressure gradient force, the rotation of the earth, how that affects the movement of air and wind, again rather complex equations here, the deflection force and the magnitude on unit force, very important equation there, 2ΩVsinø [geostrophic wind factor], the Coriolis acceleration, diagrams illustrating the wind flow and the forces, the pressure gradient force and the deflecting force, so I think the main point here is that one would expect, if you have low pressure and high pressure, that the wind would flow

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 117 C1379/33 Track 5 directly from high to low pressure but it doesn’t, it goes – it blows around areas of low pressure because it’s been acted on by two equal and opposite forces; the pressure gradient force and the – the – the deflecting force, so we’ll talk about how that acted.

Now looking at those pages, I suppose at least three quarters of the surface area of the writing is taken up with – with equations, now – and I wondered how you felt about that at the time, given what you’ve said about mathematics?

Not too bad I don’t think actually [laughs], not – I’m not saying this was simpler but I suppose it’s because it’s in meteorology and I felt more comfortable with it, you know, rather than complex equations on hyperbola and – and things of that nature, [inaud], that’s all I can say Paul. The thickness equation, again I think I mentioned how important thickness is, where you had to be concerned about the thickness between the surface and the upper air. Technique and thickness analysis, again further equations. Thermal wind because the thermal wind is a theoretical wind which blows along the thickness lines, so that’s important. And then the gridding factor here where you have the actual wind flow, the blue lines and the thickness lines and you’re able to grid those together and determine what the future wind would be, a calculation of thermal wind, further equations, thickness equation. Ah, then we have the thermal patterns, these are thickness lines showing the way in which they vary according to the weather situation, and that’s an interesting pattern of a cold pool which shows how the thickness lines have become completely distorted, normally they would be flowing west-east but now you have a completely meridional flow, north-south, south-north flow.

Are these upper air movements?

Yes, that’s right, yes. And that’s a very important feature in a cold pool. Thermal steering, and then the – of – thermal winds associated with anticyclone, thickness lines again, so it’s quite a long feature about that. Changes in thickness … Craddock investigation. Mr Craddock [James Craddock ] I met, he came to the Climatic Research Unit later when he retired from the Met Office, little did I realise that I would meet this particular person again having studied his theoretical research.

Where was he based at that time?

Well he would have been at the – in the Met Office headquarters presumably, hmmm … but I mean Hubert Lamb you see when he set up the unit, he I think had people who he knew in the Met Office who came and worked with him here. Shall I go on?

Yes yes.

Vorticity, another complex factor in meteorology which I am not really able to explain to you at the moment, mathematic basis of vorticity.

Again –

And that’s –

Go on, yes.

The whirling of the air and how [it] sets up depressions, on different scales you have a depression and you have a hurricane tornado, all these features illustrate the vorticity of air, and sometimes if you have a stable situation there’s little or no vorticity but if the air becomes unstable then you probably see it on the – on the lawn in your garden with the leaves swirling round and eventually that could set up a – a swirling tornado or – or hurricane, etc, from a small, you know, vortices developing, so that’s quite an important feature of meteorology.

And again the pages are – are made up of – of equations, written notes and quite a lot of drawings involving lines with arrowheads on and sometimes the lines are straight, sometimes we have perhaps four curved lines together with – in another colour a sort of – well a circle indicating a – a pressure or a centre of some sort of system, and then variations of four lines being drawn in different orientations and curving in different ways, as I assume indicating upper air flow of various kinds?

It may well be showing that perhaps there’s no vorticity when you have a sort of uniform flow of air from west to east, but then you notice on these lines they get close together and that is setting up a sheer which tends to perhaps increase the vorticity, but I can’t really

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 119 C1379/33 Track 5 explain any further. So it’s obviously very important to the actual flow of the air, again a – a diagram showing the flow increasing or decreasing according to the distance apart of the lines … and of course there’s a lot of calculus, hmmm, notation being given in here as well, in the mathematics.

With the symbols in the calculus appearing also on the diagrams so this is –

Yes.

These are –

Yes, that’s right.

Equations that mean something in relation to this – the drawings that you’re doing, yes.

Absolute and relative vorticity, development of diversions of vorticity, Sutcliffe technique, again I think I mentioned Dr Sutcliffe was the key figure in this – in this theory of upper air analysis using thermal winds and he later became the founding Professor of Meteorology at Reading University, after leaving the Met Office, on retiring from the Met Office. And I remember him coming to Birkbeck actually, I was so pleased and he gave a lecture on meteorology at Birkbeck College and I remember walking behind Dr Henderson and Dr Sutcliffe at Birkbeck College, so very minor memory but that sticks in your memory. Sutcliffe Development Equation, so as you see a very important figure in the theory of meteorology to do – to do with the upper air, Sutcliffe Development Equation. Various patterns which are derived from his work showing – these are the thickness lines again shown in red how according to the pattern you have either a low developing on this side of the trough, or low occurring on this side, or an anticyclone when you have a – a ridge in the pattern, depending on which side is the most favourable for development of the systems, summary about the anticyclonic and cyclonic development associated with thickness lines in a distorted pattern. So these are very important aids to forecasting, and still are I believe because I go in, I think I’ve told you, to the internet, the weather charts for the days ahead and on the actual surface charts they are still giving these thickness lines with certain values … so they are still being used today for forecasting. They’re very useful also for practical forecasting because certain thickness lines tell you an idea of where the snow will

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 120 C1379/33 Track 5 occur, when the thickness is very low, in other words the distance between the surface and the upper air, when you have a small thickness it means the air is cold and the reliability of the snow is high, and then if the thickness is high then the forecast could be for a warm spell. So besides the actual practical theoretical side, the – the lines can be used in a – another way as well, forecasting actual weather conditions.

In terms of this advanced forecasting course, were any of these equations that we see being run through computers at this time of any type or –

Not to my knowledge, no [laughs]. Oh you mean in the Met Office?

Well on this advanced training course at Stanmore?

Not – not with us, no. But they might have – they were developing computer studies at the headquarters of the Met Office at – the new headquarters was in … Reading I think it was, or near Reading anyway [Bracknell], it’s now Exeter, but this was the age of computers coming in by the Met Office, getting bigger and better computers, but we weren’t involved at that time, no. I think – I don’t think computers were being used when I was doing advanced forecasting.

We could – having been given an impression of that, we might pop to the tropical –

Yeah, certainly.

Section given that that –

That’s Tropical Course one and two [late 1959]. I – the lecturer here, I remember his name, Mr Emery [Paul Emery], he obviously had – had experience in – working in the tropics and I think he was the – yes, here we are, Mr Paul Emery so he was our lecturer.

And what was the reason for having separate – a kind of separate course on tropical weather specifically – could you – for people who’d – this will be an obvious answer for you but could you explain to people without any understanding of meteorology why it was

Well I think it’s mainly because the weather in the tropics has its own characteristics which would be different from the weather we experience here in – in the British Isles, you would have to be familiar with the fact that tropical storms develop and how they move and how they develop. Hmmm … just referring to the notes here about the trade wind belt which of course we wouldn’t experience in this country … again I haven’t looked at this for years so I can’t really speak off the cuff about it very much I’m afraid. But the conditions, the actual conditions in the tropics are different from what we have here, hmmm, both theoretical and practical. So this presumably is why we were being instructed in this field. The equations that work here wouldn’t necessarily work in the tropics, the – the geostrophic force for example would be different because it –

What’s that, what’s the geostrophic force?

Rotation of the earth [effect on wind flow] … but I don’t think I better go any further than that at the moment [both laugh] … and I think, you know, it shows here there is a different technique being used for forecasting winds, streamline-isotach method … yes.

So the thickness lines here, so –

No, these are – I think are actual motion, wind motion lines showing the flow of air, cyclonic and anticyclonic, vortex centres … hmmm … isotachs drawn at low levels, at five knot intervals in tropics, but ten to twenty for subtropics.

Could you – could you explain that term? Iso –

[Sighs].

So this is areas of equal what, it’s wind speed or …?

Equal [wind speed] – it must be I think, yes, yes, I think – yes, you’re probably right I think, yes, thirty, twenty and ten knots.

[isotach: a line of constant wind speed]

Hmmm.

Yes, so that was another feature which would not have been mentioned in the previous courses.

Why wouldn’t you have been interested in areas of equal wind speed and temperate forecasting?

Maybe because the – perhaps the basic isobaric pattern of wind flow wouldn’t perhaps – wouldn’t be so important, wouldn’t have been so significant in the tropics. Me – I mean here as you know the weather charts are composed of isobars showing the wind flow but they probably wouldn’t work in the tropics due to other factors, so perhaps this was another – alternative method of analysing charts. Similar methods of analysis, analysis of wind direction … streamline analysis … aids for analysis, so I think this is the main feature that it was a different way of analysing weather charts … oh Mr Rowles, I think I’ve told you, he was our theoretical lecturer, both at advanced and in the tropical course … another very good person who was interested in students and, you know, gave as much help as possible. At our wedding by the way [3 October 1959] we invited Mr Gordon and Mr Rowles, they came to our wedding at Leavesden Church [laughs] … sort of shows you the relationship we had with the – with the people in charge. So there we go Paul, I mean lots of further mathematical equations.

Yes, and I’ll just mention the other book there’s a – there’s some pages specifically on the monsoon for example and I remember –

Yes, hmmm hmm.

A little map of India or the Indian coastline really.

Here we have talk on the tropical storms, severe storms in the Atlantic, they’re called hurricanes, in the West Pacific typhoons, it’s all the same feature, in the Philippines, baguios and Australia willy-willies, Indian Ocean they’re called cyclones, Arabian Sea

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 123 C1379/33 Track 5 cyclones again, so these are all the same weather feature really but they just have different names in different parts of the world. And then I think these are all notes about these tropical storms, the eye of the storm and how they move and the winds associated with them, cloud structure, areas of formation and the six main areas of the formation of these tropical storms in the southern North Atlantic, Pacific and the Indian Ocean. So again further details about the particular features that one would expect to meet in tropical latitudes.

Did you know at the time of doing this tropical course that you were about to be posted to a foreign state?

I’m not sure, hmmm, perhaps the Met Office knew [laughs] that was going to happen but –

[1959: elected Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society]

[52.41]

Well shall we move onto then the – the origin of – of this posting to Bahrain, I mean –

[Early 1960, overseas posting to RAF Bahrain, Persian Gulf]

Well that – I mean that came as in the usual way with the information from headquarters that you are being posted to a station, Bahrain, giving you a certain date and by then of course we were a married couple so we went together. Hmmm, I can’t remember the [actual date] – it would have been early in – [1960] there was sort of a period of nothing much very happened and I think I stayed – and obviously a married couple we didn’t have a home at that time and we stayed with Beryl’s parents in – in Watford. And as I say it was sort of marking time really, I wasn’t – I wasn’t an instructor and I wasn’t forecasting, just waiting for the date to go abroad which must have come early in 1960, we married in October as I said 1959. Then the time came and we had to report to Hendon which was … presumably the place where they – where people set off, we had to stay overnight there in separate quarters, the women and men were separated, so I think they got us all together, all the people who were going overseas to Bahrain, they – they made quite sure that we were all there in one bunch as it were and then we departed the following day by aircraft from …

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 124 C1379/33 Track 5 where? I’m not sure, but from a London airport, I’m not sure if it was the London Airport, but anyway we were then combined, Beryl and I together, travelled together in this aircraft which was a DC-6, hmmm, not a jet [laughs], propeller driven aircraft, large aircraft [4- engine post-war airliner] and we made quite a momentous journey from England – I think we stopped in Turkey as a fuelling stop for a short while, didn’t actually see anything except the airport and that was [in] the dark [laughs], and then the aircraft was refuelled and then we made the next … flight across Iraq … and the Persian Gulf as it was called then, to Bahrain and we were all together in this aircraft, quite a large aircraft with families and young children, so that was quite an experience. And I remember looking out of the aircraft window over Iraq and seeing Baghdad below [laughs], then of course it was all quite peaceful, I’m not quite sure who was in charge of Baghdad – of Iraq at that time, was it Kassem? [correct], I’m not – yeah, it was another – I think the King [Faisal II] had been ousted by this time, it wasn’t Saddam Hussein anyway. Anyway, no, I think they allowed us to fly over Iraq, I think it became more controversial whilst we were in Bahrain as to whether they would allow aircraft to fly over. Anyway that’s another story. So we landed in Bahrain, quite safely, and then set up residence in a date garden in – outside the capital, Manama and that’s, you know, how we sort of started it, and the senior forecaster at Bahrain, Dr – [Mr John] Taylor, he was very helpful, he took us round, I wasn’t on duty at that time and he gave us a few days as it were to get ready, get installed as it were, and he took us round the colourful souks which were there in order for us to buy crockery, pots and pans and things of that kind so that we could set up a home in this bungalow in a date garden which belonged to one of the local Arab landowners, landlords, Sheik Kanoo so we were in residence in a bungalow in Sheik Kanoo’s date garden which was really idyllic, just two [one] storey bungalows in – set around a date garden, which obviously had been used for other purposes earlier, but no doubt the Sheik saw that it was going to be a good idea to have bungalows in his area and that’s how it started. And then of course I went on shift work at the airport as a forecaster, at the Bahrain RAF airport. Hmmm, I don’t know if that’s any …

Lovely, thank you. Could you – in terms of the – the initial piece of paper or something that told you that – seemed to tell you that you were going there, it – you’d recently been married.

Hmmm.

Could you have – could you have said no?

No, I don’t – no I’m not going you mean? No, I would have –

Could you have said, ‘I’ve recently been married, I’d prefer, you know, some sort of posting in London?’

I don’t think that was on the cards then really, you know, you were just told – and that was your duty to go. You didn’t really have any choice about it and you just made the best of the – of the situation. I mean it was quite an exciting adventure really, to start off our married life in that way. We had to arrange for packing and things like that, you know, cases and what have you and – oh the car, that was a – oh that was a good point Paul, I had forgotten – forgotten to mention, up to that time I had not been able to drive a car but it was essential that if I went I would have to drive, so I took a course with the BSE – BSM people in Watford in driving. Didn’t pass first time but second time I passed so that was all right, and then I think we bought a car which was transported, not with us, but by ship, to Bahrain and that’s another story because it got lost [laughs]. We kept on going down to the port at Manama, ‘Where is our car?’ and it – it didn’t appear but eventually it came to light and I was able to drive it back to our home [laughs].

Why was it essential there to be able to drive?

Because there really wasn’t any transport for people going from our residence to the airport which was quite a way across a causeway to Muharraq Island I think it was where the airport was, and you wouldn’t be able to catch a bus or anything like that, you’d have to take your own transport every day on duty and then leave the car at the airport and drive it back when you finish.

And what was – what were – what was Beryl’s view of this posting?

Well she was quite happy at the time really, I mean it was a very good experience, I mean it was quite primitive, the bungalows were very nice, very roomy, but they weren’t fully air conditioned, and I don’t know if you know, the Bahrain climate is pretty horrendous, in the

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 126 C1379/33 Track 5 summer especially very hot and humid, perspiration simply falls of you if you’re not in air conditioned surroundings. I think we had a little air conditioned – Beryl might tell you more about this than I can in the actual living room, but the kitchen wasn’t air conditioned so you can imagine what it was like trying to cook meals and there wasn’t running water or gas or anything of that kind. I think we had to have oil heaters for cooking and well a man – an Arab came round with a donkey cart and the drinking water [laughs] and – and one used to go out and buy, you know, frozen things from the shops in – in the town in Manama, so that would have been quite an experience for my wife, but she coped very well, got on with it. Hmmm, very large ants around [laughs] and lizards, they were all right, they were quite harmless but so it was quite – quite an experience really as far as, you know, different conditions were concerned, both for Beryl and myself.

What did Beryl do during your time there?

Well eventually, I mean we had close contacts with the Anglican Church there, Canon Morris was the cleric in charge, made friends with him and his wife and Beryl played the organ I think in the actual church for services and – and I – I’d have to check, can I get Beryl or – I think she did Sunday school teaching and things of that kind, and she read the lesson at the Christmas service and things of that kind, you know, all those sort of items. So …

What –

And oh that’s right, and she came – I think she was the – became the secretary of – of Canon Morris, so – and before becoming a musician she had taken a secretarial course on typing and shorthand [laughs] so that was a major asset. So I think she found plenty to do there, wasn’t bored at home as it were [laughs].

And what did you see of a kind of British military presence there?

Hmmm … well there was a [site] – the – the American Navy were there [U.S. Fifth Fleet], they had a base [Juffair 5 miles southeast of Manama] and I think they still have haven’t they in Bahrain [correct, now extended], in fact in the date garden where we lived the house next door but one I think there was a – an American [Naval] officer with his family

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 127 C1379/33 Track 5 billeted there. Hmmm, I can’t really tell you more than that, it was all very sort of, you know, hush hush and I don’t think we actually saw the place where the Americans were, again the Americans must – [have a strong military interest in Bahrain] the British [Army] would have had a presence there but not visible. I only saw really the airport [on Muharraq Island], which was an RAF camp with the usual messes, and fortunately now being an Experimental Officer, [equivalent RAF rank - Flight Lieutenant] I was able to use the officers’ mess and Beryl and I used to go up there on my off duty for – we went to the – the NAAFI there where we bought – oh that was a thing, we had to have a liquor licence because of the – you know, the Arabs wouldn’t be able to – were not allowed to drink alcohol, so we were allowed to but only under these conditions so we could buy beer and what have you, drinks at the NAAFI, brought those back and then used to go to the officers’ mess and have a drink there perhaps. And because it was so hot you really had to keep your liquid content up all the time, I think we were issued with salt tablets, hmmm, otherwise, you know, you might become dehydrated. So that was essential, plenty of drink, not drinking [as such] but, you know, one way or another, either soft drinks or alcohol. Hmmm … and there was a medical centre there if you wanted medical attention this was on the camp, near the airport. And dentistry, I remember having a tooth out there [laughs] with the – the Air Force dentist. So it was very well self-contained, you know, at the airport, besides Manama where we actually lived, just outside, where we also went shopping, Beryl and I on my off duty times. And that was very interesting, I think Beryl quite enjoyed going on her own would you believe into the Arab souk and all the colour and – and smells there were, you know, really evocative of that area. And I think she went to the vegetable market and what have you on her own and did all that sort of shopping, you know, for her own fruit and vegetables. But this – I would have had the car and so she would – went by taxi which were easily obtained, you know, people – no – no problem there in getting a taxi, that was one of the occupations of the local inhabitants I think. Oh and another thing which you might be interested in, for our relaxation we went into the centre of Bahrain, it’s about the size of the Isle of Wight and in the centre there was an American town which was called Awali for the – there was a … a petroleum refinery there [nearby] I believe, Bahrain I think was the first place that they struck oil in the Gulf [1932] before Kuwait and places of that came into line, and there was quite a large residential area in the centre called Awali where the people lived who worked at the refinery [BAPCO (Bahrain Petroleum Company)] and they had their own cinema and we used to enjoy

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 128 C1379/33 Track 5 driving into Awali and going to the pictures [laughs] where we saw I think Hitchcock’s, what was that terrifying film?

Psycho?

Psycho, that’s right, oh yes [laughs]. But there were more enjoyable films, so that was a very nice time because it was air conditioned, very comfortable and we used to enjoy driving to and fro along the highway, which was very good [laughs].

And what did the RAF people wear on the – on the –

In uniform, yes, I think shorts and, you know, a short shirt – without long sleeves, otherwise there were caps and everything and … people [could] tell [by] their uniform – their – what they were, officers or NCOs or what have you with their various emblems. But we of course were civilians in the Met Office but we were able to share their accommodation and facilities.

