AGM at the Kitchener

Posted on September 7, 2013 by G. A. Michael Sims

Last night I attended the the Annual General Meeting of the Lord Kitchener Memorial Holiday Centre in my capacity as one of the trustees. Held at the Centre at 10, Kirkley Cliff, Lowestoft we heard the chairman of the trustees, Derrick Yellowley, and the chairman of the management commmittee, Dr. John Greenacre, report on the year’s progress of the Lowestoft charity which provides holiday accommodation to ex-servicemen and women.

The guest speaker was Major-General John Sutherell, CB, CBE, a Deputy Lieutenant of Suffolk and just retired as Secretary of the Officer’s Association. He gave us a detailed and very interesting description of the pattern of charitable giving since 2002, of the changes during that period and the practices that charities would need to adopt to stay viable the ever-changing financial climate.

kitchener_2_2013_250b

Lady Emma Kitchener with her husband Lord Fellowes of West Stafford

We were delighted to welcome our Patron, Lady Emma Kitchener, LVO, with her husband, both of them more probably familiar as the Lord and Lady Fellowes of West Stafford (Julian being better known as the creator of Downton Abbey), and the many other distinguished but somewhat more local guests. Lady Emma told us briefly how pleased she was to be with us, how happy she was that both she and Julian had managed to arrive together although travelling from different starting points, how proud both she and her late uncle Henry,  the last Earl to hold the title Lord Kitchener, were of the Centre and how she was sure his interest continued. Lord Julian spoke briefly and amusingly about the nature of Lady Emma’s directions to the Centre but gracefully did not press the matter.

After the main business of the reports was accomplished a Centre prepared buffet was served by the staff and by the naval cadets of the Training Ship Europa. Lady Emma and Lord Julian stayed on and both were as entertaining as ever and  seemed inexhaustible, finding the time and energy to speak to almost everyone present and being tireless in posing for photographs. Noblesse oblige very much alive.

 

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May we please have our description back?

Posted on August 27, 2013 by G. A. Michael Sims

Did anyone spot Jim Hinck’s article on his ViaLibrian blog in June? I am afraid I only came across it a month or so later but it’s well worth reading, about the plagiarism of book catalogue descriptions. I rather like the idea of sellers publishing their book descriptions to establish the precedent for each description. As the original article was several weeks ago I’m adding my six pennyworth here to try to refresh interest in the topic (please read Jim’s blog first).

Dealing mainly in non-fiction I try to summarise the content of each of our books as part of the book description so that potential buyers, who might not even know of the author or title, might realise from that that the book was just what they were seeking.

Plagiarism is certainly an irritation but I have come to accept that on internet there has been little that I could do. I have tried on Wikipedia where I spotted extracts from a piece I wrote about Dornford Yates about twelve years ago but I have not even been able to get an acknowledgement. There is a link there to an article I subsequently wrote in 2005 for the ibooknet newsletter but that’s all.

Amongst other places I list books for sale on ABE and a classic piece of description copying occurred there some years ago when I spotted my name in another dealer’s book description. It was for a title for which we have a ready market and I was looking on ABE to see if there were any underpriced copies for sale (as one does). In those days the seller’s contact details occurred at the end of a book listing. This seller had copied my description and had not stopped when he came to the end but included my name and contact details as part of his description. A copy and paste somewhat too far.

I have had several biographical and bibliographical notes online for some years and was recently contacted by a US university which, as part of their self-policing policy, had discovered that one of their professors had plagiarised extracts from one of my articles in a presentation he had made to a university in one of the nordic countries. I must admit that I was flattered, rather than being upset, that someone in that position had thought my effort literary enough to be copied (but then perhaps they didn’t, which is why it was only extracts!)

Some months ago I made a start in publishing reading lists of titles which covered particular small interest areas of the naval aspects of WW2. There are only just over one hundred titles involved but in our current and sold databases we have probably another ten thousand titles with decent descriptions. It would take some time (a scarce commodity as one ages!) but it’s certainly worth considering publishing those descriptions. Does anyone else feel the same?

