The 1984/85 Miners Strike in Nottinghamshire - 'If Spirit Alone Won Battles': The Diary of John Lowe

The dirty war fought by the Thatcher Government to defeat the formidable National Union of Mineworkers transformed him from passive family man into political animal: witness to many disturbing events, he recorded his experiences in a diary so they would never be forgotten.

There is the initial confusion and scramble to organise; the London rally which the police sought to turn into a riot; his arrest and fast-tracking through the court system; the legendary pensioner friend ‘Sid’ beaten black and blue at a police roadblock; unifying events such as Christmas; the slow trickle back to work; and finally, the dreaded day the strike ended – and first harrowing weeks back at the coalface among people he despised.

With the scars left by the dispute still fresh upon him, he reflected upon events both at local and national level.

If Spirit Alone Won Battles interweaves his diaries and this reflection is illustrated by an exhaustive collection of photographs, correspondence, court documents and campaign literature.

It is a tale of heartbreak; but also a testament to the unquenchable spirit and stomach to fight of men and women with a just cause. JONATHAN SYMCOX – a Yorkshireman like his grandfather John Lowe – has long been fascinated by the miners’ strike thanks mainly to John’s prolific writings on the subject.

A novelist and ghost-writer in his spare time, he works as a journalist and chief sub-editor on the Yahoo! sports website in West London.

More information >>

The 1984/85 Miners Strike in Nottinghamshire – ‘If Spirit Alone Won Battles’: The Diary of John Lowe

Photographs taken by Captain Scott on his final expedition to the South Pole have been saved for the nation thanks to £704,000 lottery grant.

Foundering in soft snow: Bowers' sledge team; Wilson pushing; Oates and PO Evans repairing, Beardmore Glacier, 13 December 1911. Pic SPRI

Thought to be lost for more than 70 years, the 109 photographs give a view of the Antarctic as seen through Captain Scott’s eyes as he documented the first part of his epic journey to the South Pole.

Subjects include his companions, the ponies and sledges, the scientific work they were undertaking and the breathtaking Antarctic landscape.

The Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) in Cambridge University purchased the images with support of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF)

Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, said: “Scott’s photographs bring to life, in vivid detail, his party’s sledging journey into the interior of Antarctica.

“From men and ponies struggling through deep snow, to panoramas of the Transantarctic Mountains, the images are very powerful.

“They are a superb complement to the Antarctic photographs of Herbert Ponting, which the Heritage Lottery Fund also helped us to acquire”.

It is 100 years this year since his expedition reached the South Pole.

Reunited with camera

Captain Scott was taught photography by the official expedition photographer, Herbert Ponting, and the collection charts his first attempts through to the remarkable images he captured on the first part of the Polar journey to the head of the Beardmore Glacier.

The photographs were printed in the Antarctic by members of the expedition team as they waited for his return from the Pole, and Captain Scott never saw them.

Thanks to a previous HLF award, the original 1,700 glass-plate negatives of Herbert Ponting’s photographs were bought by SPRI in 2004.

The acquisition of Scott’s own photographs brings the two collections together for the first time, making this the largest photographic record of the British Antarctic Expedition 1910 – 1912.

The purchase of the photographs by SPRI will allow the images to be reunited with Scott’s camera, which was given to the Institute by the late Lady Philippa Scott in 2008.

Once they have been fully conserved, the photographs will be digitised and made available online.

The Antarctic expedition

The British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition was led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott RN with the twin objectives of being the first to reach the geographical South Pole and to undertake scientific research on the Antarctic environment.

Scott and four companions attained the pole on 17 January 1912, to find that a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen had preceded them by 34 days.

Scott’s entire party died on the return journey from the pole.

Some of their bodies, journals, and personal effects were discovered by a search party eight months later.

Captain Scott’s photographs were developed in the Antarctic by the geologist, Frank Debenham, who later became the founding Director of SPRI.

The images were returned to the UK by members of the expedition in 1913 and it was intended that they be used to illustrate books, reports and lectures; however, difficulties with establishing copyright meant that only a handful were ever used.

The First World War intervened and confusion over ownership was never resolved, any remaining negatives were lost and the prints passed to Herbert Ponting.

On Ponting’s death in 1935 the prints were sold to the photographic agency Popperfoto, who in turn sold them at auction in New York in 2001 and they have remained in private hands ever since.

The images were recently published in a book entitled ‘The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott’ by David Wilson, great-nephew of Edward Wilson who died with Scott.

Dame Gracie Fields (1898-1979), one of Britain’s most successful and best loved performers, is honoured with a blue plaque at 72a Upper Street, Islington, where she lived during the years 1926 to 1929.

It was while living here – in a maisonette above a sweet shop – with her parents, Fred and Jenny Stansfield, and her first husband Archie Pitt that she performed almost continuously in London and consolidated her reputation as one of the country’s most popular music hall stars.

Dame Gracie Fields (1898-1979) - is honoured with a blue plaque at 72a Upper Street, Islington,

These years also saw her record for the first time and appear before King George V and Queen Mary at the Royal Variety Performance.

Lancashire born

Grace Stansfield was born and brought up in Rochdale and never lost her distinctive Lancashire accent. She started singing in public at an early age, encouraged and coached by her stage-struck mother, and by the time of her first professional performance she was billed as “Young Grace Stansfield, Rochdale’s own girl vocalist”.

At the age of 14 she joined a Blackpool troupe of young performers and used the name Gracie Fields for the first time.

In 1915, Fields met the comedian and theatrical agent Archie Pitt while performing in a revue called Yes, I Think So and joined his company the following year.

