'Breakfast time at Trelill 1961', by Robert Hughes

We did our bit for globalisation. This is a picture probably taken by Anna, who was a bubbly Norwegian girl. She had a wonderful sense of humour, and could it be that she caught my father (who didn't really do mornings), resting his eyes at the breakfast table? I hope she prospered as a film-maker or something.

Let's have a look at who these folks are:

1. Trevor Hughes (1907-1988). Why is he wearing a fisherman's sweater around his neck? Well, he came from a long line of seafaring men, and we would usually head off to the beach after breakfast so he was ready for anything including the chilly winds likely to be encountered in Cornwall.

2. Me at 10.

3. My brother David, who was 7.

4. Melanie Lawrence. We had a slight love/hate thing with her, perhaps Freud would discuss latency and stuff, but her Mum had a small dairy herd and Melanie drank too much milk. However, she was really a very sweet person and we hope she has done well.

5. Little Dominique. He was with us two years running, and my enduring memory is of how when we held a fancy dress party he was Pharoah and very convincing with his crooked staff and the other thing across his chest.

6. Martine's dad was an abdominal surgeon of some sort. She came to us two years in a row.

7. Although you can't see her in this picture, this is actually Inga, a Nordic beauty. I don't recall if she was Anna's sister or her mate, but they arrived together.

8. Christian Bronnec, a French lad from Brittany. He had a slightly odd delivery and would say "ch" for "c". One day we were on the beach having a picnic and Christian wordlessly thrust out his paw for some piece of grub. My mother said "Now, Christian, we are trying to teach you good English here, so could you ask properly please?" "Chan I 'av eet?" he said.

Christian and his sister Sylviane were with us two years running.

9. Flora Jean Hughes, (Née Britton), has appeared on this blog before. If you look at this table, you will see that there was quite a lot to putting together breakfast for fifteen people from different nations, but she did it.

10. Olivier. A very sweet guy. I hope he did well in life.

11. Richard Rawlinson. Now this guy looks very young here, (and of course was young) but he was our tutor for awhile and taught me Latin and Maths. Unfortunately one day we were on the beach at Polzeath and some annoying boys asked him a few questions which he couldn't answer. By that time they had established what he did for a living..."I think," said one, "that you should stick to Latin!", and the other one chimed in "or Maths!"

It wasn't poor Richard's fault, and I wouldn't be surprised if he did well later.

Richard visited us when we were at boarding school, and looked at my Latin text and just read it off in English as if it was the newspaper. He grinned and said "Oh, sorry Robert!" I suspect he was really very clever.

12. Sylviane, sister of Christian, see above.

13. The lovely Carol, such a doe-eyed beauty that is it a surprise she and Richard became an item?

14. Christian Renard, a regular French macho guy.

15. Karl Sacher. His father worked in a hotel in Vienna and is credited with inventing the Sacher Cake! I hope it's true. Of all the people who stayed with us, Karl was one of the kindest and sweetest.

One phrase stays with me: I asked how the Austrians went along with Hitler, and his response was "They must!" (They had to.)

Totalitarianism is hard to fight, and we would be glib if we think we know what we would do in the face of it.

Flora Hughes (née Britton), 25 October 1919 – 13 May 2008

Last night, Robert Hughes told me that his mother, Flora Hughes (née Britton), died yesterday morning. She was the daughter of Reginald Percy Leopold Britton (a.k.a. Bob to his family but usually Keebah to Robert) and Maisie Britton. This is Robert's comment:

'She was a wonderful mother to us and she will be sorely missed.

The attachment I am sending is a cutting from the Daily Sketch of April 1937.

My mother fell ill shortly after eating a bite from a packet of nuts and raisins which she bought at the cinema. Realising there was something wrong with the taste, she had a close look at the contents and saw that there was evidence of gnawing by a mouse.

Within a few hours she had lapsed into fever and delirium.

However, she vividly recounted to us how she had fought for life for the sake of her parents who had earlier lost Rob her little brother: she could not bear the thought of them losing her as well.

The illness was subsequently diagnosed as Mouse Meningitis.

She defied death that time and lived for seventy more years, giving us life, and despite many hardships, leading a very fulfilled life herself.

But she never forgot Rob.

As her mind progressively failed over the last few years, many things slipped away from her, but she would point to his photograph on the wall opposite her sofa and ask "Do you know who that is?"

"I do," I would reply, "but do you?"