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‘A Passage to Sword Beach’ by Brendan A. Maher

Posted on August 20, 2013 by G. A. Michael Sims
A Passage to Sword Beach

A Passage to Sword Beach

One of the joys of selling second-hand books is the opportunity to read your stock. When cataloguing I try to summarise the content of all our non-fiction but occasionally you come across one that you dip into and just can’t put down. Recently one such was a really excellent memoir of naval experiences of WW2 that appears to me to stand head and shoulders above many others. It is a relatively recent account by an ex Royal Navy Officer which, sadly, does not appear to have been published in this country.

Normally I am wary of recent accounts of events that took place fifty years ago. There have been many memoirs written of WW2 in the last twenty years but time and an ageing memory do not always make for an account that can be relied on too heavily as the memory can play tricks. With this book, however, the author had two original sources of notes made at the time to help him.

Brendan A. Maher lived with his parents in Eccles, a suburb of Manchester, where his father was headmaster of a local school. He applied to join the Royal Navy shortly before his eighteenth birthday in September 1942 but a slight stammer meant that initially he failed. It was explained to him that in the heat of battle verbal orders had to be passed quickly and correctly. He practised his speech control and applied again a few weeks later, this time successfully, passed his medical in December and was accepted.

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P.A.D.? – help please!

Posted on August 19, 2013 by G. A. Michael Sims
ABCA pamphlet

ABCA pamphlet

‘WAR’ was a series of ‘restricted’ pamphlets issued fortnightly by the British Army Bureau of Current Affairs from September 1941 until just after the end of WW2 which provided information to officers of the army about progress of the war and the activities of branches of the armed forces in all theatres, with the intention that they should pass it on to the fighting troops.

Authorship is often anonymous and/or by staff writers but there are a few attributions to some notable contributors, including Eric Linklater, Anthony Cotterell and Orde Wingate.

In the alternate weeks the Army Bureau of Current Affairs issued the fortnightly ‘CURRENT AFFAIRS’, each issue of which dealt with one subject of topical importance.

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Robert S. Arbib Jnr. – Here we are together

Posted on November 3, 2012 by G. A. Michael Sims
Robert S. Arbib Jnr. Courtesy Lois Gebhardt and American Birds obituary, 1987

Robert S. Arbib Jnr.
Courtesy Lois Gebhardt and
American Birds obituary, 1987

I have only recently discovered the recollections of an American serving with 820th Engineer Aviation Battalion, Staff Sergeant Robert S. Arbib, Jnr., called ‘Here we are together’.

Robert Arbib relates his experiences in Great Britain during WW2 when he and his unit came over to construct airfields for the US Army Air Force. He and 4,000 US service personnel arrived in Glasgow aboard ‘Monterey’ in August 1942, a ship designed to carry 700. Arrival was soon followed by a somewhat disastrous march from the ship to the railway station when, as part of the headquarters platoon, he was towards the front of his column and dropped his entire reserve of seven cartons of cigarettes and twelve packets of pipe tobacco. He managed to retrieve them all but at the expense of the derision of the remainder of his battalion as they marched past and the polite amusement of the Scottish audience as he scrabbled to gather up the scattered packets. As he relates, a good sergeant would have left them and marched on but he never professed to be a good sergeant and apparently his company commander entirely agreed.

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RNPS Commando – Petty Officer Harold Hiscock

Posted on October 21, 2012 by G. A. Michael Sims
Harold Hiscock - Operation Checkmate

PO. Harold Hiscock, courtesy
Commando Veterans website

I was recently talking to a colleague, a retired British Army Major who now leads battlefield tours in Europe and who had been investigating the records of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, in what was East Germany. He had come across a reference to an Royal Naval Patrol Service member, apparently a commando, who had been executed there in 1945 and who is mentioned on the Addenda Panel of our Memorial in Belle Vue Park, Lowestoft. Knowing my interest in RNPS matters he mentioned the details to me.

I had not heard anything about him and I checked with those at ‘the Nest’ (Sparrows Nest Gardens, Lowestoft where the RNPS Museum is situated) and they hadn’t either so I have been trying to follow it up. The name on the Addenda Panel is Petty Officer H. Hiscock and the details of the Commonwealth War Graves record of him as ‘of Newfoundland’, his service no: LT/JX 217862, his date of death: as 02/02/1945 and that he was attached to HMS Quebec.

