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

147 Pages·2014·5.32 MB·English

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

[phone]
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