What did you tend to wear as an Experimental Officer?

I think shorts really, a shirt and shorts, hmm.

And could you talk and tell me about –

And a hat of course, very important as well.

What sort of – what sort of hat, sounds a bit … specific?

Well a straw hat I suppose, that kind, I’m not quite sure really but – because the sun was very dangerous, you know, to be out too long in the sun wasn’t very good. Sorry you were saying?

Yeah, what relations do you remember with – that you had with local people, apart from the man who brought the drinking water on the donkey, could you say – tell me more about any relations you had with –

I think Beryl had somebody to help out with the housework, I think an Indian lady, and they had a special term, I can’t remember [ayah], Beryl will tell you I think more about that, who came out on a daily basis presumably. And then I mean the actual gardens were quite pleasant, there was a little swimming pool there where the children used to swim and ourselves also sometimes. A very – it wasn’t a made up road, very bumpy to go in over the – with the car, and we had a bungalow which overlooked an Arab field or – where they grew vegetables of some kind or other, and it was irrigated and they had a little hut in the middle of it, so that was quite fascinating to see the work in there. So all together I mean it was, you know, a very interesting different situation to be in, hmmm … [laughs].

Did you – did you – to what extent did you have conversations with local people, or interact?

Not really, only if we were parking the car perhaps in – in Manama and when we went shopping, they would always be some – one of the Arabs who – who would want to wash the car, and so we had contact with him, but just hello and goodbye and payment, etc, but quite friendly. And of course with the trade’s people in the shops … buy meat and things of that kind and other – other items. But not real contact perhaps with the people living there, the Arabs. Sheikh Kanoo [landlord] who used to come round and make sure everything was all right [laughs] and if it wasn’t, you know, we would tell him about it, but whether it got done was another matter [laughs], I think we had to keep on reminding him about certain things were not quite right, but that was all part of the game as it were. I think he was one of the wealthy sheiks in – in Manama, I think we’ve seen his name coming up here, you know, with perhaps horse racing and things of that kind. But he was very friendly, I mean this is a feature that what we found when we went about the car they – they were very friendly there, but you always had to go in, I don’t know if you know the routine when you go into an Arab shop you – they always offer you a coffee, you know, you go through this routine of how are you, etc, etc, before you can actually get down to the business you go in for, there’s all this sort of … hmmm, business of having coffee and having a polite conversation, etc, etc, and they have these little – little sort of coffee cups and you have to make quite sure you – I think you held in your left hand, or right, I’m not quite sure but one was unlucky and one was the one thing to do. And the bank, that was

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 130 C1379/33 Track 5 interesting, int – I think that was – they were mainly Indians employed there, were quite a lot of Indian people in that area.

The – the – I know that back in England you’ve enjoyed exploring the landscape, going out drawing, looking at things, to what extent did you off duty explore this very different landscape?

Hmmm hmm, with a camera this time and I have lots of – I have boxes of pictures of 35mm pictures of Bahrain in the inner part, which was interesting to me as a geographer because it was in a – an eroded anticline and the actual centre of the island had been eroded away so it had these in-facing scarps, like we have in England, you know, with the North and South Downs but this was all in miniature so this was most interesting. And then there was the pipeline across the island, clouds of course were very uncommon, during the summer the skies were cloudless day after day, and then I spotted a cloud and we went out in a car to search where the cloud was would you believe [laughs] and found it in the – in the centre on – of the island. So things of that nature, you know, yes. Quite a different landscape but interesting. I think the army had an area where they did their manoeuvres in the southern part of the – of the island which was out of bounds as it were, you came to a big notice, you know, saying you couldn’t go any further than that.

The American Army?

No, that was the British Army I think, yes, we had a base there, the Americans it was mainly naval people. Hmmm … so all in all I mean it was a fascinating area to be – and also yes you reminded me, Paul, in the centre of the island that we found – or that we were told about these mounds, tumuli, and apparently the island in – centuries ago was very important for civilisation [probable location of Dilmun, a notable Bronze Age settlement], it is said it was the – you know, where Adam and Eve, the story about that that originated from the Garden of Eden it was thought was Bahrain, hmmm, because no doubt because of the varying climate that might have been greener in those days than it was at the present time. And I remember going – oh the British Council, very important factor which Beryl and I shared, we met the people running that, made friends with them and they put on various lectures, one I think they had archaeologists coming to tell us about the history of archaeology of the island, which we found fascinating, hmmm. And you could actually see

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 131 C1379/33 Track 5 all these tumuli in the centre of the island, which of course had been raided, there wasn’t – there weren’t any remains there, like the pyramids for example, but it was that on a small scale, fascinating area, it really was.

What were the tumuli then, burial –

Burial I think, yes, burial mounds, that’s right. Yes.

And the archaeologists that lectured for the British [Council] –

I think they were from Denmark I believe, I think it was a Danish expedition going on at the time, but that was most interesting, you know.

[Reference: ‘The Pre-History of Bahrain’, T.G. Bibby (Danish Archaeological Expedition to Bahrain) in: Welcome to Bahrain , James H.D. Belgrave, Manama, 1960, pp 72-83]

[Two periods of annual leave to East Africa (Nairobi and Mombasa) whilst in Bahrain, flights via RAF Aden.]

And what relations did you have with other … meteorological – British meteorological families staying –

Well – well we mixed in together quite a lot, quite friendly, being a closed community there of English people, British people. And we made friends with them and we still have contact, one of the friends in fact – I didn’t realise at the time but he was one of the people involved with the Met recce flights [Reconnaissance Flights, Second World War], he was a Met Air Observer, Peter Rackliff, and so we made further contact later on with this … situation, subject.

Met flights over Bahrain or more widely?

No, this is in the war, Met flights from the British Isles, you know, the – the book.

[Even the Birds Were Walking: The Story of Wartime Meteorological Reconnaissance, John A. Kington & Peter G. Rackliff, Tempus Publishing, Stroud, 2000]

Yes yes.

I showed you and he was involved, erm, in flights made with Halifaxs, four-engine ex- bombers, over the Atlantic Ocean every day, making weather obs – information, I didn’t realise that when I met him in Bahrain, that only came back much later and then we made contact with him because of the book when he was living in Newport Pagnell, but they now live on the south coast, but we still keep in contact, Christmas cards and what have you and occasionally eletters – e-mails with him, because … it’s funny that the– there’s a great interest in what went on during the war and he [Peter] often has queries about, you know, what aircraft are flying and this that and the other and I think he keeps in close contact with his Air Force colleagues, he goes to the Duxford air shows and things of that kind.

[End of Track 5]

Track 6

Now last session we – we left you in – in Bahrain and I wonder whether you could sort of tell the – the story of the sort of the next stage which involves returning to the United Kingdom and then making a decision about your future I think at that time and slightly changing course, but I wonder if you could give us the sort of – the chronology of it and the – the steps and the decisions made, so – so go from returning from the Bahrain posting?

Yes, well if I may – if I may go back to Bahrain, that –

Yes.

Towards the end of my tour we were thinking about this change and we had taken newspapers, advertisements, and found there was a – a post for a schoolmaster at – at Harwich County High School which we took up, so we were in correspondence with the headmaster already before leaving Bahrain and then when we came back to England I went for an interview to Harwich for this post which I took up quite soon after a leave period. And we stayed with Beryl’s parents in Buckinghamshire, Simpson near Bletchley and I remember driving – getting a hired car from a local person and I remember driving to Harwich for the first time, to the school, to see the headmaster.

And could you say why you made this decision then during your posting, given that you’ve – you’ve moved up through the Met Office and you've – you’ve been on various postings, why not just continue to go to the next posting and continue within the Met Office in that way?

Well I think at that time, I don’t know if it was a wise decision or not but that was it, I had got a little concerned about – especially being recently married about the postings policy of the Met Office at that time, it had been, you know, more or less a – a new post every year or so, or even more, and I knew I was being posted to London Airport I believe, as a forecaster, but how long that would last nobody could say. So that was perhaps one reason to have – settle – settled existence and another reason, I think I told you at school, we didn’t think of university degrees but it – it came to me that if I want to improve my position as it were that’s the sort of line I had to take and I was going – you know,

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 134 C1379/33 Track 6 considering – I had already taken the B. Sc. part-time in the Met Office and I wanted to improve that qualification so I was thinking of going further, hmmm, as a schoolteacher which worked out well because the headmaster kindly gave me I think an afternoon off from teaching and I was able to – we were living in Dovercourt at the time, near Harwich, I was able to drive to Colchester and I parked the car, catch a train to London Liverpool Street and then to the college where the lectures were been given by a Professor Hare [Kenneth Hare, Geography Department, King’s College, University of London] and that was all done, you know, quite smoothly as it were, no – no problem with arrival or departure of trains [laughs]. Hmmm … and led eventually then to – that was again part- time, M. Sc., but this time specialising in meteorology. An exam was taken and I had the qualification and then I thought another step which I would – wanted to take was to become more closely involved in research in meteorology and climatology, and then again a position turned up for a research position at Swansea University [University College Swansea], dealing with historical weather charts so there again that meant an – another visit from Dovercourt for an interview and … so that meant another change of life as it were, way of life, and we moved from Dovercourt to Swansea [1969] where I took up my first position in research, from which I have continued. And then, erm, Hubert Lamb who was then in the Met Office, he was in charge of the research project at the University College Swansea which was under the Met Office, it was I think sponsored and funded by the Met Office and he used to make period – periodic visits to see how things were going on and I remember him coming down and looking at the charts I was reconstructing for the 1780s because that was the project, reconstructing daily weather maps for the 1780s, I think I’ve told you. And then much to our surprise and delight he said that he was setting up the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and invited us to join him there and so that was the next move as it were, from Swansea to here and we were very lucky to find this house where we have stayed ever since – since and that was in [October] 1971.

So the house in Cringleford is where you moved to in 1971?

Yes, that’s right, yes. And we’ve been very happy here and we wouldn’t want really to go anywhere else and so this has been our home now since, what, thirty years or more, hmmm. And of course that meant that I was involved full-time at the Climatic Research Unit in those days when Hubert was setting up the unit …

[06.19]

Could you say something then of your memories of – of being a teacher, of being an Assistant Master in geography and maths –

That’s right.

I think at –

Yes.

At the Harwich County High School.

Yes.

Your memories of what you taught and how at that time?

Well that’s a little difficult really. Hmmm … the school was Harwich County High School which was in those days considered to be a grammar school, erm, we had a very good headmaster and I remember taking up my position … and it was quite a new – new venture but I was pleased to be involved with the geography department especially, that was very helpful – the geography teacher in charge was very helpful, he guided me and put me on the road as it were, and also the maths teacher … I wasn’t so closely involved with the mathematics but mainly with the junior school and there again the teacher in charge of mathematics helped me with topics and notes and subjects to be acquainted with, and so that progressed.

And was there a link between what you had done before in terms of working in the Met Office and the teaching of geography at this school?

I think you could say there was, yes, I didn’t realise there would be this leap as it were from teaching in the Met Office as – as an instructor to being a – a schoolmaster but I tried to make the change-over … but I suppose at the same time I was thinking of – of another way of pursuing my career as a researcher in – in meteorology and climatology, that obviously

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 136 C1379/33 Track 6 had been at the back of my mind and that came to the fore really whilst I was at Harwich, during the seven years there [1962-1969], and so I had been thinking about it and when this position turned up, you know, I was quite eager to take up again, I think my interest in meteorology had always been there and perhaps I could say perhaps wouldn’t be too strong – I wasn’t disillusioned but I really wanted to go back on the road to meteorology and climatology proper, rather than teaching geography and mathematics at a school, so that – perhaps experience, you know, made me realise what I really wanted to do, put it like that.

Yes, you had – according to these notes at least two years, possibly three before you started the M. Sc. in meteorology, just – just as a teacher –

Yes.

At that time, not studying as well, and I wondered how you – how – to what extent you pursued meteorology, erm, out of work as it were I suppose beyond school teach –

Well I tried to encourage the pupils, you know, in – in meteorology and weather observing, the school was in two parts, the main school and then there was a sort of annexe which were [was] called the towers I think it was which is an old Victorian large house which was used for the junior school, where I taught some of the classes, and I remember setting up a rain gauge there and encouraging the people to measure temperature and rainfall regularly. And they had a – quite a nice garden, I remember setting the rain gauge up there and trying to keep a – a daily record of weather and rainfall, so I suppose that’s how it came out with my interest in meteorology, I gave that emphasis in geography to the weather and changes in weather and climate.

[10.21]

Could we then – could you tell me then something of the teaching involved in the – the M. Sc. and meteorology that you began in 1965?

Well as I say I was allowed time off from school, I think an afternoon a week to go to London University where I attended lectures by Professor Kenneth Hare in – in that subject, which was most interesting, I mean he was one of the leading lights in climatology

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 137 C1379/33 Track 6 at that time, I think he was a professor at Kings College I believe in meteorology, or geography perhaps. So that really was, you know, a great outing to go to London to hear him talk and, you know, that was a highlight of the week really.

And what did – what did he lecture on, what was he …?

Well I have his notes somewhere, it was a whole course in climatology and climatic change … the – the atmosphere, wind flow, the westerlies, energy balances, things of this kind, water vapour, it was a whole range of topics dealing with the climatology. I have a book by him which perhaps would be – give you a better idea of the – of the topics, and also I have his notes as well, though I haven’t got them to hand.

What was the distinction at this time, in these lectures, between meteorology and climatology, you’ve mentioned both of those words in connection with Kenneth Hare?

Hmmm … I can’t really say. Meteorology of course came into it, I think cloud physics was one of the main topics, hmmm, but not the sort of general daily run of meteorology that I had been used to in – in the Met Office, more on the academic side I suppose, but certainly came in – into the field of learning and, erm, I’ll have to look at my old exam papers, that will give you a better idea of the topics involved.

Yes, I just wondered what – what – what at this time was the distinction between meteorology on the one hand and climatology on – on the other, given that you could argue that both are about an understanding of the atmosphere and the way it works and – and so on but was there a – what was the kind of academic distinction at this time?

Well I suppose the main influence – difference rather would be the emphasis in the Met Office on actual observing and forecasting the weather, plotting charts and analysing the situations, this would not have been a feature of the course in – in that field, it would be more on the understanding how the atmosphere worked and the elements in the atmosphere, the pressure, the temperature, humidity and so forth, and the wind flow, but not the actual day to day forecasting of weather, I hope that’s clear?

Yes, that’s clear, yes. And if you were – if someone was taking a course in 2010 in – in climatology, dealing with climate change, they’d have certain expectations about the sorts of things that might be discussed but I wonder whether you could give us a – a sense of the nature of interest in climate change then in 1965 when you started, in what way was climate change seen to be interesting or in – in what ways was it discussed or – now it would be discussed one would – one would think with a certain amount of concern, certain amount of alarm and –

Yes.

And a sense of the need to be able to predict, but I wondered what was the particular interest in climate change then in the mid ‘60s ?

Well I suppose it – a lot of it would have been on – on the long scale, considering the changes of climate in earth’s history, going back thousands, millions of years, that would have been part of the understanding, such as the ice age and changes during historic times, such as the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, things of this kind, but I think at that time there wasn’t this concern for the fact that the climate perhaps was changing in our lifetime dramatically. It was more or less considered to be a stable effect, so there wouldn’t have been this concern I don’t think, it would have been treated more academically, sort of things that have happened in the past and will probably happen in the future but there wasn’t this sort of panic about – well it’s happening now sort of thing, you know, we should be very concerned. So I think that would – was probably the – the way it was treated, more calmly as it were as an academic subject, not in the field of media as it is today, would that be the sort of thing?

Yes, and – and what –

So I think, you know, it would be less dramatic perhaps, yes.

And which – what particular kinds of evidence was Kenneth Hare using in his lectures in order to talk about climate change, what – where – where was the data coming from, what – what data was he using in order to illustrate or to discuss climate change?

Well to be honest Paul, I think his – his forte was more to do with the – the – the dynamics of climate and meteorology, not so much to do with the evidence for past climates which I think would have been the field I – I would have studied under Professor Manley in my first degree, I don’t think this was emphasised so much. He was very much a dynamic meteorologist or climatologist, interested in wind flow and weather types and things of this kind, I don’t remember lectures on the sort of thing I had studied under Professor Manley quite frankly.

Do you remember anything that he showed in terms of images or maps or drawings perhaps, do you remember?

Not really, he was very much concerned with the mathematics of dynamic change, I remember he was quoting equations which I’d tried to master, erm, about the wind flow and atmospheric circulation and things of this kind, which I found, you know, quite testing at the time but I made an effort to understand, hmmm, I’m sorry to be a little vague on that, I’ll have to consult my notes again.

No, it’s quite all right [both laugh], this was 1965.

It was quite revealing, you know, the fact that one can study meteorology on this more dynamic mathematical side which I had not experienced so much with my first degree which was more descriptive side of meteorology, thinking of past weather observations, you know, accumulating the evidence as it were, but he was very much involved with the actual mathematical dynamical side of it. Sorry to keep on repeating these but this is – this is what comes back to me now.

[Lectures by Professor Kenneth Hare in the M.Sc. Meteorology and Climatology course, University of London, March 1965 to March 1966: General circulation; momentum balance; energy transformations; moisture balance; atmospheric structure; concept of climatic theory; energy input; frictional losses; trade winds; baroclinic instability; overall energy balance; Pleistocene climatic change; and recent climatic fluctuation. Lectures also given on radiation, water vapour, climatic change, urban climates et al. by Dr T.J. Chandler and Dr C.I. Jackson.]

[18.04]

And this is at a time when computers are beginning to be used in meteorology to improve the – well the speed of long term forecasting and the quality of the –

Yes.

Do you remember any reference to computerisation?

Not really.

So we’re sticking – we’re at this stage with him concerned with mathematicalisation of it rather than computerisation?

Yes, I think so. Hmmm … would you like your coffee now?

Yes.

[End of Track 6]

Track 7

Could you say something of the – the mentioning of the use of satellite photographs in the M. Sc. course in terms of Kenneth Hare’s presentation in lectures but also in your own research and work for the examination and so on? To what extent were satellite photographs discussed as a meteorological tool at this time in the schools?

No I can’t really recall anything of that nature, except – I mean I came across satellite pictures when I was forecasting in Abu Dhabi, I think I mentioned that to you, and they were quite an important feature, especially where the ground observations were rather spar – sparse and few and far between, that the satellite cloud pictures would give you a means of knowing what the weather was going on over a wide area, and they came in regularly, I remember on the machine there, so that was a very useful device. … I can’t really recall actually being taught how to analyse satellite cloud pictures, but that must have been a feature presumably.

Hmmm, thank you. And something of the work involved in preparing your M. Sc. dissertation, which you’ve just shown me, on cloud study.

Hmmm, well that would have involved reading the texts, again my memory, I’d have to recall the actual books involved but there were books by experts in cloud studies such as Professor John Mason, have I mentioned he was – he became – he was an important figure at Imperial College in cloud physics, did a lot of interesting research there, again there’s a book by him which I have so that would have been one authority. Imperial College again and … two people [doorbell chiming], Richard Scorer and his colleague who’s name escapes me at the moment [Frank Ludlam], but they also were interested in cloud study and again I have books by them on that field, so these are sort of references I would have made reference to, looked at – looked into.

And why cloud study as your choice for research rather than any other aspect of the atmosphere?

