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How I discovered the author Margery Allingham
IN 1965 I HAD to apply for admission to secondary school. As part of the preparation for this, the headmaster of my preparatory school (The Hall in London’s Swiss Cottage) interviewed each of the pupils who were ready to apply for admission. I was one of them. With some trepidation, I met him in his office. One of the questions he asked was: “What do you read?”. I answered: “Thrillers”. Then he asked me which thriller writers I liked. I answered: “Ian Fleming. I enjoy the James Bond stories.” Mr Cooper, the headmaster, seemed upset by my response. After a moment, he asked: “Don’t you read Margery Allingham?” I had never heard of her, and when I told him this, I felt that he thought I was a ‘lost cause’. Now, 59 years later, I have not yet read any books by her, but thanks to Mr Cooper, I have known about her for a long time.
Some interesting places around Hampstead
I LIKE THE WORD “environs”. I believe that I first encountered it as the title of an American road map of Philadelphia, which I acquired when I was living in Chicago, Illinois, in 1963. In those days, I was an avid collector of maps, and I had a relative who lived in Chicago and worked for the Sinclair Oil Corporation. It was he who gifted me a collection of Sinclair’s company road maps and some others, which included the one mentioned already.
The word ‘environs’ is according to an etymological website (www.etymonline.com):
“… late 14c. (implied in environing), “to surround, encircle, encompass,” from Old French environer “to surround, enclose, encircle,” from environ “round about,” from en- “in” (see en- (1)) + viron “a circle, circuit,” also used as an adverb, from virer “to turn” …”
So, it was an appropriate word to use in my book “BENEATH A WIDE SKY: HAMPSTEAD AND ITS ENVIRONS”, which I published in 2022. The ‘Wide Sky’ refers to the firmament above Hampstead, which fascinated, and was often painted by, the artist John Constable. The ‘environs’ include several places around Hampstead, which are described in the book, and listed below.
My book includes West Hampstead and North End, which although some distance away from the heart of Hampstead, have always been considered part of Hampstead. Its many residents have included a former British Prime Minister -William Pitt, the Elder – and a famous architectural historian – Nikolaus Pevsner. Golders Hill Park, once the grounds of a stately home, lies partly in the borough of Camden, and partly in Barnet. So, much of it is an environ of Hampstead.
Hampstead used to be separated by countryside from Swiss Cottage. I have written about this place, which is where I went to school between 1960 and 1965. Close to my old school, there is a drama school and a separate, highly acclaimed theatre. Although not as old as Hampstead, Swiss Cottage is not devoid of interest. For example, Sigmund Freud lived the last years of his life in the area. And near his former home, there is the Tavistock Institute, which has attracted some controversy in recent years. And the architecturally interesting Swiss Cottage Library, built in the early 1960s, is well worth a visit.
Primrose Hill (see photo above) also deserved a chapter in my book. It was visited by the artist/poet William Blake. The windows of the house where the philosopher Friedrich Engels for several years lived looked over towards the Hill. It was here that Karl Marx visited his friend Engels often. Nearby, later, the poet Sylvia Plath also resided for a while.
I have written quite a long chapter about Highgate, which is where I went to school between 1965 and 1970. Like Hampstead, the old village is rich in historic buildings and has had many now famous residents. This chapter also includes amongst many other places of note Highgate Cemetery, Kenwood, and its close neighbour the Spaniards Inn. Lesser-known places including a former school for Jewish boys and a block of flats designed by the Modernist Lubetkin are also described in this section of my book.
As you are probably beginning to realise, my book about Hampstead, which focusses mainly on the place, does include a great deal about areas that surround the old village. Apart from being factual, my book includes personal reminiscences of all the places described in it. What you will find when you read it is that you are in the hands of a guide who has known the area well for over six decades.
To obtain a copy of the book (or its Kindle version), head for an Amazon website such as:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/BENEATH-WIDE-SKY-HAMPSTEAD-ENVIRONS/dp/B09R2WRK92/
Quilts in a wonderfully designed library
OUR FRIEND MIKAEL is an accomplished creative quilter (maker of quilts). Some of her artistic quilting is on display alongside works by other quilters in London’s Swiss Cottage Library until the 26th of July 2023. I must admit that when I learned that we were going to see an exhibition of quilts, my heart sank a bit. However, I am glad we went. I had no idea how creative and imaginative quilt makers can be. Well displayed in Swiss Cottage Library, there is a collection of extremely artistic contemporary quilts, which are well worth seeing. Far from simply being scraps of material stitched together, the quilters have used their imaginations and skills to create artworks which are not only beautiful but superbly innovative.