Isn’t Google wonderful! Cutting a long story short(er) it appears from a WWW search that PO. Hiscock was a member of a seven strong team trained at the Combined Forces Training Centre at Inverary (HMS Quebec), operating as part of No. 14 (Arctic) Commando who were sent to Norway in Operation Checkmate to attack Axis shipping by attaching limpet mines to them. In mid April 1943 the team, a fishing coble and two canoes were dropped by an MTB on a small island north of Stavanger from where they operated, attacking and sinking a number of ships at Haugesund.

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RNPS Silver Badge File (II)

Posted on October 21, 2012 by G. A. Michael Sims
rnps_badge_origional

The front and back of the original RNPS Silver Badge,
about the same size as an old shilling or new 10p

On delving deeper into the file about the Royal Naval Patrol Service Silver Badge in the National Archives (the account of the discovery of which was first published in the RNPS Newsletter), we find it lays to rest some of the folklore about the reason for the change of design of the Badge, from the original pin type to the later four-eye type, with a rather more mundane account.

Traditionally the reason for the change was that Badges of the original pin type were too easily detached from clothing. So many were being reported lost or stolen, when in fact many were probably being given away as sweetheart brooches, that the design was changed to make them more securely attached. The facts are a little different.

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Fr. Anthony E. Sketch

Posted on October 11, 2012 by G. A. Michael Sims
Fr_Sk_reredos

Fr. Tony on the 40th annivesary of his ordination in 2002, on the sanctuary of Our Lady Star of the Sea, Lowestoft

On 10th October we said goodbye to Fr. Tony Sketch who had been our parish priest for nearly twenty years and who had, in his own words and after a long illness, ‘gone home to God’. The formal occasion of his Requiem Mass was marked with a packed church of Our Lady Star of the Sea, Lowestoft, with over 30 of his fellow priests from all over East Anglia concelebrating and led, in the absence of a bishop since the death of our Bishop Michael last year, by our diocesan administrator Fr. David Bagstaff. This was followed by a private burial attended by his family at Kirkley Cemetary and a wake for everyone in the Stella Maris Hall, when memories of and anecdotes about him were swapped.

Fr. Tony came to Lowestoft in 1982 and soon became a popular figure having an impact on the town with his support for the ecumenical Christians Together movement and with his work in the chaplaincy at Blundeston Prison. His greatest impact however was amongst his parishioners with his humanity and his impish sense of humour. With many he soon came to be regarded as an extra member of the family, someone who would be invited to family celebrations as a matter of course and who would come and be a welcome guest. At times a deeply spiritual man he also had an appreciation of many of the fine arts, a love of music and of the culinary arts both as a consumer and as an experimental cook.

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Lowestoft ChurchFest

Posted on September 30, 2012 by G. A. Michael Sims
ChurchFest logo

ChurchFest logo

Now that the event has finished I have edited this post slightly to bring it up to date but an amazing couple of weeks has come to an end. In that time some 38 churches in the district from the Baptist, Bethel, Church of England, Community Church, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Salvation Army, Seventh Day Adventist, Society of Friends, United Reformed traditions have together opened their doors, put on special events and invited everyone in.

As well as being an opportunity for those who don’t attend any church to have a look inside somewhere they might have wondered about or for those who are lapsed churchgoers to renew their acquaintance, it is has been an opportunity for members of the different congregations to meet on each others ground and find out how similar we all are rather than how different! So soon after the event it is impossible to say how successful the ‘back to church’ final theme has been but time might tell. You can’t drag people back to church but you can try and offer the opportunity to those who have an unfilled spiritual need in their lives.

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Lady Emma Kitchener, LVO

Posted on September 14, 2012 by G. A. Michael Sims

lkmhc_lady_emma_+julianAt the Lord Kitchener Memorial Holiday Centre we were delighted to learn that Lady Emma Kitchener, aka Lady Fellowes of West Stafford, has agreed to be our new Patron following the death of her uncle, and our previous Patron, Lord Kitchener.

Sadly she was not able to be with us at our Annual General Meeting this year as her husband, the Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, possibly better known as the writer of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes, had commitments in Los Angeles at the Emmy Awards.

We look forward to perhaps seeing both of them at our next Annual General Meeting!

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