Well I think that goes way back, you know, to boyhood schooldays when I had always been interested in clouds, I think I showed you that picture I – I drew at Haversham before

I started taking photographs, but once I had the camera then of course that took over and any interesting features of the sky I snapped. So this obviously had been a very important – it still is, I mean every day I look out, the first thing I do, look out of the window and see what the sky is – the – appearing [appearance], so that naturally was the topic I took up.

Could we just look at the plates – the photographs in your M. Sc. and I wonder whether you could point out and discuss any notable occasions that you remember of taking the cloud pictures because as your – as your new – recent New Naturalist book, in the dissertation there’s quite a lot of pages which have got photographs of clouds, taken by you at various points, including various points that will have already come up in the recordings so far, so I wondered whether we could have a quick flick and you describe and then they could be scanned at a later date.

Yes, I’d be happy to. [M. Sc. Dissertation: The Classification and Nomenclature of Clouds: A Review in the Light of Modern Dynamical and Physical Theory]

But on – because I’m quite interested in the fact that these are taken from – often from family homes or from windows of –

Yes, when we were on holiday with our parents in Buckinghamshire, going out, that would have been [flicking through pages] … oh here we are … [looking for photographs] … so here – these are the first clouds then. This is taken in Bahrain, cirrus clouds, the important feature there of course that for much of the year the skies are cloudless so as soon as they start appearing that would be a great point of interest, to me at least [laughs].

Do you remember where this is taken from or the occasion of taking it?

This is taken from I think our, hmmm, bungalow overlooking the date – no, overlooking the Arabs’ garden behind us in the field, but the – I’m afraid the picture’s not, hmmm, too clear, but I’m sure that’s right [Plate I Fig. (a)]. And then – oh I mentioned flying through the inter-tropical front [Inter-tropical Convergence Zone] on the way from Aden to East Africa and I think this was taken – and you can see the turbulent clouds here, cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds.

[Plate I Fig. (b)]

Taken from the window of the plane?

From the window of the aircraft, that’s right, yes … shall I turn?

Yes yes.

Hmmm.

Yes, if you spot on these photographs any rooftops perhaps you could say where you were and what you were doing at the time?

Well this would have been from our back window at Dovercourt, overlooking the Dovercourt Bay and here you can see a clearance of cloud, presumably frontal cloud, which is moving from west to east.

So this is plate –Plate II Fig. (c).

Yes. Yes. That’s right. And oh this is an interesting cloud, cirrocumulus which – which is quite rare, hmmm, mackerel sky and … I’m not sure whether that was taken, looks as though it could well have been in Bahrain area [Dovercourt].

Okay, and that was figure A [Plate II Fig. (a)].

Yes … so these are going through the main types of clouds, from the high medium low clouds and now we’re onto medium clouds, altostratus where the sun appearing as it were through ground glass, altocumulus, hmmm, medium cloud, I think this may well have been taken at the Met Office – no no, this is a bungalow in Bahrain, that sort of square cut outline, so … [Plate III Fig. (a)].

I’m interested in the fact that these aren’t taken because you’re writing a – an M. Sc. in – in clouds, and therefore you’re looking – you’re going around collecting, you know, taking photographs at the time for it, these are photographs that you’d already taken at various –

Yes, simply for their interest, you know, in different types of cloud, I think I was trying to assemble a collection of all different types of clouds which was again Bahrain, it became quite cold and rainy at times, you know, during the winter season and you can see here some of the med – thick medium clouds which affected the area, I think these are dwellings from our date garden bungalow again.

Okay, that was figure D plate three [Plate III Fig. (d)].

Hmmm hmm [looking through papers]… hmmm, plate four [Plate IV Fig. (b)]. That was in – oh there’s – this is – ah yes I remember this, this is from the village where my mother and father lived, Sherington near Newport Pagnell and this is a most interesting type of cloud where you have what we called pileus [lenticular] clouds, wave clouds, like almond shape but the atmosphere is no longer unstable, [when] you have towering cumulus, it’s stable, you know, clouds are sort of … kept under control if you like as it were, but there – there is this wave movement and you form – you see them forming in the upper and lower parts of the wave, lenticular clouds, hmmm …

That’s figure A [Fig. (b)] – and when do you think you would have taken this – with – the photograph with your parents’ home in the foreground [nearby]?

I think this is probably when – when we were at Dovercourt, on school holidays we – we went to stay with our parents in Buckinghamshire, so that might have been such an occasion.

So how old would you have been do you think when you –

That would have been in the 1960s, so in my thirties.

Hmm.

This is another interesting cloud, usually the herald of thunderstorms, altocumulus castellanus where you have clouds in the – in the middle layer of the atmosphere forming these turrets and that’s usually a sign that there’ll be thunder activity on the way within

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 145 C1379/33 Track 7 twenty-our hours, a very good sign. This I think is taken from our house in Watford when I was staying – living with my parents, when I was at the Training School, Stanmore.

That one’s figure C, plate four [Plate IV Fig (c)].

Yes, and also – this is another interesting one, this was taken on a flight from Bahrain to Aden, again looking out through the aircraft window, again the castellanus clouds, similar to these but more developed taken over the desert, Arabian Desert.

Figure D [Fig. (d)].

… Hmmm, not very interesting but it is a line – definite line of stratocumulus, figure – plate five [Plate V Fig. (a)], that was in Watford I think. Oh this is another interesting topic … one had to – well didn’t have to, one liked going on fieldtrips when one was doing, you know, the M. Sc. and B. Sc. and this was a fieldtrip to Malham Tarn… but I’m afraid it’s not very clear but that does remind me that that was another feature of the study fieldtrips to various parts of the country … Norway, I think I mentioned that to you on a field – school trip to Norway, inland from Bergen and I took it because of the cloud enveloping the mountain tops.

Yes, this is – that was plate six, figure C [Plate VI Fig. (c)] .

Hmmm hmm.

And then the roof tops in figure A [Fig. (a)]?

Yes, that’s again Dovercourt, I remember that outline, again looking out from our back window over the Dovercourt Bay and I think it’s mainly due to the stratocumulus. But anyway … the clarity is better in the new book isn’t it [laughs], which I think they’ve done a marvellous job on really from these 35mm slides, which they were. Hmmm, now where’s that? Oh this is Watford, yeah, Watford, there was a big green there on the outskirts of Watford where we lived, Kingswood but not – just a normal cumulus cloud [Plate VII Fig. (a)]. Oh that’s interesting, this is Mombasa from our hotel, I think I told you, we were looking out across this – probably estuary of the sea, and again fair-weather

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 146 C1379/33 Track 7 cumulus, similar to what we were – had experienced in the British Isles, so … that’s plate seven Plate VII [Fig (d)], another location. Yes, cumulonimbus clouds again, this one is in Watford with the anvil, typical anvil [Plate VIII Fig. (a)] and this one’s in the airport of Bahrain, near the forecast office and this is the actual airfield, towering, colossal cumulonimbus cloud, thunderstorms in the area [Plate VIII Fig. (d)]. And this is Mombasa again [Plate VIII Fig. (c)], so you’ve got England, Africa and Bahrain, and this is a shot in the air again, flying through inter-tropical front [Inter-tropical Convergence Zone] [Plate VIII Fig. (b)].

Hmm.

[Laughs] … Hmmm, oh that’s a condensation trail made by an aircraft, and this – ah, this is the Met Office Training School at Stanmore, I recognise the wind vane here, but the – the building’s building is not very distinct but this – these are the sort of buildings we were using for the classrooms.

I see, thank you, that’s figure C [Plate IX Fig. (c)].

And also, besides contrails, sometimes the aircraft disperses the cloud and this is a – a dis – distrail, dissipation trail [Plate IX Fig. (d)], so you don’t see those so much as – these [contrails] are more common. So those are the … interesting clouds, crepuscular rays as the sun shines and it forms these sort of effects like you see in a church when the windows are being illuminated, that’s at Watford again [Plate X Fig. (a)]… erm, oh this is Stanmore again, yes, there’s the wind vane [laughs], very indistinct. And these clouds are interesting, you’ve got cumulus clouds pushing the air up and forming another cloud on top, that’s capping the cumulus cloud, again it’s quite rare that type of cloud [cumulus pileus], so that was worth photographing. I’m not sure what that is, figure D… no [Plate X fig. (b)], oh I give the locations here [Stanmore], good, so – let’s make sure at the moment – tell you correctly, hmmm, yes Watford and that’s Stanmore, right, and Mombasa – Mombasa again, all right, good [laughs].

Thank you very much.

[14.22]

Now the move then to the Department of Geography at Swansea, could you take me through the – the process of applying for and starting that job as a climatological research assistant.

Hmmm hmm, well it involved as I said going for an interview from Dovercourt where I made the trip by train, quite a long time but I got there, arrived, took a bus from the station to the university [University College of Swansea] and met Professor [John] Oliver, who was one of the professors of geography at the department who was particularly involved in this side of the work and I was going to, if successful work under him. So that was a first stage and, erm, I’m not sure if I knew how – if I had been successful or not at that time but it turned out all right, yes, the – they did wish to have me there.

And could you give me a sense of when you started who else was working in the Department of Geography at Swansea at this time?

The –

Department – you were based in the Department of Geography?

Department of Geography, that’s right, working on this project of reconstructing historical daily weather maps for the 1780s and the project was sponsored and – and supported by the Met Office research people at … at headquarters, they were then at … hmmm [Bracknell], well they’re at Exeter now, before they went to Exeter, it was … [Bracknell] oh dear my memory escapes me, but anyway that’s why they – it was centred at the Met Office, they supplied the actual money as it were, grant for this work, so I was particularly pleased that I was, you know, sort of working indirectly again for the Met Office under Professor Lamb.

And who else was in the Department of Geography at this time, what else was …

I was the only one involved in this particular project, yes.

Yes.

Yes, that’s right.

Do you remember the other members of staff in the department?

Not really, no. Hmmm …

And who was supervising you then day to day at –

Would be Professor Oliver, yes, he was in that particular branch of the Department of Geography, I’m trying to remember the name of the other professor but the name escapes me, but again he was very interested in climatology, I can give it to you later [Professor William G.V. Balchin]. But they were very – very – both of them, Professor Oliver and this other professor were I think much involved in climatology and meteorology.

And did you have any sense of why this project had been started here, why the Met Office had funded this project here rather than –

What, in Swansea?

Hmmm.

[Laughs] That’s a good point, not really, no I can’t really answer that. But all I know is that it was under the too – under the direction of Professor Hubert Lamb, when he was in the Met Office as a Scientific Officer, and of course he was very much involved in changes of climate and the circulation patterns of the past … but as to why it should be … there rather than at the headquarters I – I’m not quite – perhaps it was the policy then to support projects of this kind in – in universities, hmmm.

[18.09]

And your first then contact is Professor Oliver and he supervises you, what do you remember of your first meeting, encounter with Hubert Lamb as the sort of remote director of the project?

Yes, that’s right, it was under his guidance as it were. Well I was – I was very thrilled actually to think that I – I mean he had been a figure who I had read about, known about, expert in the field of climatology so I was very, you know, pleased to actually meet him face to face when he came down to Swansea and, er, we entertained him, I took him back to our home and Beryl had I think a meal for him there, and I drove him from the university to our home in Sketty which was the outskirts of Swansea, so it was very much a friendly contact with this prestigious climatologist [laughs], so that went – that made me very pleased, you know, to think I was in – in that field as it were now.

What can you say about your first impressions of him as a – leaving aside his sort of reputation and his professional expertise and so on but as – just as a – as a person, what were your impressions of him?

Well he was just a very kind person to meet, hmmm, very easy to get on with and speak to, you know. I don’t know what else I could say, but very friendly and Beryl and I, you know, were very pleased to entertain him whilst he was here, back down in Swansea that is, hmmm.

Did you gain a sense of his interests outside of climate – climatology, his – you know, his more – more general interests as a person?

Not really, no, what you mean in his way of life and –

Yeah.

No, I don’t think so, no, I think it was mainly centred on – on the professional life of a climatologist and the fact that he was interested in what I was doing there, you know, and gave me advice and backing on that line. I don’t remember – I’m jump – jumping ahead but, you know, when he invited us to join him here that again was a great surprise and delight so we were thrilled about that.

Did you get the – an impression from him at this time, working as you are as the research assistant in Swansea, of the – the reason for doing the work, the – the perceived

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 150 C1379/33 Track 7 importance of it? The reason why he was directing this project at Swansea, the reason why he presumably had been involved in getting funding for it, his sense of the importance of it?

Well as you know I think he was particularly interested in determining the – the changes in the weather and climate over historical and pre-historical times and this was a little part of his, hmmm, area as it were, of the 1780s, I didn’t realise at the time how important this particular period was but I found out later that it was a period when there were great extremes in the weather, both hot and cold, wet and dry, and he obviously was interested in determining the type of weather types and circulation patterns that, erm, gave rise to this effect and the 1780s, it meant that once I had plotted and drawn up the charts in a synoptic fashion from this early historical weather data, which hadn’t been used before in this way, we were then able to determine the circulation patterns of that decade and I think he was very pleased to find out that the patterns I had drawn show there was a decline, a major decline in the westerlies, so called prevailing wind and this of course meant that you had other circulation patterns becoming more predominant, blocking highs and features of this kind. And I think I refer to that in the – in the book, you know, the fact that the 1780s, a lot has happened in more recent times can be mirrored in what happened in the late 18 th century. And then of course there was another factor, the volcanic effect where there were these major volcanic eruptions in Iceland and Japan which sent up this huge cloud of dust which was caught up in the upper westerlies and travelled all around the world and you have these alarming effects of these very thick dust haze [formations] effecting the sun and the moon … so not only did you have a decline in the westerlies, but you had also this other outside effect of – of volcanic dust, so it made a great interest, I was find – I was finding out things which I hadn’t realised before which were going on in past climates. And this – the winters also there was a – a sort of benign period up to about 1781, but 1782 it all went downhill and that became a very cold wet year, again due to the – the decline in the westerlies, so all these features, you know, sort of added up to great interest.

So did you get the sense then that this had already been identified by Hubert Lamb as a remarkable decade?

I think it must have been, yes, and that’s why he homed in on it, you know, as a – a project to be investigated in more detail, up to that time it hadn’t been dealt with on a daily basis but what I was doing was showing that it could be examined in much more detail using the

– I think I mentioned the historical weather data which had been collected at the time by the German society, the Mannheim Society [Societas Meteorologica Palatina], have I mentioned that?

Yeah.

And the French society [Société Royale de Médecine], they had realised that something was going on in the weather and so there was a great effort in Europe and Britain to collect as much information as possible. The Mannheim Society sent out instruments and instructions on how to make weather observations through all the major cities in Europe, we were invited but we didn’t take part but we had some very good observers in England at the time, Thomas Barker, I think I’ve showed you the book I had edited on his work, and so all this information was now being put together and actually used synoptically, which I think at the time they had collected all this information but they didn’t know quite what sense they could make of it, you know, it was all a jumble as it were, but using the information, ideas that came in the 19 th century and early 20 th century by the Norwegian meteorologists, mainly Bjerknes [father and son], hmmm, who put forward the theory of front – frontal analysis and air masses, I was then able to plot the information and then draw the charts using isobars and fronts, and that made much more sense in a synoptic way. So we – then we were able to classify the charts so I plotted the charts, drew the charts up, isobars, fronts, etc, and then together with Hubert we were able to classify the daily weather maps using his system of British Isles weather types. So they were some of the earliest examples. His series starts in 1861, I don’t know if I’ve shown you his book, a classic book on weather types and he used the charts which were being made by the official Met Office when they first started up in the mid 19th century which goes all the way through now to the present time and so he made this classic study of British Isles weather types and circulation patterns. But then using the information from our project we were able to go back another century to the 1780s and I think … perhaps the dream was that we could – should continue and fill the gap as it were between the late 18 th century and the early 19 th century with a whole series of charts, but I’m afraid that hasn’t – that’s a dream yet to be fulfilled, but I do mention that in the book and I think I’ve shown you – oh sorry.

That’s all right.

What I’m trying to do here … [reaching for something], I hope that hasn’t upset your –

No no.

[Looking through pages of book] This is what I’ve tried to do, so going back to the late 18 th century I’ve tried to give a continuous series showing the frequency of the westerlies over the British Isles from the 18 th century, right through to the present day.

Page fifty-six – [Climate and Weather , The New Naturalist Library, Collins, 2010]

But there is this gap you see here between what I was doing at Swansea, these are the results from my project and these are the results from Hubert’s classification from 1860s, up to present time, so there’s – there is this gap to fill but I have tried to fill it in other means, with other information so yeah. And here to there. And I’ve combined the two graphs together here.

This is page fifty-six and fifty-seven from Climate and Weather, yeah.

Yes, in other words it’s a continuation of Hubert’s graph here where he plotted the westerlies using historical weather data, way back to the 14 th century and you see there is this very rough and ready, but there is a decline, a rise, a decline, a rise, a decline, a rise and now here there is another decline taking us up to 2010, so this is a – a theme which I’ve talked about in – in the book. And of course all the variations of temperature which are very much in the public eye and rainfall, they all depend on the changes in the circulation, which sadly I think is, er, you know, being neglected. It’s the changes in the circulation which determine the climate and the so called global warming and cooling is dependant on the type of circulation patterns that are prevailing.

[28.47]

And could you describe your sort of working quarters at what – at Swansea, where you were – where you were based within the department, if you could describe your – your bit?

Well it was in – in an annexe really, as usual [laughs]. Not in the main building which was, you know, a typical university, it’s one of the newer universities I believe isn’t it, I used to love going over to the main department. But we were in a sort of mixture of huts as it were, which had been used as a temporary basis I suppose and became more or less a permanent basis, like many of these effects. Anyway it was where we did the work and that was where Professor Oliver – that was his sort of domain as it were and the other professor [Professor Balchin] was in the other part, the main part of the building [laughs].

And could you describe the – the room, what was in it?

Well I think I shared the room with another research person, a lady I think who came from Sri Lanka, Ceylon and she was involved on another project which I can’t remember what [her] … work was, but I think we shared – I shared a room with her, a small room about half the size of this room I suppose.

So we’re sort of – well six metres by four or something, or –

Yes. I had a – a desk where the charts were where I was able to stand and plot the information and – and an ordinary desk as it were, and a space between the two. And then she was on the other side of the room. Perhaps a third of this size I suppose, not really half, something like that.

And so you’ve got a – a table at which you can draw daily synop – synoptic weather charts.

Yes, that’s right.

Could you give me a sense of the – because I know these vary a bit but the scale of the maps that you were – the daily maps that you were drawing, pres –

Yes.

Not global maps, but European?

No, they covered Europe, Western Europe, the British Isles and the north Atlantic – east and north Atlantic, and Western Russia, that sort of idea. I can show you a chart later on, they’re quite large, about this size, that size.

So could you give me an estimate for the recording because they can’t see your …

Hmmm, well that’s about three feet by two feet, something of that order.

And so I can see the desk and you’ve got the – the charts, you’re able to draw the charts but where do you go to get the data and what does the data look like?

