Search Results for: Tim elkington

I learned many things from my father, Tim. But the last lesson was not to have a funeral – but instead to let the dust settle and then have a wonderful memorial service. In his case, it was a service conducted by The Venerable Ray Pentland CB, Honorary Chaplain to the Battle of Britain Fighter Association. He did the service with a twinkle in his eye and some delightful situational humour. Perfect. Tim would have loved it.

Representing HRH The Prince of Wales and the Chief of Air Staff was Air Vice Marshal Simon Ellard, Air Officer Commanding No 38 Group. The honour guard bore the Standard of No 1 Squadron, with which Tim was serving when he was shot down in August 1940. 

And representing his later time in Russia were nine nonogeneraian Russian veterans of the ‘Great Patriotic War’, a time when the Soviet Union was our ally – and Tim went around to Murmansk, both as a CAM shipfighter pilot and to teach the Russians to fly Hurricanes. And fly with them. The photo on the Order of Service dates back to that time.

Despite ongoing tensions with Vladimir Putin, these extraordinary people were spontaneously applauded into the church, which was dressed with glorious floral arrays by our daughter Gaia.

Rather than have one eulogy, we offered a 5-part tribute, with me kicking off, then Gray, then Tessa (who accompanied Tim on so many of his diplomatic adventures over the years, notably the trip to Russia with Princess Anne), then Lydia Elkington (Gray’s daughter) and finally Gil Chambers (Tessa’s oldest son), reading one of Caroline’s poems, this one about Tim’s wife of 70-plus years, Pat.

This was followed by an appreciation of Tim and his generation of Battle of Britain pilots by Dilip Sarkar, who has published extensively on the period, by Churchill’s account our finest hour.

Our daughter Hania later added a further brilliant facet to our collective portrayal during the reception in the garden of Cottor’s Barn, next door to Hill House, where the Chambers have periodically roosted for many years. She told one of the defining stories of Tim’s life as a father, grandfather and then, with Hania and Jake’s son Gene, great-grandfather. He taught many of us to drive, in the old Landrover up on Little Rissington airfield – and he taught us to shoot, shotguns, air rifles, bows and arrows. When it came to teaching Gaia to shoot a rifle, he chose to do so in his huge greenhouse out behind the barn.

Gaia: “What if I miss?” Tim: “Don’t!“

The music included Elegy on the RAF March, two hymns (Morning has Brokenand Lord of all Hopefulness), a wonderful a cappella rendering, with trumpet interlude, by Gaia’s husband Paul Eros of When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano(Tim loved vocal groups like The Ink Spots and The Mills Brothers), The Last Postand Reveille played by the Royal Air Force Trumpeter, and then – playing us out of the church – Vera Lynn singing Wish Me Luck. That one really brought tears to my eyes.

But the unquestioned highlight of the Salute was the flypast by a Hurricane Mk 1, R4118 UP-W, flown by Stu Goldspink. This is the only Hurricane from the Battle of Britain that is still airborne today. He flew it across from Duxford, Cambridgeshire. Our huge thanks go to James Brown and David ‘Rats’ Ratcliffe for making that possible. The aircraft left with a final waggle of its wings as it headed back east, the Merlin engine fading into the distance as we headed into the church.

A worthy, moving and yet playful celebration of the most important man in my life – and, I suspect, in those of a fair few others.

[With huge thanks to cousin Toby Adamson, Pat’s nephew, for many of the photographs used here, and to Hill House neighbour Nick Cole, Church Warden at St Peter’s Church, for so deftly smoothing our way.]

My favourite Kew Gardens greenhouse is the Princess of Wales Conservatory – where in 1985 Sir David Attenborough buried the time capsule originally thought up by Elaine during a dinner in Barnes with Gaia Books co-founders Joss and David Pearson.

The time capsule contained seeds of extinction-prone plants and a copy of The Gaia Atlas of Planet Management, which I had helped Joss and Norman Myers bring to life.

Our daughters, Gaia and Hania – then aged 6 and 8 – sat on Sir David’s knees, all three wearing hard hats, as he prepared to lower the time capsule into the newly-built Conservatory’s floor.

Yesterday, Gaia, Elaine and I went to see this year’s Orchid Festival – and walked around the time capsule plaque, while I pondered that each and every orchid on display was a time capsule in its own right. Shaped by its evolutionary history in ways that emergent sciences like epigenetics are only just beginning to probe and understand.

2019 has been a year to remember, with both my father, Tim, dying on 1 February, while Elaine and I were in Copenhagen, and my mother, Pat, dying this week, on 19 November. In her case, after a long illness that had her confined to bed – dependent on my three siblings and various forms of nursing and end-of-life care, including the magnificent Kate’s Home Nursing. Both died at home, with family members around, a real privilege in these days of increasingly institutionalised care.

As her younger brother, Paul, put it to me today, “Pat, my sister, your mother, was a most remarkable being – she was very close and dear to me all my life and a prop and mainstay in troubled times. She had what I can only describe as a ‘glow’ – almost an aura that even shows in photographs of her over the years, she will be most sorely missed by us all, and leaving us she has taken with her much love and many memories.” She was certainly an extraordinary story-teller.