The withering look she gave me was pure RADA, pure her; transcending amnesia, laughing to scorn the passage of eighty years since this searing event.

The bombing to smithereens of the family home in 1941, the loss of Granny, Keebah, my father; her own struggles with the debilitating condition Polymyalgia, which struck overnight just as she was trying to make a living selling windows in her sixties, (she conquered it and went on to be a prize-winning member of the sales team); her motor accident in 1998 where she came within one inch of death: none compared with the heart-rending loss of her little brother and playmate.’

The following paragraphs are from Flora Hughes’s website, where several more of her poems are published:

'Born in England and trained at RADA as Flora Britton, Flora abandoned a promising career as a classical actress on the West End stage for her husband and, in time, her two sons. Her dramatic instincts have remained with her. These and her love of people, animals and the natural world shine through these entertaining collections, written over many years.

Flora enjoys painting, gardening and verse speaking. "I started writing poetry as soon as I had discovered it because I love words and rhythm," she remarked. "My work is influenced by my observations and my style is varied between classic and humorous. I would like to be remembered as someone who was kindly, entertaining, understanding and sympathetic.

Flora is a widow with two sons, Robert and David. "My biggest fantasy is to be transported by magic to visit fabled places and people," she said. "I have written over 100 poems and had many published but I am most proud of these two books". Flora now lives near Ross-on-Wye, entertaining family and friends whenever the opportunity arises, and tending her beautiful garden teeming with flowers and wildlife.'

Flora's father was a younger brother of working-class writer Lionel Britton. From time to time, Robert would feed me snippets about Lionel which he'd gleaned from Flora – mainly concerning his craziness or his scruffiness. I shall miss these. Robert and his family, of course, will miss much, much more.

Lionel Britton's Distinctive Signature

Lionel Britton inscribed the above on the f.e.p. of his Spacetime Inn (1932) to his niece, Flora Britton (later Hughes), when she was 13 years old. She is the first daughter of Reginald Percy Leopold Britton, a younger brother of Lionel's. As a science fiction play, Spacetime Inn is highly unusual. And as this is a space where Eve (of Adam and Eve), the Queen of Sheba, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Napoleon, Karl Marx, Bernard Shaw, and two interchangeable members of the working classes of the 1930s all converse with each other, the content is also a little out of the ordinary.

The quotation is from page 96 of Spacetime Inn. After learning that Bill and Jim have lost their money, Eve says ‘Is it so wonderful? What can be more than the delight which breathes through all the world? There is a thrill which quickens every limb, there is a yearning answered through the eyes watching the light of other eyes wake softly like a happy day as we come near them, there is a music underneath a word which kisses the ear of one who listens for it coming from those we love. These things make life wonderful, as sun and moon colour the day and night. Let me give you these!’

Flora's son Robert Hughes comments: 'The full quotation makes a deal of sense in the context of my mother's life, for most of which she either had no regular income at all, or had to work damn hard to produce one. The philosophy behind those few lines helped her through it all and she was certainly a light to us.'


The image on the right shows Harry Peter Smolka's stamp on the first prelim, with another inscription by Lionel Britton (1). Lionel Britton's first play, Brain (1930), concerns the building of a giant brain in the Sahara Desert. This too is a science fiction play, and frequently cited as one of the first plays in which a computer is represented. From Smolka, this book passed to Flora Hughes.

(1) Harry Peter Smolka was born in Austria in 1912 but educated in England. He later became a British citizen and changed his name to Smollet. In 1937 (still as Smolka) he published Forty Thousand Men against the Arctic: Russia's Polar Empire (London: Hutchinson).

Again, many thanks to Robert Hughes for providing me with these images.

The Literary Gene in the Britton Family

Robert Hughes (aka Snatch), the great-nephew of Lionel Britton, seems a little disgruntled – or possibly perversely proud – that there have been so many published writers in his family, but not himself: the first known one was John James Britton, who was an amateur journalist at a very young age, later developing into a poet of some note, and also writing a novel. His son Herbert Eyres Britton published three works of poetry, and Herbert's nephew Lionel Britton of course published a colossal novel and three plays. There may well be other published Brittons of whom I'm unaware, but certainly Robert Hughes's mother Flora (née Britton) published some poetic works. Robert too appears to be asserting his literary credentials, because he has sent me the following rhyming couplet via email (pace John Hegley):

'Unlike every other Britton
There isn't anything I have written.'

I may well use this in my biography: it certainly shows promise, but it is above all indicative of the literary gene in the Britton family.