“THAT VENERABLE CITY”
I AM WRITING TO EXPRESS my appreciation for the excellent article on St. Albans in your November 2002 issue (page 40). Although I was born in the midlands, I have many happy childhood memories of summer holidays spent in that venerable city, which was home to my mother and her 11 siblings.
I remember my feelings of utter awe at the size of the cathedral, and at the magnificence of its high altar. I remember also walking with extreme care in the side aisles, in order to avoid stepping on the tombstones of the saints buried underneath the stone floor. I remember searching the honour roll to find the names of two uncles who died together at the battle of Paschendale in World War I. Then there was the River Ver winding through the cathedral grounds, with its resident swan families tranquilly gliding over the water.
Other memories include the Norman clock tower, the timbered houses of French Row, the market place, and the flaming red berries of the mountain ash trees that lined Carlisle Avenue where it intersected with Waverly Road, just across from my uncle’s lovely home, “Summerhill.”
It has been many years since I visited St. Albans, but I am planning to do so again this year and am looking forward to renewing old memories.
Stella Woodworth
Wallingford, Connecticut
HISTORICAL REVISION
As FAR AS HISTORICAL REVISION (May, page 4), who is to say that the Tudors didn’t do a smear job on Richard II? No ruler of that time could afford to be less devious than his compatriots. Machiavelli was just telling it like it was, but the Tudors had to work hard to establish legitimacy, and the guy was dead after all.
John T. Weeks
Hanover, New Hampshire
HUGH MILLER
THANK YOU SO MUCH for the March 2003 article on Hugh Miller’s Cottage (page 56). Hugh Miller was a first cousin to my great-great-grandmother, Samina Miller Johnson. My great-grandmother wrote in a letter to my mother years ago that her mother had seen Hugh sitting in his garden writing many times.
My husband and I visited Cromarty in 1969. We went through Hugh’s home and met the caretaker, a lovely woman who lived in a cottage across the road, which was/similar in appearance to Hugh’s but had been completely modernized.
We appreciated the article because it gave us some information about our family we did not previously have.
Edith McDavitt
Broomall, Pennsylvania
WINGING IT
I WAS VERY INTERESTED in the article about the Hurricane pilot (March, page 24). The Hurricane was my favourite plane, since I worked in the office of a factory that made wings for it. The LMS railway had a subcontract to build the wings, probably for replacements, and we worked from 9 am to 7 pm five days a week, and 9 am to 5 pm Saturdays and Sundays for the greater part of the war. We built the wings from the machine shop to the finished product, painted and ready to ship with the necessary inspection papers, which I had to get for them from the inspectors. As I recall, we sent out 26 pairs one week.
Hilda Combs
Atkins, Arizona
AN ALLY’S TALE
I READ YOUR ARTICLE about Battle of Britain fighter pilot Dennis pavid and the editor’s comment that it won’t be long before new first-hand accounts of those days are no longer available.
David said that on New Year’s Day in 1945 he was flying over Akyab in the Middle East. Prior to that day, I had been stationed in England with the 106th “Golden Lion” Infantry Division. By 1st January I was an American prisoner of war in a German hospital after being hit by a bullet and captured during the Battle of the Bulge, on 19th December 1944.
Transferred to the large Stalag XI-B 35 miles north of Hanover, Germany, I shared a Red Cross food parcel with a Canadian bomber crewman who had parachuted out over Germany and still had his electrical wires sticking out of his flak suit. Although I didn’t know this until later, our camp, was only 20 miles away from where Anne Frank was kept prisoner.
We were liberated by a British Armoured Division on 16th April 1945—and 57 years lad r I read about RAF pilot Dennis David.
Kenneth Larson
Los Angeles, California
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