Family history

One of my fellow Wednesday walkers is married to an archivist who works at Cheltenham College on and off. She has kindly looked up the old records and come up with this splendid photograph. William has the same look on occasion to the team captain, we think: not surprising, as it's his great-grandfather.

A very modest man, it was therefore all the more interesting to find out that he had a distinguished early career. As well as singing bass in the choir, he won numerous art and other prizes: he also performed, aged 16, at his house mid-term entertainment - "mounted the platform and entertained us at the blackboard, skilfully converting rhombuses and parallelopipeds into frogs, beetles and other wonders of creation (talking amusingly to himself meanwhile).” It rings true!

"Why do we have to get richer?"

This was the question posed by Mark Tully in Sunday's Something Understood on Radio 4. (It's on - live - either very early or very late, but you can of course listen online till Sunday next.)

Something Understood is my "go to" programme each week, when I reach for the button of my bedside play again radio. Five eclectically-chosen pieces of music, four prose or verse snippets (Ronald Pickup is one of the readers this week), and a shortish informal interview: that's the pattern. Tully concentrates more upon the questions than the answers, often drawing on his long experience in India.

Gandhian economist, Devaki Jain, this week's interviewee, considered the value of craft work as a contribution to a nation's health and wealth. This question was in my mind also yesterday, as I inspected the modern designer furniture etc. at this year's Celebration of Craftsmanship & Design, held just down the road from us. Caroline and I biked along together, meeting up with friends. They, unlike us, were prospective buyers, so I tried to divide the prices by the number of hours I imagined the piece had taken to make. Ikea, it's not.

The exhibition is held in one of Cheltenham's finest buildings (in recent years, part of Cheltenham College). The catalogue attempts - not entirely accurately - to narrate the history of the building and its owners: I took a particular interest in that aspect, as the first major name on the list, the 3rd Baron Northwick has a walk-on part in my ancestor, Peter Davis' The diary of a Shropshire Farmer. They were near contemporaries, born in the same parish.

Photography wasn't allowed in the exhibition building: this impression is therefore the best I could manage - taken through one of the windows, where a trio of Judith Nicoll's driftwood wading birds were displayed. Godwits (though "Goodwits" for some reason in the catalogue).

We came away, stimulated, but in need of a cup of tea.

One of the greats

Another week, another festival. I was a guest of Savills at the Cheltenham College ground for the cricket yesterday. A sunny day for once, and a very good lunch! Some enjoyable cricket too, though when they play in pyjamas I really can't think it's the same game as I used to adore. 50+ years ago I could tell you about most things going on in the first class game, and so my memory clock was set ticking when a familiar face appeared, on his way into the other half of our tent. Notwithstanding he's now 85, I recognised at once that it belonged to Tom Graveney.

Symon says...

Burma featured in the news this morning, more political prisoners having been freed, thank God! And last evening we heard our friend Canon Roger Symon give an excellent account of his recent visits to that country. Speaking to a full house in the Cheltenham Junior School Assembly Hall, he described his mission, to arrange an official visit by the Archbishop of Canterbury's representative to the Burmese Anglican Church. This representative was to be Roger's old boss, George Carey, Rowan Williams' predecessor.

Roger (no spring chicken, he won't mind the description) and his wife came to live in Cheltenham, having served as Secretary of the Anglican Communion between 1986 and 1994, taking the place of the imprisoned Terry Waite. He was brave indeed, therefore, to emerge from retirement to undertake this delicate assignment. For Archbishop Stephen of Burma would clearly rather his high profile party had stayed at home, than come and stir things up by visiting refugee camps and meeting Anglicans, identified by Burma's military rulers as natural sympathisers with the separatist cause.

Still worse were their plans to see Aung San Suu Kyi, whom the Archbishop of Burma had always avoided meeting. He did however send a message via Carey: "We all love her: she is our hope for the future." Having heard this, Daw Suu exclaimed, "No hope without endeavour! Hope is concrete, not just a concept. It has to be gained by practical work."

And thus the way was opened to the first encounter between the Archbishop of Burma and The Lady.