Guest post: Andrew Tatham, ‘A Group Photograph and the Pursuit of Personal History’

If there’s anything to be learned from biography it is that chance meetings can change lives. I first met Patrick Miles next to the warmth of the Aga in my cousin’s kitchen in 2006. I had met many of my cousin’s B&B guests over the years but what was different this time was that I was now living in Norfolk too and it so happened that I was then taking part in Norfolk Open Studios. Patrick and his wife Alison were pointed in the direction of my house for an afternoon’s outing. I have a picture in my mind as clear as day of Patrick emerging from my shed ‘cinema’ with tears in his eyes and barely able to speak so moved was he by the art film I’d made based on my Group Photograph.

This was twelve years since I’d first laid eyes on the First World War group photograph that had taken over my life, and I had been struggling to see a way forward with it. Patrick’s response and his efforts to find a wider audience for my work were something that helped convince me that my project had meaning for humans other than just myself and that it was worth persisting.

Fast forward nine years and my project reached a fruition in ‘A Group Photograph – Before, Now & In-Between’, a major exhibition in Ypres. All my energy was put into making the exhibition and the book that went with it, so when I returned home with boxes of books to sell, I was suddenly pitched into a whole world I knew nothing about. I did not start well but was spurred on by ‘It’s a magnificent book’ arriving in a letter from Melvyn Bragg and the chance to get on the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 led to an astonishing response. Still, it was all a very up-and-down business and once again Patrick was cheerleading beyond the call of duty.

Looking back now, I realise that my obsession with my own work coupled with Patrick’s self-effacing manner meant that it took far too long for it to penetrate my skull that he too had his own all-consuming project, but penetrate it did and then our correspondence intensified as we shared the experience and exasperations of research, self-publishing, getting permissions, getting noticed. And then when I read George Calderon: Edwardian Genius I really understood why Patrick particularly tapped into my work.

It seems to me that a lot of people think of history and biography as just the telling of stories about interesting people and events, as if that history can be compartmentalised into ‘the past’ almost without relation to today. For history to be most effective, though, I think it really needs to produce thoughts and questions about what it is like to be a human being in any time, and what remains of us after we are gone – to see what people have lived for, what they have died for, and whether any of that makes any sense. The richness of the material that Patrick found enabled him to show the complexities of George Calderon with all his maze of passions and contradictions and relate them to the era in which he lived. He may not be famous now but George Calderon’s story certainly made me think about my own life and what I should be doing with it.

I hope the same might be the case for readers of my new book. I Shall Not Be Away Long is based on the First World War letters of Lt Col Charles Bartlett, one of the men in my Group Photograph:

Highlighted in blue: Lt Col Charles Bartlett (click image to enlarge)

The only people who will have heard of Charles Bartlett are attentive readers of my first book, and his family (and in fact even his great-nephews who were his first relatives that I contacted had no idea who he was). What marks Charles Bartlett out, though, is that somehow his letters from his time on the Western Front have survived, all 341 of them, and they are an uncensored and almost stream-of-consciousness view of not only his war experience but also of his marriage and his friendships and acquaintances. Of course many of the latter are with military men but he was also connected into the theatre world through work before the war and from his wife being a West End singer and actress, and that really does open up the view, as does his bluff humour. I decided early on that I wanted to give context to the letters by showing the fuller lives of these people he encountered, and that proved to be hugely rewarding.

Some stories have particularly stayed with me, and here are two:

On 10th December 1915, Charles Bartlett wrote: ‘This morning I have been sitting on a General Court Martial the accused being an officer, who was being tried for being drunk in the trenches.’ I discovered that the officer in question was a Second Lieutenant Stephen Lucena. His story is a saga of bad luck and tragedy, involving the early death of his father, the murder of his grandmother, shell shock from the close explosion of a mortar in January 1915, a court martial after being found drunk behind the lines in October 1915, and another court-martial when found drunk in the trenches. He could have been shot but instead was dismissed from the service. No doubt he was still suffering from shock but, in the vernacular of the time, he must have ‘pulled himself together’ and joined up again as a gunner in the Artillery and served through the rest of the war. In 1945 he was a resident in a poor house in Toronto and died near there in 1949. Meanwhile his only sibling Theodosia had been found wandering about in London in 1915 suffering from delusions and spent 60 years in mental institutions until her death in 1976, aged 84. A great aunt, an aunt and a cousin had also been certified insane. Both Stephen and his sister were dealt terrible cards on top of terrible cards. I never met them but I will not forget their stories and I will make sure to count my luck.