Ah that’s a good point Paul, yes, that was part of what the project – which I enjoy enjoyed very much indeed collecting the data, which involved making visits to France, that was one of my first tasks I think as soon as I got there, that was what I had to get onto, arranging a visit to Paris. And the leading light in that was Professor Le Roy Ladurie, distinguished French historian who had discovered this historical weather data in the archives of the med – the Society of Medicine in Paris and he was obviously the one who had told Professor Lamb about this wonderful source of data for France and I was put onto that straightaway, ‘Go and collect this information from that – from the Academy, from their archives,’ so that was quite thrilling. First visit to Paris … and then collecting the data, examining it, it was in their archives, which … I thought was remarkable the fact that you had – that these were quite large sheets of paper, documents which had been sent out to all the doctors of the kingdom at that time where they were instructed to make weath – daily weather observations beside the actual medical reports because they thought that there was a relationship between disease and the climate, so that was their objective. So you had this wonderful collection of daily weather observations from towns and cities all over France by these medical doctors and they were all collected, sent to Paris and stored in their archives, all through the Revolution [laughs], still preserved and I was very excited to examine these documents in this very sort of parchment like paper and make copies, they brought in a special photocopying machine for me in – so that I could make the photocopies and I packed them up in my suitcases and brought them back to Swansea [laughs]. And they got – they became very heavy and I remember the walk from where I had been stay – staying in a hotel, to Paris Gare du Nord with these two heavy cases of photocopies. And I think I was questioned as to what was – what did you have there and I sort of managed to persuade

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 155 C1379/33 Track 7 the people on the station that it was all quite harmless and took them on my train journey back to … where did I fly? Took a train to an airport on the coast of France and then across the Channel by air and then I can’t remember the detail how I made it, and then train back to Swansea.

And how much data in terms of days or years could you collect in two large suitcases?

[Laughs] Hmmm … well I think I – I brought back enough to keep me going for the early 1780s and daily data and something of that kind, and then later on my wife joined me on other visits to Paris and we made further visits to this Academy to collect more data. So that was, you know – so I had company there and the help from Beryl [laughs]. We made, you know, two or three visits at that time, so that was one source of data.

[35.13]

But the other main source of data were the Mannheim network, shall I continue?

Yes please.

That was different really because it was established by the Elector of one of the principalities, the – of Germany [Rhineland Palatinate] and as you know Germany was – was not a unified country at that time and there was this particular Elector who, erm, supported the idea that they should make weather observations and they sent out the information they wanted, instruments as well to various cities, not just in France [Germany], France also participated so there was an overlap between the two societies and other stations in Fra – in Europe, such as, hmmm, Stockholm and Copenhagen, Berlin, places of this kind so we had a – a marvellous network of station data. And then you – we also had of course the data from the English weather observers, British weather observers, principally Thomas Barker and other people of that kind, so – and then another source of data were ships’ logs and that’s another activity I was involved with, collecting information from the archives at Greenwich, National Maritime Museum, so that was another feature of my time at Swansea, going to London to collect data there. So it was quite an exciting time really, you know.

[36.44]

What – when you say that Beryl accompanied you on some of the trips to – later trips to Paris.

Yes.

And – and that she – I think you said the work help, could you say to what extent and how Beryl helped in the –

Well she helped me with the – the photocopying and things of that kind and – and sorting out the data from the archives and so on. Hmmm … that’s about it really, you know, but it was much better really to have another person involved, at – at your side and of course Beryl was very interested in – in my work and gave me great assistance there.

To what extent was an understanding of different languages important, I know that there’s a kind of – to some extent, a kind of common system of – of recording but I suppose the wider question is what was involved in interpreting data from different countries, different cultures?

Well you’re quite right Paul, I mean the actual language would not be as difficult as if you’re approaching it in a general way because the terms like for – wind force and temperature and rain and things of this kind one got to know quite well, both in German and – oh the Mannheim system by the way was in Latin, but I wasn’t [taught] Latin – I never studied Latin at school but one got to know the terms after a while and … I – I can show you later the charts and diagrams that I used to convert from the different languages into the system I was used to with British plotting.

[Reference: The Weather of the 1780s over Europe , John Kington, Cambridge University Press, 1988]

[38.24]

And at the Mannheim collection, you’ve said at Paris they brought you a photocopier and you photocopied and put the large sheets in your suitcases and brought them home?

Yes.

What was the procedure first at Mannheim and then at the British sites?

Well fortunately the Mannheim Society sent their reports on an annual basis to other centres, I think – there was a – the – [distribution network] the Met Office had their own collection at the headquarters there … and I think that had already been collected before I went to Swansea, there was another person who started the project and she left and I took over and she had also done some collecting and a lot of the Mannheim information was already there.

I see.

But later on we collected more and there is this wonderful source at – in the – in the archives of the Met Office which is now at Exeter, so we didn’t have to go to Europe with that, or to Europe on the mainland rather. And the information from here, from the British Isles, would be in various weather diaries and registers and there again that would involve trips, for example the Thomas Barker observations. I think I’ve told you, he was very interested in weather, he made observations right from childhood right up to the time of his death, over sixty years, and he kept these wonderful diaries and they had to be collected or photocopied, the various archives. Oh, again in the Met Office they have – they have one or two of his weather diaries there in their archives so that would have meant trips to their Met Office archives – oh Bracknell, that’s where it was when I was working, not Exeter. So that was another visit I had to make, not had to but was pleased to make to the archives at Bracknell, collecting the information from their sources.

And did you get a sense on these visits to the Met Office at Bracknell of how your project was viewed there as within its wider role?

Well being part of the research group under the Met Office one had to make reports, annual reports as it were and I think on one occasion I actually had to go into Bracknell and

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 158 C1379/33 Track 7 present a report orally of my work. I remember going there to the actual committee of people who were interested in – in what Hubert and I were doing, Hubert actually wasn’t in the room but I remember several top level scientists, shall we say, of the Met Office and I had to explain what I was doing in – in – the importance of my work to the people there. So that was quite a … novelty [laughs].

What was the response to that there?

Well it meant of course whether they would continue funding the research so one had to, you know, give a – a very good case for the research to continue, which it did fortunately for several years.

Hmm.

But I’m not quite sure how long but …

[41.57]

And were you able to gain from Hubert Lamb at this time an impression of the – the status of this kind of work at the Met Office, relative to the other things that they’re doing at this time.

Yes.

Including these sort of international projects with satellites and computers and so on.

Yes.

Were you able to get a sense of, you know, yes the status, the relative status of this work within the Met Office at this time?

Hmmm hmm, well I can’t really go into the detail but one felt it was something one had to press hard for, you know, to keep the project going, but … so one had to make a very good case for continuing with this project, which we did, continue. And then of course it was

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 159 C1379/33 Track 7 transferred here and there again I think originally it was supported still by the Met Office as one of their research grants … but I can’t really remember the actual detail about that.

When it moved to –

But the emphasis, you know, as you mentioned at whether – I mean I know – I think you – you’ve seen in Hubert’s book, you’ve got a book there haven’t you?

Hmmm.

You’ve seen the section where he – he had problems in the continuation of this line of work when there was a change in the director. The former director [Sir Graham Sutton] had supported him wholeheartedly but when John Mason came I think there was a change in direction in the Met Office onto computers and that line of work, you know, not considering the historical weather data to be so important, they were more concerned about present and future weather patterns, but I don’t know if that’s correct or not but I think there was a change in direction there and I think that’s why Hubert, he – he retired early, as I think I’ve told you, in order to continue this line in the academic world, rather than in the professional Met Office world.

[Through all the Changing Scenes of Life: A Meteorologist’s Tales , by Hubert Lamb, p. 198]

Did he tell – talk to you about this change, about his decision to move out of the Met Office?

I don’t think so, no, I don’t – I didn’t realise at the time the – the problems there had been perhaps in – for him to continue with what he was interested in, why he was … pleased to be able to set up his unit here to be able to continue in that line of work, I don’t think I was actually, you know, in – in that inside circle as it were at that time.

Did you gain any sense of why he set up the Climatic Research Unit at the UEA rather than staying at Swansea and – and establishing it there? I think you’ve – you’ve hinted at why he didn’t set it up within the Met Office.

Hmmm hmm.

But why not at Swansea where this work was already taking place?

Well I think the people here in the School of Environmental Sciences, I think he made contact with the professors who were setting up the new environmental sciences department here, also had this very much in their mind and I think it was a – you know, a feather in the cap really if they could have a – a Climatic Research Unit under their domain as it were. So I think it, you know, worked both ways, he was pleased to be invited into the academic world and they themselves were pleased to have this prestigious figure becoming the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the university. So I think it probably worked both ways but I think Professor [Keith] Clayton, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned him to you, he was one of the founding professors – Professor [Brian] Funnell and Professor Clayton were two of the founding professors at the university when it was set up here in the 1960s, and I think Professor Clayton was very keen to have Hubert coming here as a director of Climatic Research Unit, but you’d probably find it in the book about how that came about, so …

And given that you moved across with them, how did – to what extent did relations with the Met Office change once the move had been made to the Climatic Research Unit?

Hmmm, I – I really can’t say about that, hmmm … what I can tell you is that the Royal Met Society originally had their headquarters in London, in Cromwell Road, near all the big museums, Exhibition Road and what have you, and we – I remember going there, again with Beryl for various data, it was sort of a Victorian type house, books all over the place, higgledy-piggledy to our mind as it were, but we met the librarian and he could more or less put his finger on where everything was, but to some people I suppose you could say that was in a rather chaotic state and when the new regime came in in the Met Office I think – and also with the Royal Met Society, they – they also moved to Bracknell with the Met Office as it were, the two were – were more or less next door to one another and they didn’t have room for all this data which had been housed in this Victorian House in Cromwell Road in London, so it was decided they should disperse it and the Climatic Research Unit became the recipient of a lot of this early weather data, books and pamphlets

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 161 C1379/33 Track 7 and I don’t know what, were transported here and Beryl had the arduous task of sorting it out – all out, all dusty. I remember wearing a – her wearing a mask and what have you and she had a little room there, she was officially the librarian and she’s – she’ll tell you herself the time she spent on sorting all this material out, which the Met Society had more or less thrown out, you know, they came in huge packets and what have you. I don’t think they realised at – at the time what – what a marvellous treasure of – of data they had there, originally in London. But because of the restrictions of room we became the recipients of it. And I think later on they realised and I think a lot of the data we had here went back to the archives [Met Office Archives] which are now in Exeter, presumably they had more room there for it, so – but that’s a – the story I have, that may not be completely true, but something of that kind [laughs]. I hope that gives you some information of the times we had …

[48.42]

Yes, so – so back at Swansea then, you’ve collected all this data from various – various sources, the large suitcases, the material that you could look at at the Met Office, the copies of things and – and so you’ve then – you’ve transported that back to your annexe at Swansea, where – where did you store it, hmmm …?

I think in file cabinets and things of that kind, and also here at Climatic Research Unit we had, you know, large filing cabinets where we –

And in Swansea when you brought – when you brought back your suitcases, what happened then?

Oh I think – I’m not quite sure, probably some cabinet or another what they were stored in, I don’t remember that so precisely but certainly my room when I was working full-time in the Climatic Research Unit I had these tall, you know, metal filing cabinets and I was able to store them there quite easily, in alphabetical order and what have you. And I’ve forgot to mention Paul that getting the data from England and Scotland, they – that involved other trips to places like Lyndon Hall [Rutland] and Scotland, I went there to collect data from the various archives in Edinburgh and so forth, so …

[The Weather Journals of a Rutland Squire: Thomas Barker of Lyndon Hall , John Kington (Ed), Rutland Record Society, Oakham, 1988]

And to what extent did Beryl help you on the – on the sort of –

Oh yes, much – yeah, very much so, yes, hmm.

Was she combining this help to you with her own career or job of some sort at this time?

Well the fact that she was very interested in what I was doing, you know, and able to make notes and what have you whilst we were at these various places. The trip to Lyndon Hall was quite interesting, we were entertained there by the present squire who was a descendant I believe indirectly from Thomas Barker who was the original squire who collected this marvellous record, and then we were entertained there by him and his family. So that was one – one interesting visit. And then as I – as I say visits to archives in – in Edinburgh, collecting data there and also another house, I can’t remember the actual name of it, where we went to get the information which had been made at this particular location. So that was, you know, really part of our holidays if you were – you know, as it were, holiday with a purpose, collecting data [laughs] for John’s charts.

[51.17]

Was your wife working at this time herself in teaching?

She’s always been teaching privately … and she was involved actually at – at Swansea, she went into the Music Department there whilst we were there, that’s right, I’d forgotten that. And also when she – when we came here she was involved and still is, you know, with the Music Department [University of East Anglia] and … yes, so that was a sort of combined effort, music and meteorology.

And during this –

And at the same time of course with the private music teaching, pupils coming into our house, both at Swansea and here.

[52.05]

And Sketty was the place that you lived in?

Sketty, that’s right, yes, it’s a sort of suburb of Swansea, on the western side towards the Gower Peninsular, very pleasant, many hills, very up and down. I remember one winter I went by car and slid down one of the slopes and bumped into somebody else I think it was, much to my concern, but it wasn’t too bad, but it was very – very hilly there. I don’t know, have you been to Swansea?

No.

No. It’s sort of built on a very up and down territory. Hmmm, yes, Sketty was quite pleasant, little sort of community with its own – own shops and what have you where we did our shopping, groceries and what have you, without going into Swansea, we went into Swansea occasionally to the library there, very nice library and of course the university was outside again, nearer Sketty than the main centre so that was the reason we – we lived there. I used to go by car, not very far but even so and that was quite a nice little ride, parked in the – in the university grounds. But you could also walk, I think I did quite a lot of walking between my home and the university, through Singleton Park where the university was situated, and like here for example, you know, very pleasant area.

[53.31]

Have we got to the point in your life where you’re starting a family yet in terms of –

We have no family, no.

Ah.

… Hmmm, it – I think I mentioned my mother and father, they had large numbers of brothers and sisters so the cousins that have been more or less my brothers and sisters, you know, we’ve kept in contact with them, and the same with Beryl, she has cousins in Watford, hmmm hmm.

[54.00]

Could we then talk about the – this – this change then to the – the Climatic Research Unit and your memories of the – of the very sort of early stages of the establishment of that?

Yes, well again we were in an annexe, the Climatic Research Unit, not in the main building [laughs], it was called The Village, which is still here now [the site] but it’s been – been pulled down, the actual little huts, again little huts [laughs], Stanmore, Swansea, now Norwich, we were always in these one storey sort of temporary huts, hmmm, and it’s now part – they’ve taken those buildings down and it’s students’ residencies now, you’ll see it on the way out from Norwich on the right hand side, university on the left. So that was our first location in the University Village as it was called, we had a – quite a large room and we had sort of little areas, you know, not actual offices but sort of private areas off this main hall as it were, with sort of partitions, and open at one end and the window at the other was the sort of – [situation] it’s – but that’s how we were situated. Professor Lamb had his own office nearby on the way in, and his secretary, another office there. That was on the left going in and then the big hall where we were was further on, I don’t know if that’s enough detail. Hmmm –

What was there in terms of – well sort of equipment and storage?

There was a photographic unit there, which was quite useful if I wanted to make illustrations of – of any items that were used in my research, so I made quite regular visits there to the photographic unit. There was a shop there, bookshop, and the original hall, which I think was the [rectory?] – I don’t know if you know that part of Norwich, erm, their own church by the river, and there’s this lovely old historic building which I imagine would have been the – perhaps the rectory, I don’t know, but it had been taken over by the university at that time as sort of their place where they were able to have functions and what have you, I remember going there origin – when we first came here to some function or other. So it was all very pleasant, you know, big, all these huts and what have you, various departments were there, the Music Department was there. The university itself was being built that time you see, mid 1960s and eventually the – the various departments – the environmental sciences [School of Environmental Sciences] was there in The Village and

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 165 C1379/33 Track 7 then when their place was built in the main part then they moved over, so there was a gradual moving over from The Village to the main campus.

Was the whole of the environmental sciences then in this – this annexe or just the Climatic Research Unit when you first –

I think The Village must have been the nucleus of the university at the beginning before the actual building – the present building was put up.

But when you moved there in 1971?

‘60 – when was it ‘60 – 1971 wasn’t it? That’s right yes.

Had environmental sciences established itself in –

They were still there, I remember being greeted by Trevor Davies who’s now Vice- Chancellor, he was a lecturer, being greeted by him and being shown to the office of Professor Funnell who was sort of involved very much in the – where I should be as it were in the buildings there. So yes it was still there at that time.

And who else was working in the Climatic Research Unit at this time, 1971 when you –

Well there were – Professor [Hubert Lamb] – he was getting people together at that time, I was the – I think the first meteorologist to be recruited, then there was Peter Wright, another meteorologist who came, there was – as I mentioned Robert Hay came later. Hmmm, Barbara Gray was another lady, was a lady rather not another lady, I think she was the only lady who was doing research, she was involved in the unit, the secretary of course and Hubert himself, a very small unit at that time. I can’t remember the other names of people, erm, I think there were postgraduate people who had been studying at UEA and they became part of the unit. Hmmm, but again the names escape me at the moment I’m afraid, but I could tell you later. So it was a gradual, you know, building up from about sort of half a dozen or so of us into about I suppose twenty eventually when we moved to the new building.

When did the move take place to the new building?

[Laughs] Well that was in stages actually, I think at one time we were split, there was part of the Climatic Research Unit in The Village and then part in the – in the main building. So it was a very sort of gradual process, as the rooms became available so we moved across and I eventually had a – an office in the main building, in the environmental sciences [School of Environmental Sciences]. Hmmm, I think one of the corridors in the building was devoted to Climatic Research Unit, one went through swing doors as it were if I remember and there was a – the library first of all on the left hand side and then the – Hubert’s secretary’s office and then his office and then a whole line of offices along this corridor as it were, and I was in one of those rooms as it were. So I had a room to myself then and –

So in the – in the annexe and you had just a partition, what did you have set up in – in that partition in terms of your work, in Swansea you said that you had a – a drafting table and –

Yeah.

That’s about it I think that you’d described but what did you have in this sort of part –

Well I think a desk as it were, that’s all really and my filing cabinets and …

And your work on the – on the 1780s maps, had that continued once you moved across to Norwich?

Yes, oh yes.

Rather than finishing and then you started something new at Norwich?

No, it was the same work continuing and that – that was another aspect of course, bringing the maps, these long – we – we rolled them all up, you know, and I think probably brought them in my car [laughs]. And then of course in the unit here we had a special … desk – map cabinet where the maps could be laid out which are still – it became redundant as it were after a while and, erm, so I’ve got it now in my study upstairs and I can show you the

[01.01.44]

And so you continued to work on the – the daily weather maps for the 1780s?

Yes.

Other people around you in the Climatic Research Unit, what were they working on?

Hmmm, that’s a good point, well other aspects of historical climatology, I can’t really tell you exact details … I’d have to look into that Paul actually, but it was all tied up, you know, with Hubert’s interest in the – the weather over historical, prehistoric times, but I’m afraid I can’t give you detail about that.

[01.02.24]

And what about social relations in the – the Climatic Research Unit, day to day social relations, coffee times.

Well yes.

What – how did that work, both at the annexe and then at the new building?

Well yes we had coffee breaks morning and afternoon, how did the coffee – I can’t remember how we actually made it, hmmm … anyway [laughs] that – that was a feature, yes. And Hubert of course was very friendly, he used to have gatherings at his home for people in the unit, and others as well from the university, and they were great gatherings, he used to live at Ketteringham on the outskirts of Norwich … he had a house there which we used to go to on quite a number of occasions, in the grounds of the church I think … I think I have the name right, Ketteringham isn’t it, yes. So he was quite nearby, you know, we he used to go by car to and fro from there to the unit, and then later he moved to Holt, have I told you, and that’s where his widow is still living.

What do you –

Moira Lamb, hmmm hmm.