Until I entered Swiss Cottage Library today, I cannot recall having been inside it since about 1965 when I left the nearby Hall School, aged 13. I have passed its distinctive exterior often but never bothered to go inside. I was at the school between 1960 and 1965, and I remember visiting the then new library after it opened in November 1964. It was designed in the Modernist style by Basil Spence (1907-1976), who was born in Bombay. He based his library on the design of several that he had visited in Scandinavia. All that I can recall of the new library was that its shelves contained a far better range of books than our local library in Golders Green. Being a pupil in the area, I was able to borrow books from the Swiss Cottage Library, which I used to visit often because I found it to be so wonderful.
Although I can remember the superb collection of books that existed in 1964-1965, I could not recall the appearance of the library’s interior. It was only today when we visited the quilting show that I appreciated what a superb job had been done by Basil Spence and his team. Even though it was designed in the early 1960s, the style of the well-lit spacious interior has not dated at all. The interior of the library is far more intelligently conceived than most new British buildings created in the last few years. It is uplifting to wander around the various peaceful spaces within the library. If it were nearer home, it would be a place where I would want to go regularly to read and write.
I am grateful that Mikael invited us to see the quilting exhibition not only because it contained aesthetically pleasing works of art but also because I got to go back inside the library. Although I was not particularly interested in architecture when I was 11, my fascination with it began to grow a few years later. There was even a brief period in my life when I toyed with the idea of becoming an architect. Even though I did not pursue that profession, my love of good architecture – both modern and historical – has persisted. I believe that now, in my retirement, my appreciation of great buildings (such as Swiss Cottage Library) is greater than it has ever been. Even if you miss the quilting exhibition, it is worth making a detour to see Spence’s wonderful creation – both inside and outside.
Photographs taken in a garden
IN 1960, when I was 8 years old, I was accepted as a pupil at the Hall School in London’s Swiss Cottage area. Recently, I received some photographs of me in my newly acquired Hall School uniform. They were taken in the garden of our house in Hampstead Way in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, Maybe, it is fortunate that the photographs are in black and white because the Hall’s uniform was pink trimmed with black. The Hall’s ‘logo’ was a black Maltese cross – also a symbol used by the German army. I remember occasionally, children from other schools used to shout “Nazis” at me and my friends when we were wearing our uniforms in the street. The photographs were taken by my uncle Felix, who was born in South Africa.
When Felix came to London from South Africa in the second half of the 1950s, one of his first jobs was working in a photography shop in London’s Holborn. Like other members of my mother’s family, he was a keen photographer. His grandfather, my great grandfather, opened a photography studio in King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape in 1880. It was while Felix was working in the shop that the photographs of me in my new uniform were taken.
I remember the occasion vividly. Felix arrived at our house in the Suburb, carrying with him a great deal of equipment borrowed from the shop. Most of it was professional lighting on collapsible stands. Felix spent some time setting up a photographic studio in our living room. There were wires all over the place, and every electric socket in the room was used to power the lighting. I was positioned in a suitable pose. When he was ready, my uncle began switching on the lights. Then, it happened. The house’s electrical fuses blew, and all the lights went out. I remember that my parents were not too pleased with what had happened.
Because of the electrical problem, the much-wanted photographs, which were to be sent to relatives in South Africa, had to be taken outside in the garden. Seeing these pictures six decades later brought that occasion to the forefront of my memory.
Felix was a delightful, kindly man. He was everyone’s friend, and never harboured a grudge against anyone. Although he never had any children, I believe that he regarded the whole world as his family.
A road through my childhood
IT IS BECOMING AN ADDICTION: I must write something every day. It is probably a harmless compulsion, but it gives me great pleasure. Today, I will write about a road that did not exist until 1835. It runs northwards from the centre of London. It was built to bypass the hills on which Hampstead perches. The old route to Finchley and Hendon from central London passed across these hills before Finchley Road, originally a toll road, was constructed. Part of Finchley Road connects the suburb of Golders Green with Swiss Cottage. For five long years I travelled along this stretch.