Recalling her in happier times, and her first use of headphones, the first image is of her in the Hill House kitchen. I had recorded her talking about the poltergeist that haunted her as a child, when her parents were divorcing, and the ghost that she was convinced haunted (in a positive way) the end of Hill House where there is a 400-year-old oak staircase. We knew her as Belinda. The story goes, though we heard it long after Pat first saw a mob-capped girl sitting at the foot of her bed, that a young maid fell down the stairs and broke her neck.

The second image, below, honours the huge responsibility her generation carried, symbolised by the Soviet/Russian veterans coming up to see her in bed after Tim’s memorial service. His photo, with great-grandson Gene on his lap, is in the background. The woman in red hat a former partisan, the only person from her entire town to survive WWII. A world of ghosts.

Pat and Tim voted the wrong way on Brexit, she saying the chimney-sweep told her to do so, but we loved them nonetheless!

She would have loved the fact that I was at Buckingham Palace the day after she died, though the sacking of Prince Andrew would not have escaped her notice or comment.

Her views didn’t always follow well-worn tracks, though she would most definitely not have approved of the way in which the monarchy was being dragged through hedges backwards by the shenanigans of the Queen’s favourite son. But she would definitely have approved of the way half a dozen grey vacuum cleaners were arrayed in one space I passed en route to the Billiards room, lined up in regimental order.

Our autumn campaign has taken off with a bit of a bang. But, first, Elaine and I went across to a wonderful gathering on Thursday 12th at CDP to discuss next stages with fund-raising for the proposed Amulet memorial to Tessa Tennant in the City of London.

And the following day, Friday 13th, we went across to the Kochs (the good ones, not the bad ones), just the other side of Barnes Pond, to hear Mike Koch talk about his new book on his life as a wildlife vet in Africa. Called: Through My Eyes. Self-published and he’s hard to find on the internet, but a glorious, landmark publication.

At the weekend, while we were walking across Barnes Common, we watched as the wind stirred the ribbons on the plane tree that has been re-purposed as a memorial to Iris Goldsmith. Normally such memorials make me uneasy, including the vast mountains of plastic-wrapped flowers outside Kensington Palace when Princess Diana died, but in this case the effect is wonderful. A wind-powered tribute. Rather as if people are talking all around, with the ribbons picking up the zephyrs.

Then across to Copenhagen on Monday to speak at Dansk Industry (Confederation of Danish Industry)’s annual business summit, this time on the theme of the Green Transition. The event was attended by the country’s new Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, who I found impressive; the Crown Princes and Princesses of Denmark and Sweden; and some 1,300 CEOs and business leaders. Was told by several people that my speeches here in February helped put wind in the country’s sails.

The scale of what Denmark now aims to do collectively is breath-taking. To reduce carbon emissions by 70% below 1990 levels by 2030. Various speakers admitted they didn’t yet know how to achieve this, but the level of ambition is admirable and encouraging.

In my speech, I linked one of Denmark’s favourite sons, Hans Christian Andersen, to my evolving theme of Black Swans, Ugly Ducklings and Green Swans. As a test-run for the book, due to launch in January 2020, it seemed to go very well.

Then, on Wednesday 18th, after I flew in from Copenhagen, Louise (Kjellerup Roper) and I went across to the Royal Society to listen to Bill McDonough at an event hosted by Tim Smit and the Eden Project. Glorious meeting of the tribes, though at times uncomfortably warm.

And ringing around my head all week have been the words on the yellow banner wrapped around the September 18th edition of The Financial Times, shown below. I first caught sight of it as I walked into the Copenhagen airport lounge – and my immediate reaction was that it was one of those milestone moments when you actually see the world starting to tilt and pivot.

Our father Tim died yesterday morning, aged 98. He was surrounded by loved ones, including our mother, Pat (see below).

I, sadly, was in Copenhagen, doing three speeches in one day. For decades I have travelled with the sense that one or both of my parents would die while I was travelling.

Here is a picture of the ensign flying at half-mast at the Capel-le-Ferne Battle of Britain memorial site over a replica of Geoffrey Page’s Hurricane.

More on this before too long, but a big tree has fallen in our forest. [And the BBC Radio 4 item picking up on this quote is some 13 minutes into this link.]

Here is one of the bigger stories from his extraordinary life.

And here is the love of his life:

ADDENDUM

Since this post, obituaries have appeared in many places, including The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Daily Express. I was happy that the Express used this quote from me:

Speaking from Denmark his son John last night told the Daily Express: “My father grew up in a different world. An only child, sent away to school when he was six, he jumped at joining the RAF shortly before the war. He would later stress that, while he was one of The Few, they in turn were supported by The Many. The ground crew, radar plotters, the merchantmen and tanker crews running the gauntlet of the U-boat wolf-packs. And, critically, the ordinary Britons who endured the Blitz.

“In recent years, he was an extraordinary ambassador for his generation – indeed there has been an amazing outpouring of gratitude over the internet since his death was announced and the RAF ensign went to half-mast at the Battle of Britain memorial.”