What do you remember of the social gatherings of …

Well most entertaining, you know, a great hub-hub of conversation and what have you. Hmmm … it was a great time to, you know, mix with other people in the unit and – and the university, and Hubert being the international figure he organised international conferences on several occasions and you had people come from all – all parts of the world, America and other parts to attend these climate conferences. So there again that was a great gathering of people and no doubt that would be another occasion for him to entertain at his home. So it was a very sort of friendly family affair really.

What was the role of his wife in – in his work?

Oh the usual support of a good wife I suppose, you know, we didn’t – she used to come with him, that’s right when – when he lived at Holt, he used to make I think sort of weekly visits after he had retired, to and fro, and she would come with him, I remember talking to her when he was engaged in his research in the Climatic Research Unit. Very nice lady, we still have – exchange Christmas cards, we’ve just had one quite recently from her saying that she still enjoyed dipping into my book, which I thought was very nice [laughs].

[01.05.23]

And at this time in the early stages of the Climatic Research Unit, when you’re getting together with colleagues to discuss work or when you’re taking part in these international meetings and people are presenting, what are the key sort of debates within the – within studies of the history of climate at this time, because on the one hand you might have different people describing the weather at – in different periods and showing the evidence for their descriptions but I wondered whether there were sort of key debates or key sort of areas or interest or lines of argument within historical climatology at this time?

Yes, well that may be true, erm, I can’t really remember distinctly, I mean the people gave talks and lectures on their particular subjects and then the papers were collected and later there would be a – a book, which I have of all the papers presented for that conf – particular conference, so that’s how it was, you know, collected and used, but you actually heard the people, you know, describing their research in various aspects. I mean Hubert, I mean his – his knowledge was really marvellous, I mean it wasn’t just the 1780s, I mean he was an expert on all the fields of climate going back historically, prehistoric times. You’ve seen his major books have you, you know, the volume one and volume two, great compendium of information, he had a marvellous range of interests and people would then come, you know, which – and they would elaborate on their particular role in that – in his particular fields.

[Climate Present, Past and Future, Volumes 1 and 2, by H.H. Lamb, Methuen, London, 1972, 1977]

Were there – were there disagreements over the interpretation of climatic change in the past or was it a case of people presenting a version of climate change at various – or of climate at various periods and this building up to a picture, or were there any sort of disagreements about the interpretation of –

Oh I’m – I’m sorry to be a little vague on that, I can’t really elaborate on that I’m afraid, you know.

[01.07.53]

What were the links with scientists of other kind interested in the – the history of climatic or environmental change but examining that in a different way? For example scientists looking at geology and making records of sediments or of dating sediments or of looking at beetle record – you know, remains in sediments or of looking at geomorphological evidence for climate change, to what extent did the – the CRU link up with these other kinds of people interested in reconstructing past environments?

Well I think very – very strongly actually, I think there were good links with people at Cambridge, with the work on as you mentioned the – geology and plant life, and I think

Hubert had very good contacts with – I think Professor Godwin [Professor Harry Godwin, Cambridge University Botany School] I think was one of the big names there.

Yes.

And of course Professor Richard West [FRS, sometime Director of the Subdepartment of Quaternary Research, Cambridge] who’s been my supporter with the present book, he was very much involved in that line of work too, and even with geology and the effects of climate on rocks and soils and plants and flora and fauna, that sort of thing, I think which Cambridge has a very strong school. I think another name comes to mind, Shackleton I think, Professor Shackleton [Nicholas J. Shackleton], he was very interested in the Climatic Research Unit. So all these people, you know, from various fields of interest, historically – prehistoric were homing in on the Climatic Research Unit due to Hubert’s wide range of knowledge [and contacts]. So it was a very exciting time really, hmmm.

[01.09.43]

And having finished – presumably at – at some point you finished the daily weather maps of the 1780s, what then was your next sort of priority within the Climatic Research Unit or the – the next area of research that you chose or were asked to pursue for some –

Well you say finished [laughs].

Yes [laughs].

And it’s an ongoing topic, but I’m afraid I haven’t got the time and energy to continue but I still have the charts, blank charts, I still have the data and if I had the resources then I could continue [laughs].

Yes, really what I meant by finished is like you – the project seemed to have a particular – it was funded for a particular amount of time was it by the Met Office?

Yes.

The project that you started in Swansea, so by finished I really meant in terms of the funding?

Yes, I think the funding eventually came to an end unfortunately … so that support there was – was not so well based after a while, but – and of course it’s not – wasn’t just the 1780s, I was involved also with various enquiries about what the world was like in 1816, earlier in the 18 th century and what have you, there was a very interesting conference in Canada about the year without a summer [1816] and I got very closely involved with reconstructing the weather maps during that year when we had a very cold wet summer after the eruption, volcanic eruption in the [Indonesian region], erm … Tambora I think it was called, the huge volcanic eruption which again caused chaos worldwide, like the volcanic eruptions in the 1780s, so that was a very interesting topic which I spent a lot of time on presented a paper in Canada in Ottawa, and that’s been published, I can show the actual illus – collection of papers.

[‘Weather patterns over Europe in 1816’, by John Kington in: The Year Without a Summer? C.R. Harington (ed), Canadian Museum of Nature, 1992]

So, you know, it – it’s become sort of a project which has outs and ins as it were, centred on the 1780s. Hmmm, I don’t know if that sort of answers your question.

[01.12.00]

Yes, and at this time, in the early ‘70s and this era, what was said about the – what tended to be said about the causes of climate change at this time, you’ve mentioned volcanic dust a couple of times today.

Yes.

It’s one thing to reconstruct past climates and it’s another to reflect on reasons for changes at various scales of time I suppose and I wondered what – well we could – we could start with your sense of Hubert Lamb’s views on causes of climate change at this time and then of course your own views of …

Well of course there are a number of factors which can be brought in, like changes in the solar radiation, sun spots and cosmic rays and changes in the ocean circulation, hmmm, changes in the transparency of the atmosphere … and of course now changes due to man. Interesting that with the 1780s, before – this is prior to the industrial revolution, so changes of climate then would have been completely due to natural causes, whereas now we have the added concern of pollution by man, both with carbon dioxide emissions and other sources of pollution. So I think that really is the importance, to see if we can find out what happened in the past and now what’s happening today and see what influence man has had on changes in climate. Hmmm … I don’t know if I’m sort of wandering a bit here but … as I said before, he [Lamb] was very interested in changes in circulation, what brought that about and going back in – in past – into prehistoric times we have ice ages and interglacials coming and going and we’re now in an interglacial – we had an ice age 18,000 years ago, we’ve now been in interglacial for 10,000 years or more and on average an interglacial lasts 10,000 years so the next ice age is on the doorstep really as far as geological times are concerned, but then you have the effect of so called global warming which people advocate is due to man. Is it, or is it some other factor?. Because it seems – I don’t know if I’m talking out of turn here but the actual global climate warming seems to have stuttered a bit now and in recent years, well you can see what’s going on with the present day climate, the warming is not so significant it appears. It – is this going to continue or is it just a change perhaps in the weather patterns that we’re experiencing now?. Hmmm … and going back to prehistoric times, one major effect of course is the Gulfstream and the North Atlantic Drift, how that controls the so called equitable climate of the British Isles, what’s happening now, is that still functioning or not, what about the ice in the Arctic, is that growing or declining? So these are all sort of questions, you know, which are very much in people’s minds at the moment, because going back again into prehistoric times there were cut offs in the Gulfstream due to one reason or another and the North Atlantic Drift didn’t function, it moved either south or became less strong so that brought a change of climate over the British Isles to colder conditions.

When did, as far as you remember, a concern with human produced climate change, whether it’s global warming or not, start to come in at the Climatic Research Unit? From what you’ve said so far it seems as if this wasn’t present in 1971 when it was set up, but

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 173 C1379/33 Track 7 having worked at the Climatic Research Unit from 1971 until you retired with this very long experience, when is your sense of when this concern started?

Yes, that’s a very good question Paul, I don’t really know I – that I can give you an answer there, I think it’s been a gradual process hasn’t it, where people are becoming more and more aware of – we can’t take the atmosphere for granted and we can’t keep on polluting it as we have been doing. Hmmm, no I can’t really give you a definite date or time for that but –

I suppose if – if you spoke to someone about the Climatic Research Unit today what they would think about is climate modelling and global warming forecasting, I wondered when the – kind of the look forward, the predictive work at the Climatic Research Unit started in terms of your impression of it?

Well can I just go to a section here [ Climate and Weather , page 126], hmmm, if I can find it quickly … [quoting] ‘Lamb’s Legacy During the 1950s that is well before systematic evidence of climatic change began to emerge, Lamb extended our knowledge and understanding past climate by analysing a wide variety of documentary and proxy data, ranging from recent historical records to the earlier radio carbon dating. By reconstructing patterns and timescales of past climate he established that change is the norm. In the early 20 th century textbooks have given the impression that prevailing planetary patterns have become stabilised and that notable events such as ice ages, recreation of deserts and the melting of polar ice were things either of the distant past or some time in the future. In the 1960s Lamb shed light on current shifts in prevailing winds and temperatures pointing to possible consequences in 1970s, he calculated that by the early 21 st century atmospheric changes resulting from human activities would begin to effect the course of natural climatic change, and in the 1980s he stated that whatever its cause climate change has a major impact on human affairs.’ So that sort of summarises the thinking behind the change in attitude both in the academic world and the general public I think over the late 20 th , early 21 st century.

Yes … yes.

[01.19.16]

Okay, so then the – having started at the Climatic Research Unit and then you’ve moved to the new building, could you describe any significant changes in the kind of work that you were doing or the sources of data that you were using or the way in which you were presenting it and so on?

Well quite honestly Paul it was simply a continuation of what I’d been doing at Swansea, in a different environment, now in a closed community of the Climatic Research Unit, rather than being an isolated figure at the end of the line as I say at Swansea. So it was a much, you know, better atmosphere really, you know, one felt much more closely involved in the work.

Yes.

Rather than being the odd individual, you know, working on this project in Swansea, I don’t know if that sort of gives you an idea. Hmmm …

Yes, and so could – I wondered whether you could give a sense of the kind of – the rate of progress of – of this work, hmmm, starting – so starting it in Swansea and then – we’re now in the Climatic Research Unit, obviously it would vary but at what sort of rate are you producing daily charts using data? I mean how long does it take for example to produce a – one synoptic chart?

Yes, another very good question, well I had – I had a sort of target as it were, I tried to get all the plotting done as it were, which was very laborious, you can imagine plotting this data from various sources such as from the Mannheim source and the French and the various weather diaries and what have you, I have a – a file I can show you with all the conversion tables and what have you I had to use and consult, so that was very time- consuming, hmmm, days I suppose it would take to plot several charts, three or four charts. Once that had been done then the next stage of course was analysing the charts and I found that much more satisfying, I was sort of being my own met assistant as it were plotting the charts and now I became the forecaster as it were drawing up the charts, so that was much more enjoyable. That probably didn’t take quite so long, I think the main time-consuming

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 175 C1379/33 Track 7 part was putting the actual data – plotting it, individual stations, you know, you’ve seen the charts have you on … [looking through papers], hmmm, let me get the right chapter … ninety-two … [Climate and Weather , pages 92-95] this was an early attempt by the German meteorologist Brandes and this is my own chart for the same day, 6 th of March 1783, and you can see –

So this is page – yes, page ninety-four, from your book Climate and Weather and – so this is a – this is one of the charts for one day, 6 th of March 1783.

Yes. And you can see observations being plotted in Iceland, quite a number in the British Isles, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the centre part of Europe and even some from Russia. So you can imagine I had – I had a special chart which I could lay over the top of these with all the station positions on and I was able to, you know, put points as it were on the actual plot – blank charts where these stations were, made little circles and then started plotting information around; the wind, temperature, humidity, cloud and so forth using the system I had been taught in the Met Office for plotting weather charts. And there you can see me actually drawing a chart with – putting the lines on.

What is the – on that – on the table we – this – is this the new building of the –

This is the new building.

Yes.

Not in the main part of the university, that’s right [correction – my room was in the main part of the University].

Okay, and there’s a – a photograph of you on page – on page ninety-five working on these and yes we can see the – we can see the –

You can see the side of the charts here you see.

Yes, and you’re – you’re plotting information with a pen but there’s a – this – there’s something that seems to overlay the chart.

Oh this is a sort of plastic chart which I was able to put on top which would give me the direction of flow because you see the charts are blank, they haven’t got latitude lines on but this has.

Ah, I see.

So I was able to get the actual wind direction from this chart here.

And having – having made perhaps, I don’t know, a week of charts, and you’re in the – you’ve plotted them up and you’re in the process now of sort of interpreting the way that weather systems are moving over a week, how practically did you do that, did you do that in this office at that desk, laying out?

Yes, yes, that’s right. You can see some of the data here by the way, very faint, I think these are the documents I collected, they look as though that’s the documents perhaps from France, you know, these large sheets which were housed in the Academy in Paris. And this is [the] map chest by the way here where I stored the charts, which is now upstairs [laughs] [a different but similar map chest in fact].

That’s where the charts were stored, and the data, where was that –

They would have been in filing cabinets which you can’t see, perhaps here, or here.

I see, yes, yes in the foreground, yeah.

Hmmm hmm.

And could you talk us through the chart which we can see on page ninety-four, if you could sort of for someone who isn’t skilled at interpreting a weather chart, could you say what is – what is being shown there for the 6 th of March 1783 in terms of the weather patterns over Europe?

Well one can see the – the plotted observations, I think you can just make out the – the wind directions here with these arrows and the – the feathers on the side here indicating the wind speed if I had it, and here in Scotland for example you can see the wind arrows are easterly, in that easterly flow, here in southern Britain you have south-westerly flow, westerly flow here, and a south-easterly flow here ahead of the front and so forth, so that would be very valuable for analysing the charts, the wind flow. And then also each station, hopefully had a pressure reading so that would enable me to draw these lines, the isobars in millibars, every four millibars, 964, 968, 972, etc, and that would allow me to determine where the centres of low pressure were, one here over East Anglia, another one here in the Icelandic area by the wind flow and the low pressure region. Hmmm, so this gives you can idea where the – where the weather systems are, another one here in Northern Italy. And then the actual weather, changes in weather, would help me to determine where a front would occur, here for example you can see there’s a westerly wind there, there’s an easterly wind here so sharp change of wind flow as that front moves – the front would move in the direction of the isobars from west to east and this one would move along that line. And here it gets more complicated but I – obviously I had determined that there was a – another front here with changes of wind, you have south-westerly winds here and south-east – south-easterly winds here.

So this is over the British Isles, yes.

Yes, and then the weather would also help you to determine where the fronts were, there’s rain been reported here, rain been reported there, etc, and lots of rain being reported in this area around the low pressure. So I think those are the main aspects, the wind flow, the pressure and the types of weather would then allow me to put in these lines where I thought the cold front, I wasn’t able to put these on in colour on – on these charts so I used dotted lines, but I would know that this was a cold front and that’s a warm front and this is an occlusion.

And the number of data points on here, places where you’ve recorded, is that typical for a daily chart?

Yes, I think so, by that time I had collected enough information to allow me to make a good estimate of the actual circulation pattern over this western part of Europe, but you see

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 178 C1379/33 Track 7 they become very sparse the further east you go but we were very fortunate to have an – another weather diary which, erm, was kept in Iceland, I can’t remember exactly how we got hold of that but that was most useful.

And –

And we had a lady come from Iceland with her husband and she could read it for me, I remember consulting with her about the actual information because this was in Danish I think. The actual weather observer here had been sent out from Denmark specifically to make weather observations in Iceland [laughs], Rasmus Lievog I think his name was, he would make observations there near Reykjavik. So she was very helpful in my understanding of the weather observations made there. But the ones of course here were English but these were in French and the other ones were in Latin but one got – one got to know the terms after a while.

And having made these charts and stored them in the cabinet that we can see in the bottom left hand corner of – of the photograph, now you’re obviously continuing to look at these charts in order to interpret past changes of – of – of weather and climate, could you say who else is using these charts at this time, who else is coming and taking them out and looking at them and using them?

Well I – I think after I had collect – made the charts for a month or so, I then report to Hubert and he would come and make his classification of weather types for each of those charts and that was able – that gave me an idea how the charts could be catalogued into his system of daily weather types, and then from that of course he would then be able to determine the number of westerly days and give you an idea of what the circulation patterns were for that month.

Did he record these weather types onto the –

Hmmm, yes, he had a –

How did he do that?

By hand and had a wonderful, erm, file, you know, foolscap or even longer for each month, all the days of the month and the actual weather type in each one and that would be transferred to his book … and I of course did the same, I would give a record of them which enabled me to make the deductions given in this book. And that would tie up you see with what he had done in the Met Office, with the charts made by the early Met Office from 1861 onwards in order to have a daily catalogue of circulation patterns.

[End of Track 7]

Track 8

If I could start today with two follow-up questions from last time and then we’ll continue through your life story. The first specific question that occurred to me was whether you had any memories of Hubert Lamb’s home in Ketteringham in enough detail to des – describe it, especially taking in anything that would – might reveal something about him as a person, in other words objects that he had at home or pictures on the wall or things that sort of marked it out as his home rather than a home?

Well the little memory I have, the house at Ketteringham I think was quite a historic house or cottage, it struck me as being a – very much a family home, I think that was the main – the main feature of Lamb, so he had a – a devoted wife, Moira, who we still are in contact with, she lives at Holt where they went eventually after Ketteringham, and the family members, I think they were very sort of close-knit little group as it were and one felt that one became part of that by being a member of the Climatic Research Unit. And he had occasional meetings there of people, people used to come from overseas to conferences and then he would have sort of relaxing evenings as it were, invited people to come for refreshments and what have you and enjoy each other’s company, and he invited Beryl and myself to one or more of these evenings, and there again we felt, you know, part of that close-knit community.

Were the evenings concerned with climate history, were these –

I think they were more – more a social event really, the actual climate history had been spoken about, presented at the conferences, at the university, and then this was a time to relax and be on a more friendly level with the various people, including Professor Lamb and his family.

What evidence was there at his home of his interest in climate history?

Oh I can’t really – I think he mainly had his books and papers at the Climatic Research Unit in his study, which was absolutely brimmed full of items of that nature, and I think the actual home was devoted to the other side, to his family.

I see.

[02.33]

And what do you remember of – and this is another thing that you mentioned last time, international meetings on climate history at the Climatic Research Unit from the time that you started in the early ‘70s, at the beginning of it onwards, do you have specific memories of conferences in terms of the – the things that were discussed, almost the reason for having the international conferences?

Well I suppose the main topic would have been the history of climate all down the ages, I have transactions of one or two of these meetings which I perhaps can show you later on, which would give you more detail about the, erm, talks that were given by these various people from different countries. But it was a truly international matter, he [Lamb] was a magnet as it were for people of – of his subject and I think they were quite pleased to come and be with him and present their ideas at that time. So it would have been a wide ranging conference, you know, from prehistoric times right through to modern times, but I can’t be specific about the actual contents but I can perhaps show you later.

[International Conferences organised by Professor Hubert Lamb at the Climatic Research Unit May 1973: First International Conference comprised various topics with the astronomical basis for recurring Ice Ages and Interglacials being strongly presented. August 1975: WMO/IAMAP Conference, Long-Term Climatic Fluctuations and the Future of our Climate; Sessions on: Global palaeoclimatic chronology; Stable isotopes; Holocene and recent events; Patterns of climatic change; Statistical properties of climatic change; Theory of climate and climatic change; Numerical modelling of climatic change; Climate predictability; and Impact on Man and the international economy of current and future climatic changes. July 1979: Climate and History Conference.]

