Autobiographical

So World War II ends in 1945, with the United Kingdom allegedly one of the victors. However, it didn’t feel like that to the returning soldiers or the population back home. Wars are expensive. The country was effectively bankrupt at the time. They also tend to have a detrimental impact on society, especially in case of bombings and the significant loss of young people. The euphoria of victory is rapidly replaced by concerns about the future.

Winston Churchill, considered one of the major drivers of the victory, as depicted in a number of superb films, including Darkest Hour (2017) starring Gary Oldman, was unceremoniously kicked out at the elections in 1945. The country no longer needed to be on a war footing and the public in general believed that only a change of leadership and a different vision of the future could usher in the stability that the country needed. 

The incoming government of the Labour Party, led by former Deputy Prime Minister of the coalition government Clement Atlee, won a landslide, securing a majority of 146 seats. As well as granting independence to India in 1947, it instituted a number of social reforms, creating the welfare state, with the foundation of the National Health Service and the nationalisation of the power and railway industries. Rationing introduced during the war continued until 1954. There was also a serious shortage of housing.

Meanwhile my dad had to stay in India for another year after the end of the war for some reason.  It might have been connected to the alleged court martial. Otherwise, I can only assume that he had been kept there to assist with debriefings, facilitate the return of prisoners-of-war to Japan, and possibly other countries, and sign non-disclosure agreements. Unfortunately, to date I have been unable to obtain more details due to state secrecy. If anyone out there knows more, please write!

Ken returned to the UK in 1946. Given the state of the country, the aforementioned rationing and housing issues, it must have been a considerable relief to return to Peterhouse, Cambridge and university life on a scholarship, with a room to stay and food of some sort, as well as a chance to recuperate and focus on studies. As I mentioned previously, my dad ended up graduating with a first in history from Cambridge. 

More importantly, he no longer had to go it alone. One day, while studying in the library, he was drawn to a dark-haired beauty there. He asked her out for a coffee. However, the story of the actual meeting varies, depending on the narrator – my dad would always tell me that he had approached his future wife Joan, while my mum would claim to my sister Helen that she had been the instigator. Luckily for us one of them made the move! 

My mum was also the first in her family to get to university and similarly had won a scholarship to study at Cambridge. While my dad was at the all-male college Peterhouse, my mum was at the all-female college, Girton. Well, all the colleges at Cambridge were single sex in those days. She also studied history. They had also both been born and grown up in Bristol, with my mum studying at the girl’s school Redmaids. My mum’s dad worked at a local bank all his life, while her mother was a housewife, bringing up Joan and her younger brother Michael.

On graduation, as he embarked on a doctorate, my dad spent a year as a lecturer in Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, taking his wife Joan with him on a long honeymoon before they embarked on bringing four children into the world. It might have been only three and I would have remained a ghost in the machine. 

But that, as they say, is another story.