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NATIONAL LIFE STORIES CITY LIVES Henry Pickthorn Interviewed by Judy Slinn C409/105 PDF

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NATIONAL LIFE STORIES CITY LIVES Henry Pickthorn Interviewed by Judy Slinn C409/105 This interview and transcript is accessible via http://sounds.bl.uk. © The British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB United Kingdom +44 (0)20 7412 7404 BRITISH LIBRARY NATIONAL SOUND ARCHIVE NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION INTERVIEW SUMMARY SHEET ____________________________________________________________ Ref. No.: C409/105 ____________________________________________________________ Collection Title: City Lives ____________________________________________________________ Interviewee's surname: Pickthorn Title: Mr Interviewee's forenames: Henry th Date of Birth: 29 September 1928 Sex: male ____________________________________________________________ Date(s) of recording: 21/01/1993, 23/02/1993, 02/03/1993 Location of interview: Office of Linklaters & Paines, London Name of interviewer: Judy Slinn Type of recorder: Marantz Total no. of tapes: 5 Speed: Type of tape: C60 Noise Reduction: dbx Mono or stereo: Stereo Original or copy: Original ____________________________________________________________ Additional material: ____________________________________________________________ Copyright/clearance: Full clearance given ________________________________________________________ ..c I T Y L I V E S" TRANSCRIPT TAPED INTERVIEWS HENRY PICKTHORN JUDY SLINN THE OFFICES OF LINKLATERS & PAINES BARRINGTON HOUSE, GRESHAM STREET, LONDON EC2 THURSDAY, 21ST JANUARY 1993 TUESDAY, 23RD FEBRUARY 1993 TUESDAY, 2ND MARCH 1993 [TRANSCRIBED BY DON FERGUSON OF LINKLATERS & PAINES] Henry Pickthorn F3717/A/Page 1 Tape F3717 Side A [Interview of HENRY PICKTHORN at Link1aters & Paines ~ Thursday, 21st January 1993) JUDY SLINN: Can I ask you, first, when you were born and where, and who your parents were? HENRY PICKTHORN: Yes. 29th September 1928. My father was then a history don at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was also Senior Tutor. My mother was the daughter of a barrister. His family hailed, curiously - I don't know why I say 'curiously' - from Swansea, where they had a certain amount of property, because his grandfather had been a speculative builder and had cashed in at the time when Swansea was the mining centre of the world. JUDY SLINN: Where were you actually born, then? HENRY PICKTHORN: I was·born on the first floor of my parents' house in Selwyn Gardens, which is a little road opposite Newnham College. And I think the midwife attended and that was that - all a very simple affair. JUDY SLINN: Were you the first child (the eldest child)? Were there others? HENRY PICKTHORN: No. I was the third child. My sister is the eldest and then my brother and then me. And there was eighteen months between each of us, so we are all fairly close in age. mhs/949/d - 1 - Henry Picktborn F3717/A/Page 2 JUDY5LINN: 50 you are in fact the youngest? HENRYPICKTHORN:I am the youngest, yes. JUDY5LINN: Yes • And your parents had been living in Cambri dge some time then? HENRYPICKTHORN:My father was in the First World War. He had always wanted to go to the Bar but he was extremely hard up. His father was a merchant mariner who died at sea in 1916. There is a very moving account of his death, because he dropped dead just as the ship got into Boston Harbour and it was the big story on the front of the Boston Times, all very graphic, about the storm they had come through. And there were letters waiting for him, from the 'front', from his son (who of course was my father). My father was a passionate politician and he managed to combine being a history don with politics. He was lucky enough to be elected, at a by-election, for Cambridge University in 1935. He was the last Burgess for the University - the seats were abolished by Attlee' s government in 1950. 50 he sat for Cambridge University from 1935 to '50 and subsequently was adopted for a constituency in Nottinghamshire. JUDY5LINN: When you say he was passionate about politics, what sort of politics? I mean••• HENRYPICKTHORN:I think he really felt very deeply about things. He wasn't particularly simply an organisational man who liked to win. I think his politics were deeply rooted in his historical perception of what was right and what was wrong. And he took the Tory Whip the whole of his career but he was very much an independently-minded man and I think he and a few friends in fact provided the only form of opposi tion mhs/949/d - 2 - Henry Pickthorn F3717/A/Page 3 to the Churchill government during the war. This sounds a bit unpatriotic but their opposition was simply in the realms of foreign l policy. One of the Igang (of what my father called his Igang') resigned as a Minister at the time of Yalta because he didn't approve of the deal being made with the Russians. And my father's speeches largely, during the war, were complaints about the behaviour of, first of all, supporting Mihailovich in Yugoslavia and then letting him down and supporting the communists under Tito and also the sell-out of the Poles, which he found most grievous. And I do distinctly remember, very soon after Katyn, when ten thousand Polish officers were slaughtered in the woods by the Russians, his trying to raise that question and being totally choked off (so far as he could be choked off) by Anthony Eden and the likes and being told the object was to win the war and not to stir up trouble. He was that sort of politician; and, as a result, wasn't exactly popular in some of the high echelons of the party. JUDY SLINN: Did it make any difference to you - you were old enough, presumably, to recall - when his life changed from being a Cambridge don to being an active politician in the sense of going