Thank you.

[03.51]

Now just to get the sort of timings for this session, could you tell me when you retired from the Climatic Research Unit? I mean I know that you still have a profile on the website now and are still associated with it but when – when did you sort of formally or informally retire?

Hmmm, that’s a difficult question, I’ve sort of been a – sort of overlap period between being at the university, actually going in daily to my office, and then working at home as I am doing now, can I give you a specific time? Not really at the moment. Well I started in 1971, I suppose 1970s to 1980, I was there 1980s, something of that period, and then 1990s perhaps more in retirement working at home, but, hmmm …

I suppose, if it’s not too personal a question, when did you sort of stop being paid by them, when did you stop being a – a – an employee of the Climatic Research Unit and retired in that formal sense?

Yes, that’s a good question, I’m afraid I can’t [laughs] really answer that at the moment, but perhaps I could find detail –

But you seem to be suggesting that you – sort of early ‘90s or late ‘80s is a rough timescale?

I think it must have been early 1980s, something of that order, yes.

Early 19 –

Early 1980s.

That you retired?

Being officially paid as it were.

I see, but you continued to go in through the – through – you – you continued to go to your office throughout the 1980s?

Yes, I’m sorry that’s a bit vague and I’ll try and check out – can I give you more details later?

Yes, of course.

Yes, I’ll deal with that perhaps.

I mean it’s quite interesting that almost the date doesn’t seem to have mattered because you’ve – you’ve continued to work in this field –

Yes.

Beyond it, you – it almost seems that you don’t have a set date of retirement, almost because you don’t feel that you did in some ways?

Well I was always interested in producing the charts you see, there were problems of course with finance, hmmm, I mean I think I told you originally where I started at the University College of Swansea as a research worker [Climatological Research Assistant] there, with Professor Lamb as my supervisor as it were, he was still in the Met Office then and the project was being funded by the Met Office at Swansea and then the Climatic Research Unit was set up in 1971, we moved here. It was still being sponsored as far as I remember, I had to present some annual accounts of my work and on one occasion I actually went to the Met Office at Bracknell headquarters and presented my annual report locally to the people there [Meteorological Office Research Committee], the committee who decided presumably whether they could still continue with the funding. So I think that was successful, but how long that went on after that I don’t know. I think eventually the funding was taken away and that might have been one of the reasons, you know, why … why the work was stopped financially. Professor Lamb obtained funds from other sources like the Nuffield Foundation, people of that kind, and I think I must have been supported in my work by these other processes rather than the Met Office. I think I’ve told you, you know, the emphasis on the Met Office in – at that time were – changed as it were from the historical side to the more sort of computerised – computerised methods of predicting the weather, so that might have been the reason, you know, why there was this cut off period.

I know that you’re not clear on exactly when but do you have a sense of roughly when Met Office funding stopped and it was necessary to seek funding from, as you say, Nuffield and –

Well I think perhaps the 19 – early 1980s, something of that period Paul, but I can’t be too sure.

Yes.

But I think that that was a problem, you know, at that time to find financial means to continue with – with the work in the unit.

What was – what was Hubert Lamb’s view on that increasing difficult in obtaining funding from the Met Office?

I really don’t know but I shouldn’t think he would be very happy about it [laughs], because it had been originally one of his – you know, key projects as it were and as I think I’ve told you, I mean the – the support he got originally wasn’t always forthcoming and that was the reason why he decided to take early retirement and set up the unit here, in order to cont – continue with his work in climatic history and changes in climate, because it wasn’t being fully appreciated or funded perhaps in – in the Met Office.

Do you know how he funded the Climatic Research Unit in the beginning, how he funded this independent move almost away from the Met Office?

Well he – I can’t really tell you the actual names but I – I’ll have to think about that but it was certainly funds from other sources that enabled him to set up the unit here, with the support of course with – of the university [see below]. They obviously gave him the room as it were and the facilities in order for the Climatic Research Unit to set up but I think the actual funding would have been his responsibility to bring it in from other private sources, other funds. There’s one name which escapes me I think which was one of the princ – but I think he – the actual notice is up in the Climatic Research Unit, when you go in you can see the notice that – you know, of the person who provided much of the funds at the time.

Now when we – when we work out that name we can add it into the summary at this point, yes.

Yes, there’s one particular name I think who was I think one of the great contributors in – to enable him to carry on with his work [laughs].

[The Climatic Research Unit was established in 1971-1972 with grants from Shell International, BP, the Nuffield Foundation and Electricity Generating Board. Further grants from the Wolfson and Rockefeller Foundations made it possible for the work to be continued and extended. Specific research projects were supported by the Natural Environment Research Council, Meteorological Office Research Committee, Nature Conservancy Council, Commercial Union Assurance Company and the City of Hamburg.]

[10.12]

Now you – you spoke last time about the – the work on constructing the historical weather maps for the 1780s and talked about that project as being – as continuing in – in a fairly steady way from Swansea at the Climatic Research Unit and onwards, but of course while you were at the Climatic Research Unit from the early 1970s onwards, the Climatic Research Unit itself was expanding and changing and new things coming in and I wondered whether you could give me a sense of the changes at the Climatic Research Unit from your point of view; so what changes in terms of what was going on around you in terms of what other people were doing, in terms of new staff coming in, in terms of new projects taking place, what was your memory of that?

[Core CRU staff 1971-1972: Barbara Gray, Robert Hay, Mick Kelly, John Kington, Hubert Lamb, Edith Landsell (Secretary)]

Well I think people came in from various fields but mainly of course concerned with the history of climate and climatic change so we had people perhaps who were experts in the field of tree rings, dating climate by means of that factor … but they were all mainly concerned with trying to unravel the history of climate in various ways, collecting data, I think we had some people who were not necessarily meteorologists like myself but

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 186 C1379/33 Track 8 historians who were able to access historical records, hmmm, I think they had two or three people that came of that kind who were able to access archives in Cambridge or places of that nature. I think I mentioned to you that Hubert also – besides myself had other people who were ex-members of the Met Office, for – I wasn’t really a colleague of Hubert, I was a different generation but in his own generation he had Robert Hay I think I mentioned and … James … [James Craddock] oh his surname escapes me at the moment but there were two main figures . James was an expert in statistics, so I think that was his main reason for joining the unit, he was able to make analysis on that side of the subject, and Robert Hay, he was also interested in the – collecting data and I think I may have mentioned to you that he was – on one occasion visited the Vatican [Archives] in order to find the historical data there. So those I think were main issues as it were. I’m just trying to think of the other surname of James – hmmm, escapes me at the moment I’m sorry, but I can tell you later [see above].

What –

Sorry, does that give you a better idea?

Yes, and who was – who came into work on tree rings as far as you remember?

I think it was Keith Briffa who was one of the earl early members of the unit, I think that was his main field and still is I think, he’s still one of the members of the unit I still have knowledge of when I go in. He’s now professor there.

What do you remember of Phil Jones starting and of his work?

Hmmm, not a great deal, I think he was brought in as a member of the unit at the time for what was his main interest. Again I think he was, hmmm, perhaps … conversant with the computers and, you know, establishing records, so using that new way of establishing temperature series, going back into the past. But I can’t be too sure about that actually Paul. But he was another early member of the unit, yes, an early member of a – sort of a younger generation to myself, so I was sort of – you had three generations as it were, Robert Hay and James, Hubert’s generation, myself and then new people coming in who were students and another one was … I’m sorry to be so vague but … this particular

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 187 C1379/33 Track 8 person I think was an – again a student, either here or at another university who was interested in volcanoes and the effect that they would have on climate and history [Mick Kelly, post-graduate Reading University], but I can tell you their names another time, perhaps later.

[Phil Jones joined the CRU in November 1976]

Do you remember Tom Wigley coming?

Yes, he – he came and joined the unit, I’m not quite sure when. [Tom Wigley joined the CRU in August 1975]

What – how did you come to learn about what other people were doing and by that question I mean were there communal areas … coffee – a coffee room, a seminar room, meeting rooms where you would meet people working on other things in the Climatic Research Unit and through that come to know what they were doing on this?

Well we had – yes, there was a coffee morning or afternoon but that was more of a sort of a social gathering as it were, I don’t think you actually discussed work with one another [laughs], but you got to know what they were doing I suppose in a general way. Astrid – oh that’s another name, Astrid Ogilvie, she was another member who came and she’s particularly interested in – in Icelandic data, so that was her field. [Astrid Ogilvie joined the CRU in October 1974]

[Other members who joined the CRU during the period when Professor Lamb was Director, 1971-1978: Wendy Bell (January 1975); Susan Boland, Secretary (November 1973); Graham Farmer (October 1978); Michael Ford (January 1975); Bernadette Harris, Clerk (October 1978); Martin Ingram (March 1977); Beryl Kington, Librarian (January 1976); Christopher Loader (July 1974); Janice Lough (October 1976); Don McKinlay (January 1978); Peter Mayes (October 1976); Hans Mörth, Deputy Director (March 1976); Naomi Perowne, Administrator (October 1975); Christine Pring, Secretary (December 1974); Chris Sear (October 1978); David Underhill (April 1977); Tom Wigley (August 1975); and Peter Wright (February 1972)]

Was there any … I’m not ask – I’m not asking for sort of anything dramatic but what – were there disagreements within the Climatic Research Unit on the right way in which to conduct research in, climate history, as new methods were coming in, was there a – was there debate about different ways of approaching climate history in terms of scale or detail or method or technologies?

I don’t think so, I think, you know, we were working as a team there in our various fields, as you know my particular field was sorting out the daily weather records, and plotting the information on a sequence of charts. Hmmm, other people perhaps worked on the – perhaps monthly basis or annual basis but I think there was – you know, it was all being steered towards a better understanding, a knowledge of climatic history, so I think we were working as a team for that cause. But of course people came in with their various fields of interest and perhaps contributed more to other sides which aren’t – I’m afraid I wouldn’t be familiar with, you know, such as being able to use the computers and sort out history in that way. But I hope that’s [clear] [laughs] –

Yes, no this is – what do you remember of the introduction of computers, I know you’ve just said that you were viewing it from the outside, you’ve implied that you didn’t use the computers yourself, am I right, yeah?

No no.

But what do you remember of seeing the introduction of computing at the Climatic Research Unit from the outside, what did you see going on?

Well perhaps I’ve given you the wrong impression, I mean we didn’t have a computer, I mean I think people used their … [individual] means at that time, well I – I can’t really – [explain] in detail about that I’m afraid.

Was there a time when a … was there a time in the ‘70s when a computer was sort of delivered or established at the unit and someone started working on it or were there particular people who were especially associated with the use of computers in climate history and …?

I don’t think so, I might – might be giving the wrong impression but I can’t really, erm, comment on that I’m afraid.

So it’s not as if there was a – a room where there are lots of computers and a lot of people working on computers and –

Hmmm.

Other parts of the unit where people weren’t?

No, I don’t think so [laughs] perhaps I’ve given the wrong impression about that, you know, bring in the word computer, I think we were all in our individual offices as it were working away at our documents and … screens and what have you. Of course I didn’t have one in those days, it’s only lately that I’ve been able to use the web and what have you, internet, but I certainly had – didn’t have that access at that time when I was working full-time, but other people might have done I suppose.

At any point did you have a computer on your desk at the Climatic Research Unit?

No, no. No, it was all, you know, hand driven as it were [laughs].

And as you sort of walk round, did other people have computers on their desks?

I’m not sure [both laugh].

Okay.

I mean they would have – they would nowadays of course but at that time I’m not sure, hmmm, I think I told you, we were situated in the so called Village, which no longer exists as part of the university. Maybe, I don’t know [laughs].

I know that in the – in the photograph that’s in your book, Climate and Weather of you at your desk with the charts.

Yes.

There’s no – there’s no evidence there of – of computing, but I wondered whether if you stepped out of that picture, walked along a corridor, went into another room, whether you would find someone with a computer doing something else in the climate – climate history or if you walked along further you’d find a computer room or something like that but I’m – I’m gathering from what you’re saying that you wouldn’t –

I don’t think so, no.

I suppose part of the reason I’m asking is that the – the Climatic Research Unit now is fairly well known for climate modelling, and this seems to be happening – it is happening on – on computers, so I was wondering really about the – the origin of the use of computers at the Climatic Research Unit to produce models of climate or simulations of climate and – or sort of automated predictions of climate?

Well I’m sorry to be a little hazy on that but I – I imagine that that would have come in when the unit moved to the new building on the actual university campus, you know, at the round tower building which you’ve probably seen and I think –

Yes, when did that move happen?

Again it was gradual, people gradually moved from one – from The Village as it were to the main building, I had an office in Environmental Sciences and, er, before the actual building – the round building that was there, but it was all a very gradual process, but I have the feeling that when that was built then people would have moved in and started using it – the computerised side of the – of the subject, and as you say using computer modelling for analysis.

Did you ever move into the round building at any point?

Yes, that’s right, I – again it was a gradual process, I had an office in The Village and then we moved across to the campus – main campus and I had an office and Hubert also had one

And is that what the photograph is taken of in your book, that’s the main –

Yes, that’s right that is the main building of Environmental Sciences.

And so could you then say something about the – the move to the round building, the when and the how of that?

No, I’m sorry, I don’t know. Hmmm, that must have happened later of course because I – I had an office there [mid 1980s], which was off – off the library which is in the lower floor of that building, and it’s still there, the actual office.

Could you describe the rest of that building, did you – presumably at some point you explored the rest of the building rather than staying on the –

Well yes, of course, one went up to the office area, which is on the next floor as it were, the library is in the lower part of the building, more or less below ground level, you go down the steps, when you’re going in the main entrance you go down a little flight of stairs to the library and my office was an offshoot from that and then you have to go up the stairs, there were then offices on the sort of floor above where I was, hmmm, a set of offices there and then you went up a – another flight of stairs to where the director was, where Hubert had his office and Tom Wigley later when he’d became director, and erm, the secretaries had their rooms there on this sort of third – second floor, and then you went up another flight of stairs to another set of offices underneath the roof, so that gives you an idea. And that’s where I think Keith Briffa and Phil Jones had their offices, and probably still are there now [laughs] Coff’, is that the sort of information you want?

Yes. And what would you say about the differences between the Climatic Research Unit as it looked in the main campus when you say you had a corridor, to this new set up in – in the round building in terms of what was there? I mean one might imagine, I’ve seen a photograph of this on the web – the website, one might imagine a new high tech environment but I’m gathering that perhaps this – this difference wasn’t as stark as that.

Well not – not really, I think the thing that comes back to my memory, whether this should go on the record or not, was the fact that it was a very awkward building to furnish because it was round and all our bookcases were square or rectangle and it was a great job to fit everything in. I think it award – it gained awards from the architectural point of view but [laughs] as far as a working area it wasn’t all that one desired [laughs].

And did you have a –

But then [laughs] –

Did you have a computer there on – in your – on your desk in the room off the library?

No, no, it was the same as my office in the Environmental Sciences.

And who else worked on this ground floor?

Well various research students.

Library – library levels.

Yes, and I think there are two or three rooms off – off the library, hmmm hmm.

Thank you.

And the main library of course was a sort of jewel in the crown as it were for the Climatic Research Unit because we had and still have a marvellous collection of books and papers being stored there … and at The Village we also had the library there before it was moved to the main campus and, er – oh that was another feature, yes, I sort of was sort of in charge as it were of the library of – of the – of the Climatic Research Unit, besides what I was doing with my maps, so all the material that came in, pamphlets and books and what have you, and also Beryl helped me and she became a librarian at one stage, and that was a feature that I took on as it were; cataloguing papers and books coming in, being sent from people elsewhere.

[In September 1981 the University offered me temporary employment as part-time Librarian/Archivist in the CRU. I resigned from this post in April 1983 to take up an appointment as Senior Meteorologist with International Aeradio Ltd (IAL) forecasting in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) and Saudi Arabia. By a remarkable co-incidence, Cambridge University Press then offered to publish my historical weather charts. With Beryl’s help I began to prepare the text whilst abroad and redrew the charts for publication on our return to the U.K. in 1985. The book, The Weather of the 1780s over Europe was published in 1988.]

[26.38]

When you say Beryl became the librarian, could you say a bit more about what that involved in terms of time spent there, what she did there?

I think we better ask Beryl about that in – but she did spend quite a lot – a lot – a lot of the time there in – in the unit at one stage, but we’ll find out the details from her I think.

Thank you.

There was a lot of material – I think I told you, when the Royal Met Society moved from the London headquarters in Cromwell Road to Bracknell, to their new building, usual story [laughs], lack of space and so – [talking to wife] Beryl I think you should come in, I’ve told Paul about the fact that you were involved with the library at the Climatic Research Unit, can you enlighten us further, how much time did you spend there?

BK: Well eventually I had two days a week I think, two mornings.

JK: Two mornings?

BK: I became librarian because Professor Lamb was pleased – all these crates – have you told [Paul] about the nets Met Society and told –

JK: Yes, I’ve just introduced that, they – they moved from London to Bracknell.

BK: Yes, when we went to the – the building in London it was opposite one of the museums, at Cromwell Road [Natural History Museum].

JK: That’s right, yeah.

BK: Lovely house but completely, you know, higgledy-piggledy and there were books up the stairs, as you went up the stairs a whole row of them weren’t there, quite an elderly gentleman who was doing it and I think it had sort of got a bit overwhelming.

Yes.

BK: Anyway, then it was transferring to Bracknell and then it came – some of it came here, I don’t think all of it did but I –

JK: They didn’t have enough room did they at Bracknell, that’s –

BK: No no.

JK: Yeah.

BK: And it was just left in the bottom, in the basement of Environmental Sciences in tea chests and there [were] bird droppings and all sorts of things over them, and I looked at this and I thought, well, you know, somebody ought to sort this out, and that’s what I started doing. And I did newsletters – well library sheets and what you’d call them with little comments which Hubert was very pleased about.

JK: Which we had in our collection now didn’t we?

BK: That we’ve got somewhere.

JK: Yes, we had these valuable documents of books didn’t we?

BK: Yes yes. Yes, so – and – and … I’m sure you’ve told Paul, all the different buildings you had at – at – in UEA, first of all you were over in The Village.

JK: The Village, that’s right.

BK: And then it came to the – the main block.

JK: Yes.

BK: And there was a room set aside for the library which I –

JK: Which you had.

BK: Had which was very nice, I sat in there all surrounded by these books, and then – then the build – then the Climatic Research Unit was built [new round building].

JK: Yes, can you remember when that was?

BK: The actual, you know, the round [building] – hmmm, not really.

JK: No, I couldn’t.

BK: I suppose it would be somewhere, I’m not quite sure where, one of your diaries it might say.

JK: Maybe, yeah [early 1980s].

BK: And the library was downstairs, round building, no flat walls to put shelves – bookshelves on [both laugh], brilliant idea but still won prizes for architecture but not practical, and there wasn’t – still wasn’t – there wasn’t room.

JK: No.

BK: But they have introduced since those early days these folding up bookcases which you have in the middle, you wind the, you know, wheel and it goes together or whatever.

JK: Like a concertina.

BK: Yes, but I mean a lot of the stuff has [been moved] – I don’t know where it’s gone.

JK: No.

BK: But the gentleman [Alan Ovenden, present Librarian] who did it last was very good, he did tidy up a lot but I don’t know where a lot of the things – ah, hmmm, I know, you had a letter from somebody [inaud] saying that because of lack of space it was all going to a warehouse somewhere.