Swiss Cottage is named after a pub, Ye Olde Swiss Cottage, which still resembles many people’s idea of what a Swiss chalet should look like. The pub is a descendant of the Swiss Tavern, built like a Swiss chalet. Opened in 1804, it stood on the same spot as its most recent avatar. It stood on the site near one of the toll booths built for collecting money from people using Finchley Road in earlier times.
There was another toll collecting place at Childs Hill, between Golders Green and Swiss Cottage. This toll gate was next to the now demolished Castle pub. For five years, I passed through Childs Hill on my way to the Hall School near Swiss Cottage.
I attended The Hall between 1960 and 1965. The Hall, founded in 1889 (the year the Eiffel Tower was built) was a private school for boys preparing boys for entry into private secondary schools, misleadingly called ‘public schools’.
During my time at the Hall, several bus routes plied between Golders Green and Swiss Cottage: 2, 2a, 2b, and 13. The fare was five pence (less than 2.5p) for children. I used to say to the conductor: “five-penny half, please”.
The bus journey to and from The Hall was tedious and slow. This was because Finchley Road was being widened. The roadworks began before I entered The Hall and continued after I left it five years later. To widen the road, which was lined by houses and shops all the way between Childs Hill and Swiss Cottage, every garden by the roadside had to be cut short. There was a garden centre in a long greenhouse near Finchley Road Underground station opposite the present O2 Centre. More than three quarters of its length was demolished to permit road widening. All in all, the long section of road being ‘improved’ caused the rush hour traffic to move sluggishly. After 5 years of enduring this, I used to be able to recite from memory and in the correct geographical order the names of all the shops along Finchley Road. Today, hardly any of them exist. Even the large, still extant department store John Barnes has changed its name to John Lewis. Gone is the remains of the garden centre and the Edwardian Swiss Cottage public swimming pool. During my time at The Hall, this place closed when the then new Swiss Cottage Library and swimming pools opened close to the swiss style pub. Another of many disappearances is that of Cosmo, a restaurant that used to be popular with refugees from Central Europe and later with my wife, who loved the Hungarian cherry soup served there.
The Camden Arts Centre stands at the corner of Arkwright Road and Finchley Road. The arts centre faces across the main road the start of Lymington Road, which soon runs along the side of a large grassy open space. This is where Hall School boys played football and cricket. We used to walk two by two with one of our teachers from the school to and from the field, a distance of at least a mile.
The Hall School was an ‘elite’ establishment. Almost all the pupils had parents who were listed in “Who’s Who”, or royalty, or were extremely wealthy. Several of my fellow pupils were sons of Greek shipping magnates. One of these used to be driven from the school to Lymington Road in his chauffeur driven Bentley, which he pronounced ‘bantly’. Occasionally, he used to offer teachers a lift in his luxurious vehicle.
The sports field in Lymington Road was opposite a small newsagent-cum-sweetshop. We were not supposed to enter this during school hours, which included time at the sports field. And, because we walked back to school after a sporting session, there was little chance to explore it, but somehow, we managed. The shop was amazingly well-stocked with cheap sweets. I discovered that if I walked from Swiss Cottage to Lymington Road, the fare from there to Golders Green was two pennies (there were 240 old pennies in one Pound) cheaper than from Swiss Cottage. This gave me two pennies on top of what I was given daily to buy snacks (in my case, read ‘sweets’) on the way home.
At Swiss Cottage, there was one sweet shop near my bus stop. It was a branch of Maynard’s inside the subterranean foyer of the Underground station. The sweets it sold were poor value: there was nothing for under three (old) pennies. In contrast, the shop on Lymington Road was full of sweets costing less than one (old) penny. For example, one penny bought four ‘blackjacks’ or a large chewy item called a ‘refresher’. And, for three pence, a ‘Sherbet Fountain’ (still available on the internet for 132 [old] pence or 55p). This used to consist of a paper cylinder containing a fizzy lemon flavoured white powder into which there was a black cylindrical straw made of liquorice (used to suck up the powder). The thing looked just like an unexploded firework. In short, It was worth walking about a mile to save on the bus fare and then to spend it in a place where my money had much better buying power.