into the House of Commons? Did that make any difference to you or to family life? HENRY PICKTHORN: Yes, it did. We went to a day school in Cambridge, King's College Choir School, and one of the interesting things that I can remember about that, compared with educating one's 'own children thirty or forty years later, was that when we went to the Choir School the fees were twelve pounds a term and the only extra that my parents paid was for fizzy lemonade, during the summer term, twice a week. And when we left the fees were still twelve pounds a term. And so those were the days when you could plan. I don't know why that sticks in my mind but, if you tell the modern parent, they are almost incredulous that there should have been such stability in prices. mhs/949/d - 3 - Henry Pick thorn F3717/A/Page 4 But the difference that it made was my mother and father were then away for the middle of the week. My father arranged to take his pupils at the weekends and he lectured on Friday and he lectured again on Monday morning. And my mother was in the car outside the history school and he leapt into the back of the car and she drove him to the station and they caught the train up to London. So one didn't see them during the middle of the week ••• JUDY SLINN: Did they have ••• HENRY PICKTHORN: •••for half a year. JUDY SLINN: Sorry. Did they have a flat in London then, or something - somewhere to stay? HENRY PICKTHORN: My grandmother (who had been widowed quite young) had a house in Sloane Gardens, just by Sloane Square underground, and I think there was quite a comfortable establishment and my parents just firmly took over the best bedroom and they were there during the week. JUDY SLINN: Which grandmother was that? HENRY PICKTHORN: That was my mother's mother. JUDY SLINN: Yes. And who looked after you three? HENRY PICKTHORN: Well we had - it sounds frightfully grand - but there was a staff in our house in Cambridge. There was a cook who became one of our greatest friends, although we never really got to know her until the war. I don't know why that should have been - or perhaps we were just a bit older. But she was a tremendous friend of ours. And we had a series of I don't know whether you call them 'nannies' or mhs/949/d - 4 - Henry Pick thorn F3717/A/Page 5 'nursemaids'. They didn't seem young at the time, but they were actually extraordinarily young people. I think they were just wholesome country girls from the villages round about Cambridge. When I say we had a series of them, I think there were only about three. The first one got married; the second one got married and the third one got married. And they were very nice. I think there was one who was less nice, who came temporarily in the holidays. So I suppose they were in charge of us. But, with us going to the prep school during the daytime, there wasn't an awful lot for them to do, and we were reasonably well behaved, I think - 'untroublesome children I is my guess. JUDY SLINN: Did you have a lot of friends around in Cambridge? HENRY PICKTHORN:Yes. One knew almost everybody, really. One certainly knew one's neighbours extremely well and the neighbours' children were one's friends. One played in the road; one biked up and down the road. One went and shot pigeons and rooks with one's airgun in Nevnham if one could avoid being caught, and so on and so forth. And it was all really what would now be called a very jolly community. But one didn't use those words then. JUDY SLINN: I suppose it was because - I mean, normally, it seems to me, and from talking to other people, that somebody of your kind of background would probably have gone to boarding school, but I suppose it was the fact you had good day schools in Cambridge. HENRY PICKTHORN: My father had been sent to boarding school at the age of six and he was obviously a very precocious, a very clever, child. He was utterly miserable there and I think he also had a theory that little boys should not be well taught. I think this might have been a mistaken theory because in fact the school we went to was a very happy one but it mhs/949/d - 5 - Henry Pickthorn F3717/A/Page 6 wasn't the sort of school which got top scholarships here, there and everywhere else, although obviously there were fairly clever children, because - I don't know - on the whole, perhaps, dons are likely to produce more intelligent children than some other people. JUDY SLINN: It was mainly - the school was composed mainly of dons' children, was it? HENRY PICKTHORN: There were quite a lot that came in from the outlying villages. I remember we had great friends from Waterbeach, the children of a retired army Colonel. Yes, I think by and large it was academia that sent the children there. For instance, we had friends just up the road (the Adrian family) - the father went on to become Master of Trinity and my contemporary is now Master (I think he may have just retired) of Pembroke. There was the Hoskyns family: he was an eminent theologian; they were just up the road as well. They all went there automatically. JUDY SLINN: What about your sister? Presumably she didn't go there. HENRY PICKTHORN: My sister went to the Perse School until I suppose she must have been thirteen when she went to a boarding school in Bedfordshire. JUDY SLINN: Did your mother share your father's - you talked about your father's character a bit - can you talk a bit about your mother's character? Did she share his interest in politics or was it simply - or did she just go along with him during the week as a sort of - you know, as a wife would? HENRY PICKTHORN: I think she was a loyal wife and had he been in the army she would have followed the drum. I think she felt it was her duty to be with him. He was always miserable if she wasn't about. And I think, quite rightly, she felt she had a greater loyalty to be up in mhs/949/d - 6

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