On 21st April 1915, Charles Bartlett wrote: ‘Kingerlee has just this moment been hit but don’t say anything about it until you hear more from me, as I know no details. A sniper got him, & the bullet went in through the cheek and out at the neck, so I am afraid it sounds bad.’ Cyril Kingerlee was another man who was dogged by misfortune. When the bullet hit him he must have thought his life was over but in 10 months he was back in the trenches. He somehow managed to survive Passchendaele and the rest of the war, though he was deeply affected by what he had been through and, after his first wife died young in 1928, his world started collapsing. To try to take him out of himself, his father took him to a hotel for Christmas and there he met Elaine Nind. 50 years later they were still married and you can see the love they had for each other in this picture (compare it with the picture from during the war – he kept his military moustache to disguise the scar from where he was shot in 1916). Whatever bad luck he suffered in his life, not many are so fortunate to find such long lasting and true love.

Cyril Kingerlee during the war

Cyril and Elaine Kingerlee in old age

Obviously this is a book set in war but I don’t want you to come away thinking that it is entirely po-faced. It couldn’t be with a narrator like Charles Bartlett, and here is an example of one of his letters that shows a very wide spectrum of life (and also illustrates the visual approach I’ve taken to presenting the letters):

p. 206 from the book (click image to enlarge.)

The first reader of this new book was Patrick and I was bowled over by his response:

The achievement of it, the depth, breadth, humanity, suspense (what on earth was Charles going to be up to next?), the 300-strong cast, the meticulousness, brilliant structure and design… It is a more than worthy sequel to ‘A Group Photograph’ and the two fit beautifully, seamlessly, together.

Not only did he write that but he also asked to confirm whether he was the first person to read it in its entirety because he thought his descendants would be proud as he felt sure it would become a classic! Well, indeed he was the first reader, and what he said gave me the confidence to approach William Boyd to write the Foreword for the book, and in turn I was beyond thrilled to see how his words echoed Patrick’s:

This is not only a beautiful-looking book, generously and wonderfully illustrated, it is also a remarkable human document, as rich in detail and commentary on the human condition as a long novel. Tens of thousands of books have been written about the First World War and who would have thought that, over a hundred years since it ended, there was anything more to say. But I Shall Not Be Away Long fully earns its place in the Pantheon of literature about the Great War. We come away from it amused, moved, informed, baffled, shocked, saddened and, with a bit of luck, wiser. It is a classic of its kind.

You can see more of I Shall Not Be Away Long at https://www.groupphoto.co.uk/2nd-book/ with details of how to order as well as a competition to win a copy.

Work on this book has been very difficult at times and I know I couldn’t have done it without Patrick and his support. You never know what might happen on any day in your life. I hope that you have the great good fortune that on one of your days you happen upon a friend like Patrick Miles.

© Andrew Tatham, 2020

SOME RESPONSES TO A GROUP PHOTOGRAPH 

‘It’s a magnificent book’ Melvyn Bragg

‘Honestly I can’t recommend it enough – the whole year we’ve done different books on this show but this is the one that is just so powerful’ Jeremy Vine

‘Endlessly fascinating and profoundly moving. It brings the past to life with matchless vividness.’John Carey, The Sunday Times

‘The book really is a glorious achievement and completely fascinating‘ Gyles Brandreth

‘Magnificent’  Rt Hon Keith Simpson MP in his Summer Reading List for fellow MPs

‘I give you my highest level of congratulation. It’s a beautiful piece of work’ Martin Middlebrook