John Elkington » Family

Bonnies & Clydes: Gaia, Paul, Hania, Jake and Lander at the Elkington-Eros wedding in Tweed, Ontario, 2014

I was born in a mill-house on an island in a tributary of the Thames at Padworth, Berkshire, in 1949. My father, John Francis Durham (‘Tim’) Elkington was born in 1920 and was an RAF pilot in the Battle of Britain. (The Richard Paver photo below shows him back in the air, at the controls of a 2-seater Spitfire, late in 2011, just before his 91st birthday.) Later in the war, he served in Russia, the Battle of the Atlantic and India. He stayed on with the RAF until 1975, when he retired as a Wing Commander and set up an art and picture-framing business. My mother, Patricia (‘Pat’) Elkington (née Adamson), was born in 1922 and met Tim at Castle Gogar, where her aunts lived, when he was commanding nearby RAF Turnhouse. They married in 1948. I was the eldest child, followed by Gray, Caroline and Tessa. After stints overseas, they moved to the Cotswolds in 1959.

Elaine was born in Edinburgh in 1947. Her father, Dr George Stanley Waite, was born and raised in Barbados. He studied at McGill University, Canada, and Edinburgh University, Scotland, was a veteran of the WWII North African campaign (parted from his wife for six years), then served for many years as a GP in Mossley, Lancashire, before he and Margaret retired to Great Longstone in the Peak District. Elaine’s mother, Margaret Thompson Waite (née Dunlop), was a nurse in Edinburgh when she met Stanley. In Mossley, she was a pillar of the community, as the doctor’s wife, a JP and fund-raiser for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Elaine was the eldest child, followed by Christine and Charles.

Having met in 1968 and married in 1973, Elaine and I have two daughters, Gaia (born 1977) and Hania (1979). Both went to St Paul’s School for Girls, London; both got firsts at Edinburgh University; but otherwise they once could have been from different species. But they both went into the film industry as a great convergence began. I had always wanted daughters, I got them, and I couldn’t be happier with them.

tree

Hill House Elkingtons family tree by Caroline Elkington, for Pat & Tim’s 60th anniversary, 2007

It was an extended family, as this photo shows. From left to right: my youngest sister (Tessa), her husband John, Christina (Gray’s former wife), Elaine, my sister Caroline, Nigel Palmer, Jane Davenport (originally Keay), Nicky Hanks behind her, Caroline Feichtinger (originally Palmer), my brother Gray behind her, Ian Keay, his wife Alda, Glynn Davenport (Jane’s husband) and me. These families free up together. This was an impromptu shot, I think after Pat and Tim’s sixtieth wedding anniversary, but whenever it was it captures the spirit of Hill House.

Patcast: My mother, Pat, listening to a podcast interview I had just recorded of her, in 2007.Among other things I inherited from her are a passion for reading–and my writing. She also tells me that there was a strong thread of conservation activity in her side of the family, the Adamsons, which may account for my environmentalist epiphany in a field full of eels in the mid-1950s.

My youngest sister, Tessa, with Tim, during the 70th Battle of Britain anniversary events

Tim back at the controls of a Spitfire, late in 2011 (photo by Richard Paver, 2011)

Tim back at the (back seat) controls of a Spitfire, late in 2011 (photo: Richard Paver, 2011)

Preparing for take-off: During WWII, when involved in shipping squadrons of Hurricanes to Russia

Axis Mundi: Among the blue remembered swell of the Cotswolds, a place of relative calm as the pressure waves have worked their way through the global system. We moved to Hill House, Little Rissington, in 1959, on returning from Cyprus. This is a detail of an 11-foot-wide painting of the village from a nearby hill by my sister Caroline Elkington (carolineelkington.net), which now roosts in the Village Hall.