At the end of the day, I disembarked at Golders Green near the Underground Station. There used to be many children from other schools mingling there on their journeys home. One incident at this place remains in my mind, but before relating it, you need to know what we wore at The Hall. The colour that predominated in the school uniform was pink, which was considered rather strange for a boys’ school. Blazers and peaked school caps also contained black trimmings. One of these, which was prominently sewn on to our caps and the outer breast pocket of our pink blazers trimmed with black, was a black Maltese cross. The way that the school’s emblem was drawn was closer to the shape of the German Iron Cross than to the real Maltese cross. By the time I was attending The Hall, I had already become interested in the Holocaust (the Shoah). Golders Green had many Jewish people living there and several shelves of its public library were filled with books about the deeds of Hitler and his followers. I borrowed and read many of them. Therefore, I was horrified when I stepped off the bus at Golders Green one afternoon, and then some schoolboys from another school shouted at my friend and me:
“Look, the Nazis have arrived.”
Is it not strange what one cannot forget?
Picture from https://www.uniform4kids.com/
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Sergeant B
I have always been hopeless at all physical activities such as sports and gymnastics. I enjoy walking and have in the past played tennis half-heartedly.
At school, we had to attend gymnastics classes (‘gym’ for short). In the school I attended between the ages of 8 and 13, gym classes were held at the gymnasium at the public baths in London’s Swiss Cottage. The gym teachers there took a delight in making a misery of the lives of those, like me, who were no good at gym.
When I moved to Highgate School, my senior (or high) school, things changed for the better. Gym classes were held in the school’s own rather antiquated gymnasium beside the unheated open-air swimming pool. The classes were conducted by a retired military man, Sergeant B. He was not in the least bit interested in those, like me, without any skills in gymnastics. All that he wanted was that the useless members of the class kept well out of the way of those who had some aptitude for gym. This suited me fine. I used to spend the gym classes seated at one edge of the room, doing nothing.
In summer, we had to swim in the open-air pool. This was quite comfortable if it was raining, but it felt icy cold on a warm sunny day. As with gym, swimming was not one of my strengths. Once again, Sergeant B was not interested in people like me. The poor or non-swimmers were told to stand in the shallow end of the pool and to keep out of the way of the rest of the class.
No doubt it would have been better if Sergeant B had encouraged the ‘useless’ members of the class to gain some enthusiasm for gym and swimming, but I cannot say that I regretted his neglect.
Sergeant B retired many years ago. Nowadays, pupils at Highgate School cannot expect such a casual approach when it comes to physical exercises.
- Photo by Victor Freitas on Pexels.com
Why?
In the early 1960s, I attended a preparatory (‘prep’) school between Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park in north-west London. A prep school in the UK is a place that young children aged between 5 and 11 to 13 years study in order to pass examinations that will admit them to Public Schools, which, despite the name, are actually private schools.
At my prep school, The Hall School, we were made to sit in alphabetical order (by surname) in the classrooms. We were addressed by our surnames. I suppose arranging us alphabetically might have helped the teachers remember who was who.
My surname is Yamey, so I always sat in one corner of the classroom. There were often no other boys at my end of the alphabet, although occasionally I was in the same class as someone with the surname Yeoman or Zangwill.
Often, we had to learn poetry off by heart (by rote). We would then have to recite the poem in class. Invariably, the teachers began be asking the boy at the beginning of the alphabet to commence the recitations. Then, the other boys in the class took their turns, as the teacher worked his way down the surnames towards the end of the alphabet. Often the bell marking the end of our 45 minute lessons rang before the teacher reached my end of the alphabet and I was spared the embarrassment of having to try to recite a poem that I was never able to remember. I was hopeless at learning poetry, or anything else, by heart. I can only remember things if I can put them into some conceptual framework in my mind. Poetry did not seem to fit anywhere in my head!
What continues to surprise me is the lack of imagination of our teachers. Why did they always start asking us to recite by beginning with the pupil whose surname was at the beginning of the alphabet? Why did they not begin at Y or Z and work in the other direction?
Many years later, our 6 or 7 year old daughter attended a school in which students were asked to do things in alphabetical order of their surnames. Unlike me, she was always keen to take part in class activitues. So, one day she informed the school that she her surname had been changed to one begining with D. That way, she was always asked to participate in class activities that were being done in accordance with the alphabetical order of the children’s surnames.
All went well until we received the termly bill for the school fees. It was addressed not to Dr and Mrs Yamey, but to Dr and Mrs D…. I told our daughter that as the bill was not addressed to us, I would not be able to honour it. Our daughter quickly agreed to change her surname back to Yamey.
yamey 