JK: Yeah, that’s right, you know.

BK: If you wanted anything to take it now.

JK: Hmmm, that’s right.

BK: I don’t know whether that ever happened. I’m not sure where it went, it went somewhere in Norwich first and then it went out somewhere in some sort of – [warehouse]

JK: One of the villages outside [Norwich] wasn’t it?

BK: Yes, I’m not quite sure where so what’s happened to a lot of it I just don’t know.

JK: No.

BK: There was a – there was a pamphlet collection which I started, I suppose that’s still somewhere.

JK: I think – I think some of it’s it is still there, yes, but I don’t know.

BK: I don’t know, and Hubert’s things are all there I think [CRU library].

JK: Yes, his boxes.

BK: Yes.

JK: Hmmm, in the library.

BK: But, hmmm, we went [earlier] in The Village, that was nice, I had a very nice room in The Village, a big room on the end and a view of Elizabeth Fry’s home which is called – what is that called? Earlham Hall?

JK: Earlham Hall, that’s right.

BK: Yes, drive down [from the CRU] but of course that’s all changed now anyway.

JK: Hmmm.

BK: I think – well that building is pulled down anyway, that’s not there but that was – that was idyllic. Yes, I enjoyed it [laughs], it made a change from teaching music but, erm, then eventually you [John] took it over because your – the funding [stopped] –

JK: Yes, Paul’s interested in that, I couldn’t really –

BK: Yeah, funding disappeared, I think the Met Office stopped funding all [university] research.

JK: Yes, that’s right.

BK: Everything was stopped.

JK: But when was that, I mean –

BK: Well –

JK: I mean they [University] funded me – [please see pages 204-205]

BK: Well we went to – this is when we went to Dubai [and Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.].

JK: Oh yes, I haven’t told Paul [laughs] that.

BK: Partly because that was why, hmmm, and so I mean we were left with literally no money [funding], but – but I said to John, ‘We are not going to give up that – all that work you’ve done,’ don’t know whether you should put this down [both laugh] as –

JK: I hadn’t mentioned it [all laugh], carry on.

BK: Well we were determined that we would stay regardless, whatever, but what we actually did, there were two positions you’d – you thought about, one was a – a meteorological one, forecasting in Aberdeen on the rigs which wasn’t terribly, you know, sounded a bit sort of … what can I say, hmmm, not energetic but –

JK: Risky wasn’t it?

BK: Risky and I don’t think you were really the sort to go clambering up rigs and what have you [both laugh] so –

JK: I did go up there [Aberdeen] didn’t I for an interview?

BK: You did go up [by air from Norwich] and he handed – he [John] was offered the job, yes, and the man you knew because he was [ex] Met Office and I think he was a bit disappointed when you didn’t take it up, because at the same time there was another position going in Dubai [and Abu Dhabi] which was forecasting for a civil engin – a civil [communications firm] – or whatever you call it [IAL, please see p. 212], it [forecasting] wasn’t done by the [U.K.] Met Office then, not in – [the U.A.E.]

JK: No.

BK: It was in Bahrain [early 1960s] but it wasn’t in – [1980s]

JK: Not in Dubai [and Abu Dhabi], no.

BK: Dubai [and Abu Dhabi], that was a private concern. So we went out, we – we were supposed to be going for five years, that’s what they said, and as soon as we got there to Dubai [and Abu Dhabi], which was – which we liked very much, and then they were going to move us to Riyadh [Saudi Arabia]. Oh well first of all they moved us in – from accommodation, very nice house, enormous house we had, no complaints, everything was provided, we went from that, they then – the lease ran out so they didn’t re – they didn’t redo the lease, they moved us to another house, it was [in] a compound [near Dubai, U.A.E.].

JK: Compound, yeah.

BK: But very spacious, so we moved into [another nearby house] – having cleaned up this other house very nicely, done everything we wanted with it, bought that piano [indicates piano], that was in there, they then moved us to this other one, so piano and everything was trundled across sort of two roads to get to the – this other house which wasn’t quite so nice but it was all right.

JK: No.

BK: And then they wanted – having got that settled they then decided they were going to move us to Riyadh.

JK: To Saudi Arabia.

BK: Yes, and we thought, no, we don’t – we don’t particularly want to go there because it was bad enough – we did go – we – [however] we did go to Dhahran [Saudi Arabia], ah, we went there.

JK: Hmmm.

BK: Which we knew nothing about, we had no idea what it was like living in Saudi, piano had to come back to London and then go out – stayed in Heathrow somewhere, went back to Jeddah, went across the desert to Dhahran.

JK: All across [Saudi] Arabia, hmmm.

BK: Because you can’t take anything from the Emirates to Saudi, they must come back to London and then go out again so that’s why that happened, so okay you [we] did – did about two years in Dhahran [and Abu Dhabi] I think.

JK: Yeah.

BK: And then they were going to move us to Riyadh so we thought, no, that is enough, we’ve had three moves and apparently this is what they did so we decided we’d come back. Well we – so John returned to CRU which was already still pending, we didn’t actually sever connections with it.

JK: No.

BK: And in fact the very week we were going, or you [John] accepted that job you had an offer from Cambridge to publish all your charts, so we took all of that material out to Dhahran, it was, you know, to Dubai and Dhahran with us so that he could work on that book [both laugh] so we just came back and continued with it so [laughs] – [please see pages 204-205]

JK: Hmmm, yes, Yes and I remember going to see Tom Wigley and he offered me the position of a Visiting Fellow, unpaid, but that’s what I – [became]

[May 1983: resigned from the CRU to take up a post as Senior Meteorologist with International Aeradio Ltd (IAL) operating in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

March 1985: returned to the U.K. to take up an appointment as a non-stipendiary Visiting Fellow in the CRU.]

BK: Yes, but you did do the library work for a little while [prior to the IAL post in the U.A.E].

JK: Yes, that’s right.

BK: I gave it up and you took it on.

JK: Yes.

BK: Which I think was sort of, you know, two days a week just to – which provided a tiny bit of money, so we actually financed the research from then on.

JK: So the – the money ran out in 1980 [early 1980s], something like that.

BK: Well ’84 [1983] I think we went to Dubai [Abu Dhabi].

JK: Yes, that’s right, yes, then that came – we came back and got this position, non- stipendiary position which I still have you see so that –

BK: But we were determined we weren’t – you know [giving up John’s climatic research], that was our life, John’s work and – the music you see carried us on.

JK: Yes.

BK: And then when John retired we had the pension so in fact we were very well off, not well off but, you know, we were better off [laughs], was more comfortable because you – we had extra then [laughs], instead of having less we had more, which was very – [welcome] and of course that was quite a nice pension because it was the teaching and the Met Office, it was a very long term one.

JK: Yes, I was – yes.

BK: And in fact you took it early – I think that’s the gas man coming.

Right.

BK: Because you had accrued all these years of – of whatever you had it [nearly 40 years], it was just sitting there waiting.

JK: Yes, Met Office, teaching and then university here, and they all married together didn’t they so –

BK: Yes yes.

[This comprised continuous service from 1947 to 1962 in the Civil Service and subsequent employment in the Teaching and University Professions.]

JK: So it was worthwhile taking early retirement.

BK: So we’re glad we didn’t sever links with – with CRU and, you know, it’s – well as I say we were determined, nobody else was working on this project so – so we carried on with it, a labour of love.

JK: Yes.

BK: It really was.

JK: So I hope Beryl’s enlightened you more than I have with our [all laugh] –

Yes yes.

JK: Various stages and it – it was a crisis period you see Paul when the funds ran out so we had to do something, it was a crisis period when the funds ran out, yeah.

BK: Yeah, we weren’t the only one, they [Met Office] didn’t fund anything so.

JK: No.

And the work in Dubai [Abu Dhabi], that was forecasting?

JK: Forecaster, yes.

Yes.

JK: Well I went back to what I had been doing in the Met Office.

Yes yes.

[Laughs].

Well that certainly – yeah, that certainly explains the sort of timing of things and – and – and really explains the – the fact that there isn’t a kind of formal retirement period, in fact you continued working on – on the charts in your own way, in fact self-financing later on.

JK: Yes, hmmm hmm. I’m – I have had the office in the round tower, I like to call it, but eventually I had to vacate that and the – I brought all the charts here, home now so this is where they are now today.

Why was it necessary to leave the office there, given that you were a …

BK: Don’t forget your coffees are over here.

JK: No, can you –

BK: And the reason why Hubert came here was because the Met Office wouldn’t fund his research there.

JK: Yes.

BK: They wouldn’t do it.

JK: No.

BK: So he – I don’t know how – he obviously had a word with the universities and this [one, UEA] was a newish [university] – I think they were six years old.

JK: They were pleased to have him coming here weren’t they?

BK: Yes.

JK: But they didn’t actually provide the funds, he got the funds –

BK: He got all the funding from all kinds of places.

JK: From – can you remember the – the big name who funded him?

BK: Yes, ooh.

JK: Was it Nuffield Foundation?

BK: Could have been – I’m sure, he – he managed to get funds from all sorts of places. [please see page 196]

JK: Yes, he was a great one for, you know.

BK: And he did – he had some very – [useful contacts] he was a good pioneer.

JK: Good contacts, yes.

BK: Marvellous man really.

JK: Hmmm. So –

BK: You’ve [John] had two contacts, Manley and Lamb who are both …

JK: Yes.

BK: I never met Gordon Manley, although he did come here but I didn’t actually meet him, but Hubert we knew very well and we still have contact with his wife, Moira.

JK: And Paul’s asked me why did I move from the – my office in the unit with all my charts to come here?

BK: Well because it would have – they would have – [been stored away]

JK: They weren’t –

BK: That wasn’t Hubert then you see.

JK: No.

BK: Hubert had gone, Hubert would never had destroyed any historical stuff.

JK: Correct, no.

BK: But we had doubts as to what would happen because we know – well I mean Schove’s [Dr D. Justin Schove] things, there they are, people leave things to the CRU, this is what happens on small places and where things change, hmmm, Dr Schove who was another private –

Pioneer.

BK: That did a lot of research, he was a – he had a school, it was his school, he was the owner, headmaster I suppose, somewhere in Kent wasn’t it?

JK: Hmmm, that’s right. [St David’s College, Beckenham, Kent]

BK: Canterbury [actually Beckenham] and he brought – he – he did a lot of work, very useful work and all his papers he passed on to CRU, and John has actually used them in the last book.

JK: Yes, in the book, yeah.

BK: And you’ve thought about tidying them up but you’ve said it’s such a mammoth task.

JK: Hmmm, yeah.

BK: And you – and what will happen to it I’ve no idea, I’m sure somebody won’t know what they are.

JK: And they will just be discard discarded –

BK: That’s what it is, they don’t realise the importance.

JK: No.

BK: I mean that – we’ve known that’s happened all along, we went to the Royal Horticultural Society in London to collect data and they destroyed all the – not them now, but in the 19 th century they destroyed all the original observations and just made means, well they’re no use [for synoptic weather analysis].

JK: No, we want the daily observations.

BK: So [laughs] – so you know, people don’t realise the value of – of these things, so – anyway, erm, Hubert got lots of funding, yes.

JK: Yeah.

BK: And the reason – well I think we were just afraid that there wasn’t any room, they were – there was a little cupboard, go in the library room on the left and there was a little cupboard in there, you found a lot of things in there didn’t you?

JK: Yes.

BK: And they’re quite bulky [John’s historical weather maps] [both laugh], well they have been – I mean actually one of the ladies from Env [Environmental Sciences] whose husband was a professor and she was a cartographer, she did all the charts.

JK: Yes, she helped me out.

BK: For Cambridge University Press on wax paper, had to be done on wax, so they – those are somewhere, those originals are somewhere, I don’t know where.

JK: No [laughs].

BK: But I think we thought, you know, that they’re [to be kept] – I mean we’ve got a map chest upstairs which belongs to CRU, but they didn’t want it.

JK: Yes [laughs] – no, oh that’s right, yes.

BK: So it came here [laughs], so a great big object.

JK: In the back of my car.

BK: Yes, anyway you – and he won’t part with it so [laughs].

JK: I think sort of they – you know, they moved on and perhaps what I was doing wasn’t really relevant.

BK: Well I think that is it, it’s gone on too – I mean they’re doing all sorts of things on computers.

JK: That’s right, yes.

BK: Digitising whatever, if that’s the term. Have your coffee, I’m making one for the gentleman.[Laughs].

[End of Track 8]

Track 9

Okay, could you then tell me about the – the move of your materials for producing the daily weather charts, 1780s, out of the circular building, then – the – the – what is now the Climatic Research Unit, to home, the decision to move material from there and transfer it to home?

Well I – I think it – I mainly did it – the charts I have in sort of sections – yearly rolls as it were, and I just physically moved them with my car from there to here and the – as I say – Beryl said about the map chest which was in my room, which you can see in the photograph [actually a similar item], that was not required by the unit so it was agreed that I was able to have that here and to the people involved – I think that was Keith Briffa and … Phil Jones I believe who helped me in – bring it back here in the boot of my car [laughs] and they helped – I remember them going up the stairs and putting it – I don’t know if you’ve seen my room, the map chest is there now full of material, and the actual maps which have been rolled up into yearly, 1781, ‘2, ‘3, ‘4, etc, are now stored in my room, together with all my papers which I had collected in – in my office originally, in boxes, alphabetical under names of authors and they are again in my study upstairs.

And how far have you got in plotting daily weather maps for the 1780s in terms of, if you are going from the beginning of the 1780s to the end in that order – in that direction, how far have you got with that project? Because last time I – I think I asked a slightly naïve question, something like when did you finish the 1780s or something and you very patiently explained that it’s a – a very much an ongoing project, and I’ll ask you a bit later about the sort of time it takes to do one, but how far have you so far got through the decade?

Well the – the charts which have been published by the Cambridge University Press, they cover the years 1781 to ’85 [1785] I believe, but I’ve also got charts for 1786 which I don’t think have been published and various odd charts for other periods in the 1780s of particularly important events like the French Revolution, things of this nature and notable weather events, but it’s not a continuous series so there are a lot of gaps I’m afraid now. And also I have – I think I told you, constructed charts pre 19 – 1780 and after 1780s for – I’ve had requests from people, you know, asking what was the weather like when William of Orange invaded England in 1688, so called Glorious Revolution, so I’ve got a whole

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 209 C1379/33 Track 9 series of charts for the latter part of the 17 th century, again in my room. So that’s quite a nice series. And then odd charts in the 19 th century, the Battle of Waterloo and things of this nature which I have a chart for, which are published actually in – in the book.

And could – could you give me a sense of how you continued to work on – on these charts at home, and when I say how I mean your sort of working routines at home if you like? How you went about continuing this work at home?

Well quite honestly I haven’t been continuing because it’s a very tedious and time- consuming exercise to carry out full-time and I’ve had other projects such as the – the book for example which has really taken – it really took over my working interests so I – I regret that – that continuation of plotting weather charts on the daily basis is – is not really going on at the moment but it – if I had perhaps a whole team of research assistants then it could be made a possible feature but of course that would – that’s only a dream. So it’s really left in abeyance I think the actual plotting and construction of daily weather maps, unless something turns up and people say, ‘Ooh, would you kindly, you know, produce a series for whatever period,’ and it could be taken up again quite easily but … I don’t know, I can’t really see that coming up but anyway it’s feasible [laughs].

And to give someone on the outside with absolutely no experience of plotting a weather chart of any kind, could you give a sense of how long it takes to produce a chart for a day?

Well not too long, I would say the actual plotting would perhaps take you full-time a day’s work, producing one day’s chart, something of that order because they would be about forty, fifty or more stations to plot physically by hand, I can’t imagine that would take you more, perhaps more than a day or so, so you could perhaps produce a day – a chart a day, does that answer your – ?

Yes, but that’s, just as you say, the plotting.

Yes, and then of course the analysis which would be perhaps another day’s work, but you could do the analysis – I think you could do two, three or more charts, you – by draw – drawing the isobars and the fronts, that wouldn’t be so long or so tedious, the actual tedious work was is plotting the – the actual data, which will be more time-consuming.

And if you had more time, and as you say a team of research assistants, do you have here at home, as well as charts you’ve already done and blank charts, do you have the data that would allow you to – to continue to construct the weather charts for the 1780s and sort of close gaps and …

Yes, but it’s only a limited amount I have here at home, mostly it’s still in the Climatic Research Unit in the files there. If we went there you would see that I have two or three banks of files [filing cabinets] with my data stored there now, such as the information from France and all – all the other various countries, so that is – that could be taken out and used, how far it goes I’m not quite sure, I think I collected data for most – most of the 1780s, so it is feasible to take that up again if – if necessary.

And –

And I have, sorry to interrupt you, but I have some film – rolls of films here in – in my room which don’t take up too much room because all that data is, you know, would be rather … impossible to store here, but I have a few reels of film with data on of some of the historical weather stations such as a station in Scotland which has a long-running daily series, and Thomas Barker’s work, his observations, I have a film of that, reels of film with that – oh microfilm, that’s the term I was trying to find, and I have a microfilm reader in my room which I could – which I have used occasionally to access this sort of material but it – it takes a lot of time I’m afraid [laughs]. And this of course is the asset of computerised [data], having it on – computerised methods, but I’m afraid I haven’t done that.

And how do you think that your – your work on plotting the daily weather charts is viewed by, erm, other members of staff at the CRU, and the change in the way it was viewed over the period in which you were working?

I really don’t know, hmmm …

I –

How can I describe that? Hmmm …

In the discussion that we just had with your wife and we were sort of talking about funding and dates and things, she seemed to suggest that by the time you moved charts and things out of the round building that the – that the main focus of work at the CRU had slightly changed, and I don’t know whether she said moved onto computing and digitising, so I wondered whether you could say something about the – the change in the way that your work was viewed, almost the – the change in perhaps status of your work over the period from the early ‘70s when your work was very central to the CRU because in fact that was why it was set up, it was the project.

Yes.

But the kind of change in the way that that work is viewed relative to other things the CRU do?

Well as I – as I mention in my book, I think – my feeling is that the – the emphasis has not been so much on what I call dynamic meteorology and climatology, in other words trying to determine the circulation patterns that have brought about changes in weather and climate, which I think is, you know, essential really to understanding both past, present and the future climate, and perhaps that emphasis is not so strongly thought of now, and I think I’ve hopefully brought that out strongly in – in the book that this is really essential to understanding climatic change, you should understand or try and find out how the circulation patterns have varied in the past, rather than just constructing a series of temperature, rainfall, humidity. Because all these factors, elements such as temperature, rainfall, humidity and what have you, they all depend on the circulation pattern.

Yes, I –

And that I think is the key.

Yes, I think that you used the phrase, hmmm, a – a historical study of changing circulation patterns over the British Isles allows the – the historians of climate to keep their finger on the pulse of what’s happening more generally.

Yes, that’s what Hubert said, yeah.

In global circulation, yes.

Yeah.

What – how would you account then for this move away from an interest in what you call dynamic meteorology in a study of circulation patterns, I think you said that there’s a tendency now to look at just variables, I think you said temperature and – [rainfall]

Yes.

How would you account for that change why has that happened?

