TALES FROM THE HILLS

(Ashmansworth and Crux Easton)

The Princess in last month’s tale was only eleven when she and Pamela joined the Girl Guides at Buckingham Palace. The times that followed must have been memorable. When they met again, decades later, the Queen said simply “Hello, Pam” and the intervening years vanished.

We often envy the lives people lived in the war years. In December’s magazine, Penelope Lake described herself and the Hill twins, Carol and Lyn, and the sheer enjoyment of life they felt at the time. It was the same with young Max Mosley at the Rectory. There were indeed shortages and restrictions – even bombs and sudden death – and certainly no toys or treats; yet, far from damaging children’s lives (like those inhuman Covid restrictions) it seems to have enhanced them.

Nor was this effect confined to the young. Contemporary letters show Gerald Finzi, composer of classical music, at target practice down at the rifle butts with the Ashmansworth Home Guard. He was the sergeant. His musical friends had fun conjuring scenes of Gerald chasing German parachutists along Doiley Bottom.

(By the way, where were the rifle butts? With a crowd of exuberant beginners firing away, Doiley Bottom [yes it does exist!] would be handy, the sloping sides of the valley providing a backstop to the bullets.)

In fact, Finzi took the Home-Guarding seriously, a gun leaning against a stack of music in his study.

His biographer explains that he found composing a lonely job and was often depressed. Then the war came and immediately he could join in. He took part in night patrols. He was keen to show a friend his battledress, forage cap and the three sergeant’s stripes; he was as proud as a schoolboy on finding, when the guns arrived, that he could hit the target. He was rejuvenated and his creativity was restored.

Similar effects were reported throughout the war, and suicide rates fell dramatically.

They lived through terrible times, yet well might we envy them: Penelope, Carol and Lyn, Max; and of course Gerald, Pamela and the Princess.

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!”

Wordsworth

Agricola, January 2026