I don’t really know, I mean essentially when Hubert set up the unit we were ex- meteorologists, very much concerned with that side of meteorology, other – perhaps other people have come in who don’t have this expertise in being able to construct weather charts and circulation patterns. Hmmm … I mean you hear much talk about extremes of weather today, you know, whether they’ve happened in the past or not and you get the impression sometimes from the media that these are unique events, but if you delve back into the past you find that these aren’t particular – not particularly unique and we’ve had them in – in the past, even perhaps affecting areas more strongly. I don’t know if I’m right in that way but … how else can I put it. But anyway that’s, you know, what I feel, that in order to understand what’s going on today, rather than just thinking about the actual events themselves, why are they occurring, and one of the main themes which I’ve taken on from Gordon Manley is the study of the – of the westerlies over the British Isles, and at the moment with these cold winters and warm summers and what have you, it’s due to the decline in the westerlies, we are now living in a period when the westerlies are not so strong as they were in the earlier part of the 20 th century, when we had a more favourable climate. So when the westerlies go into decline you have other patterns, what we call blocking patterns, occurring and these lead to extremes of weather, dry, wet, cold and warm seasons, whereas if you have the westerlies blowing strongly as we’ve had quite recently in this latter part of the winter, we have these mild wet conditions, but early in the

I’m very interested in what you said about the fact that when the Climatic Research Unit started people like yourself and Hubert Lamb had a background in meteorology were in fact, in your case, very much a meteorologist, some –

Yeah.

Members of staff who came to CRU later on, did they tend to have backgrounds in sciences other than meteorology’s, does that partly explain the decline in interest in circulation patterns in [telephone ringing] dynamic meteorology?

Yes, maybe, hmmm. Is that your phone?

No, I think it’s the house phone.

Oh – oh Beryl’s got it, okay, thank you. Hmmm hmm, yes, I think so really. There’s been a change of emphasis in the expertise for studying weather and climate.

Hmmm. And is this – do you – would you regard the – this as a lack of – in discuss – in sort of modern discussions about climate change, you tend not to hear about westerlies and about circulation patterns and about blocking, would you regard that as a … a problem in – [understanding climatic changes?]

Hmmm, I think so, yes, hmmm, I think that’s a pity really. I think more could be laid on – on that basis … hmmm, I mean for example my – one of my hobby horses is the lack of information given in the media when they present the weather forecasts, I mean it’s all been ‘dumbed down’ [requests quote] where they have these – this marvellous technology of showing the weather over the British Isles, blue areas, white areas and what have you, but I say where’s your chart [synoptic weather map], and that’s how we used to start off – Michael Hunt was one of the pioneers of weather forecasting on TV in Anglia, East Anglia, always started with a synoptic chart, once you’d got that in front of you then you could explain what’s going to happen, why it’s happened, etc, instead of having all these pretty

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 214 C1379/33 Track 9 symbols as it were portrayed. I think my wife gets a little concerned [laughs], he’s [John] going to grumble again, there’s no weather chart [both laugh]. So that’s what I feel, you know, that the actual synoptic situations and circulation patterns should be more perhaps emphasised – they seem to be afraid that the general public will not understand, hmmm, but that’s not true, when Michael Hunt was presenting his charts he had warm fronts, cold fronts, depressions, etc, and he always – every so often he’d say, ‘If you want more information I can send you a – a – a pack,’ as it were, ‘explaining all this information,’ and that’s how I started when I was at school in geography, I saw these patterns being portrayed of warm and cold fronts and I thought to myself, well what are – what are these features and I made it my business to find out, so … but they don’t seem to have that emphasis now as it were to –

And in – in modern treatments of – of climate change, when people are talking about the effect of climate – carbon dioxide or the future effect of the effect of carbon dioxide, why do you think it is that these dynamic concepts – concepts in meteorology aren’t raised or discussed?

[Laughs] Well I – I don’t really know, I suppose it’s … it’s be – become politicised hasn’t it to some extent, you know, the funding required for trying to decrease carbon dioxide emissions and what have you. Hmmm …

Hmmm, what is your view on climate change prospects on the – the role that is claimed for carbon dioxide and for human influence more generally?

Well I think it’s just one of the factors that, erm … I think it’s perhaps too heavily emphasised that this is the key factor for climatic change. I mean when you consider that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a very rare gas, but the – they bandy these – these figures about, you know, about the increase in carbon dioxide, well if the increase in actual fact occurred it would still be a very minute … constituent of our atmosphere and there are other factors as well which could be equally, or more, effective. I mean the talk about greenhouse gases, well carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas but it’s only a minor one, the main greenhouse gas is water vapour and that is a much more important factor, controlling the climate. So I think it’s sort of a hobby horse, you know, which has been used as a way

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 215 C1379/33 Track 9 to frighten the public or, you know [laughs], give some sort of emphasis to a feature which is maybe not the – the true – true factor, but that’s just my own opinion.

And you think – and to what extent do you think that this is linked to the – the training of people who are now called climate scientists?

Yeah, that’s another factor, climate scientists, what’s wrong with the term climatologist? I mean you don’t talk about weather scientists with meteorologists after all … anyway, that’s just my hobby horse, you know, that you’re quite right, they all – they are all climate scientists, but they are climatologists really, the study of climate, that’s what it means.

[End of Track 9]

Track 10

Now last time and in your book Climate and Weather you explain how the production of daily weather maps was analysed by Hubert Lamb and yourself in terms of his weather types, his series of weather types, and how this series of weather types was a way of recording changes in circulation patterns over the British Isles and thereby changes in global circulation, so this was concerned with the weather types. And between this session and the last session you kindly emailed me to tell me a little bit more about the – the Lamb series of weather types and you said that it was a continuous run for 150 years.

Yes.

A daily catalogue of Lamb weather types, but that it had been recently discontinued by the Met Office, and I wondered why?

[Laughs].

Why –

You’d have to ask the Met Office about that I’m afraid [laughs], I don’t know, I was very concerned [about] that – and what I’m – did I tell you what I’m doing now, I am trying to continue the series from when it was broken off by the Met Office in my own way and I hope to perhaps publish that in due course, to bring the series up to date, and that’s what – that’s one of the features, one – what I’m doing now actually, every day I’m classifying the weather type over the British Isles. I’ve been looking through my old Weather magazines and every month they produce a monthly – daily series of charts and I’ve been going through those and classifying them from when the Met Office stopped, you know, doing it and using my own way – my experience with Hubert of being able to classify the weather charts on a daily basis, and I can show you later if you’re interested what I’ve done so far. I was to continue it up to 2009, so have a complete decade of weather types and then I’m going to analyse and find out how the westerlies have behaved over that decade and to see if what I’ve said in the book is really happening where I’ve suggested that there’s been a decline and we’re living in a decline at the moment, and that’s the reason why we’re having these extremes for example.

You – I think you said somewhere that when this – when this series of weather types, each time it was sort of published there was a kind of audience for it who were waiting to see what had happened.

Yeah.

To what extent are you able to continue this work and publish it in an ongoing way, is that possible from home?

I hope so, yes, hmmm hmm. I’ve been – I’ve been in contact with the German weather magazine, the Meteorologische Zeitschrift and I’ve had friendly contact with the editor who has published [my] work in the past in this journal, which is now published by the way in English, although it’s a German weather magazine they’ve considered that English is the sort of lingua franca of the scientific world so they publish all their books [papers] now in – in English or – despite the fact it’s a German magazine. And, hmmm, I was thinking – this is long term, I haven’t actually made contact with the gentleman, but perhaps it could – this would be a venue for what I’m doing now on the – on the British – on the Lamb weather types. The – the German Met Office you see have a similar weather type system which his is called the – the – the Grosswetterlagen, large scale weather patterns which was initiated by Franz Baur, similar pioneer to Professor Lamb and he started their series which is ongoing and it’s being brought up, continually updated, the GWL, Grosswetterlagen so I think, well if the German weather service are doing it what’s happening here, why is it being discarded so that’s my little, you know … part – [time] work at the moment.

And how are you recording it in the meantime, in anticipating future publications?

On paper, yes, on columns, you know, in my files [laughs]. And I hope eventually perhaps I’ll have a little article based on it and as I say I don’t – I haven’t made any overtures yet to the – the German people but perhaps they’ll publish it in their – in their weather magazine.

So up to 2007, who at the Met Office was continuing this classification, this continuation of the weather types here?

I really couldn’t say, I think the Hadley Centre I think in the Met Office at Exeter, I don’t really know Paul I’m afraid.

And I suppose another question is I – I had imagined that – that Hubert Lamb became disconnected from the – the Met Office by moving to the Climatic Research Unit, so I was almost surprised that the Met Office had continued with his weather series until 2007, had they – was it possible for them to continue that without involvement of Hubert Lamb himself while he was still alive? I mean are they – is this a continuation of his system, but not involving him?

I’m not sure, I mean there are obviously people like myself who would be able to classify the charts using his system and it’s not a, you know, not a secret as it were, it’s been published well, so I think if you’ve got meteorologists like myself who would be able to classify the charts that’s obviously what they’ve been doing. And I think they were able to computerise it as well by some means or other, I can’t go into detail but at one stage it was a computerised – it’s – his system is called a subjective system because it depends on how you look at the charts, you know, and somebody else may classify a day another way, slightly different, but I believe they evolved a system which was more objective and that was in use for some time and I thought, good, they’re carrying on with it but then it’s stopped now, even that system has stopped now so it’s now gone back to what I call a subjective system with myself. But they – they don’t know anything about it of course [laughs]. They may not be interested so –

And how did you feel when you learned that it had been stopped, how did you –

I was very disappointed, yes, hmmm. Hmmm … that’s all I’m afraid, yes, I mean I haven’t been in contact, I wouldn’t make any cont – any comment about it, they obviously thought it was not really necessary to continue, I don’t know why but –

So it’s just fortunate that you are able to do it and willing to do it yourself?

Yes.

[06.47]

The last thing that I’d like to ask you about is if you could tell the story of the writing of Climate and Weather being one of your most recent major projects and by the story I mean the story of it from the invitation to do it, what was involved in actually working on it up, to the publication of it?

Well I think, originally, as far as I know HarperCollins got in contact with the Climatic Research Unit because they oft – thought you know, with Hubert being a former director, and then I think Phil Jones sent out an email if anybody would be interested and that’s how – I don’t think anybody else took up the offer and so that’s how I came to get in contact with HarperCollins. And that’s really the beginning of it, you know.

And could you say – I’ll ask you about the decisions you made in writing it, but what sense did you get from HarperCollins about what they wanted in terms of this new … New Naturalist book on climate and weather?

Well the original book by Professor Gordon Manley was very prestigious in their series and they realised that, you know, climate – climatology and meteorology had moved on since that time so they moved – they didn’t want to [simply publish a new edition] – I thought at first it would be an update of his book, so – and that rather concerned me, I thought, oh dear, I don’t think I can do that, but then they assured me that they wanted a book by me, you know, my own ideas of how things have changed, so it was really a completely new venture, wasn’t updating Gordon Manley’s which I didn’t really envisage would be possible. But they told me several times, ‘It’s – we want your idea about how climate and weather have evolved so,’ so that was the spur as it were, you know, for me to start thinking about it seriously and I came to realise of course this would be a means of putting down in a permanent form my whole career, as it were, in the Met Office and Climatic Research Unit and that’s how I feel, you know, it’s been a great boom as it were. I never thought I would be able to do this, I mean I’ve had papers published all throughout the years but I’m starting now to put it all as it were condensed into one volume, so that thrilled me no end. And it does still thrill me, every time I go upstairs I have a look at it and think, or I turn to a page and, did I say that, sort of thing, you know, and it gives me sort of great pleasure.

When you – when you said that you were a bit concerned about the prospect of updating Gordon Manley’s British – Climate and the British Scene .

Yes, that’s right.

You said you didn’t think it would be possible or that you didn’t –

Well a daunting start – task I think, you know, because he had his own expertise, he was very much a [renowned] climatologist and he had all these ideas about climatology which I really wasn’t an expert on, you know, I couldn’t really compete on that, but when it was said, ‘We want your ideas, as it were, on how climate has evolved,’ and so that made it better to take on. But as you see in the book, you have the book have you?

Yes yes.

I give full acknowledgement, you know, to Gordon Manley and what he did and it’s really sort of a continuation of that type [laughs]. So I hope that answer – sort of answers your question.

How long did it take you to assemble and write?

I think it must have been about, ooh, hmmm, seven years I suppose when I first started, I have the file but – and it wasn’t continuous at first, you know, it was rather discontinuous, haphazard, hmmm, had – didn’t really get down to the details of it until much later … and they were very – [HarperCollins] were very flexible, they – they gave me a deadline as it were, but I found I couldn’t keep to it but they allowed me further deadlines in the future, but eventually of course it became the [final] deadline and I had to really get down to it and pull all the stops out to finish the book for that particular time, which I did, so that – it – the work really accelerated at that point.

And how closely were you edited in writing it, were there … were there sections that you included that they wanted –

Yes.

Cut?

Oh yes, indeed, I’m very impressed. I mean previously when I have had books published you really had to, hmmm … what shall we say, hammer the – the publishers about, you know, what – what they’re going to do next, but it was the other way around at HarperCollins, they were hammering me about getting it finished and getting it in order and what have you. And they had a very good copy editor, I had good contact with the chief editor, a lady there at HarperCollins, [Julia Koppitz], then it went out to another – a copy editor, he went through the whole text, he improved my English as it were and sorted out any discontinuities, where I had one – said one thing one way and some – something else another – in another part, so it was all very closely edited by them.

And how did they guide you on the – I don’t know, the level of the detail or the … or the way in which they wanted the history of weather and climate in Britain to be presented, discussed?

Well they had some quite good ideas about that, you’ve met … Richard West?

Yes, yes.

Who was one of my sort of sponsors as it were, advisers, and he also read the texts and he came back with some very good ideas of how it could be rearranged as it were, the chapters I think, they were not quite as they wanted, and he suggested some good ideas, especially with the history of climate in prehistoric times because he’s an expert on that, you know, a geologist, you’ve –

Yes, in the Quaternary period and –

Yes, that’s right, exactly.

Biology and geology, yeah.

So I’m very grateful to him, he came here originally at the beginning of the book starting, had a nice conversation and I’ve been in contact with him since that time, and I was so

© The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk John Kington Page 222 C1379/33 Track 10 pleased when he said – when he congratulated me on – on the book, eventually. So that was a great boost, you know, as he’s been very kind.

What other feedback have you had on the book in terms of reviews and lett – letters and –

Yes, quite a – quite a bit really, people have … said they liked it, I can’t think of any particular response … and it’s going to be reviewed. Oh I mentioned the German Met Magazine and the editor there – we sent – we sent copies, rev – review copies to various people, like the Weather magazine here and the German weather magazine and some other people, and he [German editor] has a copy and he’s told me that it would be – it’s under review and it will appear – the review will appear in their magazine shortly. And the Royal Met Society Weather magazine has also a copy and that review should come out in March [yes, it was favourable]. So it’s been a rather slow process, you think when – when the book’s published, you know, things will happen straightaway and you’ll get a rapid feedback, but it’s been rather slow but perhaps it will develop now with these reviews coming out in various journals.

[14.52]

Could I ask you now to say something about the experience of being interviewed for National Life Stories, and as part of that if you could talk about the more – the more general way in which you seem to have been stimulated to … find photographs and things relating to your history, in other words, so your experience of it but also the – kind of the effect of it, the effect of it on you and the way that you’ve been thinking recently?

Well Paul, it’s been a great boost as it were, all these photographs and documents have been sort of lying about in drawers and what have you, collecting dust, so it’s given me an incentive as it were to bring them out into the open, so I’m very pleased to – that you had – you’ve made contact, you know. Hmmm, and the fact that they may be of value has also been very pleasant [laughs].

How did you feel when you received the – the approach letter for – for the interview from National Life Stories, do you remember your feelings on receiving the letter?

What from – the original letter from you?

Hmm.

Well that – that was also a – a very good experience [laughs]. I was quite thrilled about it, yes, to think that you would be interested in … in my circumstances [laughs].

And in terms of the material that you have, would you be able to give a brief description in terms of the amount of material and the type of material that you have in terms of a personal archive relating to your life and work? When I say the amount, if you could – I don’t know, talk about a number of bookshelves or a number of boxes of data and things like that, so if you could give just a brief sketch of what you have in terms of a personal archive here?

Well I suppose the main collection has been, you know, that the photograph albums which have been … stored away in – in drawers and the – my old school notes, the drawings I made, er, the photographs I’ve taken which I don’t think I’ve shown you many of those, but they’re mainly in the book, of clouds. So that’s been my – one of my great interests, cloud study. Hmmm …

And – and material relating to your profession as a meteorologist, you have –

Yes, that’s right, the notebooks I had when – [at the] Training School originally, when I first joined the Met Office, I never thought they would be looked at by somebody else besides myself, so that gave me a boost, you know, to think that I had – I’m so pleased I have kept them [laughs]. Sort of many of these – what I have regret is about school exercise books, all the subjects one is taught at school, history, geography, mathematics and what have you, where are they? I think when you leave school you sort of have the feeling of to leave that behind and I’m afraid they got discarded one way or another, so I was so pleased that I could show you the history of architecture book, and that’s I think one of the few schoolbooks I kept [laughs]. But what about all the other books on history and geography and what have you, where are they; that would have been most interesting but they’re lost forever I’m afraid.

And I think you’ve – you’ve almost covered this already, but what you have here in terms of historical weather data and charts and that sort of material, I mean you’ve mentioned that you’ve got the map chest with charts.

Yes.

You’ve got yearly rolls of – of –

Of – of the charts, yes, they’re up in my room, I’ve found a new place to put them underneath my desk ‘because I’ve been taking up room in my room – in my study but we’ve found another home for them now so they’re rather bulky, about this size you see.

Sort of a metre across, yes. About a metre across you just said?

Yes, that’s right, yes.

And – and the – and the raw data, weather data, I mean you described in your recording carrying suitcases of it back from various archives.

Yes.

Some abroad, some in various places in Britain but how – how much material of that kind do you have here and how much is at the Climatic Research –

I think it’s mainly at the Climatic Research Unit, because that’s very bulky, you know, sort of foolscap size documents, in the filing cabinets there. Hmmm, all I have here really are just … rolls of microfilm, which don’t take up too much room. I have a – a card index of historical weather data which I can refer to.

Here?

Yes.

When did you produce the card index?

Well it’s been used or evolving over a period, you know, for years as – as the data has come to my knowledge.

Have you attempted to computerise the data in any form, scan or input?

Hmmm, not really, no. I may have put it on the [computer] screen or on my PC, so the file, something one means to do but I haven’t got round to it really, so it’s mainly on card – on card index. So there’s a card index for historical weather data and are mainly in – in date order, and I – I also have a card index of all the pamphlets I’ve collected under author, alphabetical order.

[End of Track 10]

[Postscript: Another aspect of my research developed in the 1990s when, after my return to the Climatic Research Unit as a Visiting Fellow, I became a member of the EURO-CLIMHIST team directed by Professor Christian Pfister, Bern University. As a result, and following the lead of Professor Hubert Lamb, contacts were made with like-minded climatologists in continental Europe. Workshops were attended in Bern, Copenhagen and Tallinn, and past climates of Europe were reconstructed by subjecting historical weather data to synoptic dynamic methods of analysis. Sample paper: ‘Wintertime European Circulation Patterns during the Late Maunder Minimum Cooling Period (1675-1704)’ H. Wanner (Switzerland), C. Pfister (Switzerland), R. Brázdil (Czech Republic), P. Frich (Denmark), K. Frydendahl (Denmark), T Jónsson (Iceland), J. Kington (U.K.), S. Rosenørn (Denmark), and E. Wishman (Norway) Theoretical and Applied Climatology , 51, 167-175 (1995)]