Between 1916 and 1918 she appeared in more than 4,000 performances of It’s a Bargain, a revue written by Pitt that showed off her talents as a comedian as well as a singer.

It was Pitt’s next show, however, that proved the turning point in Fields’ career, for the six years from 1918 to 1924 she spent touring in Mr Tower of London made her into a music hall star.

 London debut

In April 1923, she married Archie and a few months later made her West End debut alongside her sisters and brother when Mr Tower was booked for a week at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square; her performances were greeted with rapturous reviews when the show returned in February 1924.

Over the next few years Fields took on a phenomenal workload, appearing in stage plays, music hall performances and late night cabaret bookings at the Café Royal.

She became very wealthy and together she and Pitt built a 28-room mansion in The Bishop’s Avenue, Hampstead named ’Tower‘, in honour of the show that had made her famous.

In 1928 Fields – by now affectionately known as ‘our Gracie’ – made her first of ten appearances at the Royal Variety Performance.

Capitalising on her stage success, she became a regular performer on the BBC and recorded many of her popular songs including ‘Sally’, ‘The Biggest Aspidistra in the World’ and ‘Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye’; by 1933, she had cut four million discs.

Fields also started her film career; her starring role in Sally in our Alley (1931) proved a great hit and won her lucrative contracts to make ten further films over the next eight years, including Sing as We Go (1934), The Show Goes On (1937) and Shipyard Sally (1939).

She became the biggest box office star in British cinema and in 1937 signed a £200,000 contract with Twentieth Century Fox that was billed “as the highest salary ever paid to a human being”.

Cancer diagnosis

The following year Fields became the first female variety artist to receive the CBE, and was also awarded the freedom of Rochdale.

Gracie Fields was at the pinnacle of her career, but her private life was far from straightforward; having separated from Pitt, she had an affair with the artist John Flanagan for several years and in 1935 she met the Italian-born film director Monty Banks, who directed her in four movies and became her second husband in 1940.

In 1939 her career was unexpectedly halted as she was diagnosed with cervical cancer; hundreds of thousands of fans sent her letters and telegrams and she was overwhelmed by their support.

Told by her doctors to take two years off, Fields returned to work after only a few months, determined to contribute to the war effort.

She performed to troops around the world but in Britain she was accused of betraying her country as she moved to United States in 1940, fearing Italian-born Monty would be interned as an alien.

Living in Capri

After the war, Fields settled on the Italian island of Capri, but she retuned to Britain to record and give concerts, including her triumphant return to the London Palladium in 1947. In the same year her radio show, Gracie’s Working Party, was broadcast from factories across Britain.

After Monty’s death in 1950, she married Boris Alperovici in 1952, whom she had met in Capri. She spent most of her time at her villa Canzone del Mare and was feted by many fans who had chosen to holiday in Capri to catch a glimpse of her.

Fields made her final appearance on the London stage in 1978 when she ended the Royal Variety Performance with a rousing rendition of ‘Sally’.

She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1979, only a few months before she died in Capri aged 81.

Lancelot ‘Capability‘ Brown, is to be commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque at Wilderness House, Hampton Court Palace, his home from 1764 – when he was appointed Chief Gardener at the palace – until his death in 1783.

Blue plaque remembers Capability Brown

Capability Brown was the leading landscape gardener of his age and his legacy can be seen today in many parks and gardens across the country.

He is credited with designing over 120 landscapes and demonstrated a flair for creating idyllic, pastoral scenes that complemented some of England’s grandest country houses.

Although Brown’s work was criticised after his death, both for laying waste to the formal gardens of his predecessors and for suppressing nature’s wildness, his designs have come to epitomise the well-ordered English landscape. As one obituarist wrote of him, ‘so closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken’.

Landscape architect

Born in 1716 in the small Northumbrian village of Kirkharle, Brown began working for the local landowner Sir William Lorraine.

In 1741 he was employed by Lord Cobham at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, then one of the most famous gardens in England, where he worked under William Kent, who had started the trend away from formal garden design to a more natural approach.

Brown’s own taste led him to develop his trademark style of sweeping, open landscapes of sloping lawns and ornamental stretches of water, with trees and livestock as decoration.

On Lord Cobham’s death in 1751, Brown moved from Stowe to Hammersmith in London, where he established himself as an independent landscape architect and worked tirelessly on a vast number of commissions, which included Petworth House, West Sussex; Alnwick Castle, Northumberland; and Chatsworth House, Derbyshire.

He became the most fashionable designer in the country and by the 1760s was known as ’Capability‘, because when surveying a property he spoke often of its “capabilities”.

World’s largest vine

In 1764 Brown was appointed by George III as Chief Gardener at Hampton Court Palace and moved to Wilderness House.

The house – which dates from about 1700 and is listed Grade II – lies within the walls of Hampton Court Palace and was the official home of the Palace’s head gardeners until 1881; other occupants include Charles Bridgeman. It is said Brown refused to sweep away William III’s formal layout “out of respect to himself and his profession” but he stopped cutting the topiary and was accused of neglecting the gardens.

Perhaps his most lasting achievement during his time at Hampton Court Palace was planting a Black Hamburg vine in 1768, which continues to flourish as the Great Vine and is the world’s largest and most famous grape vine.

Brown’s work at Hampton Court did not stop him taking on other commissions, which included remodelling the gardens at Richmond Palace for the King, assisting Garrick with his temple to Shakespeare at his villa nearby and working on a ten-year project at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, where he created his most celebrated landscape.

In 1772 he took into partnership the architect Henry Holland, who became his son-in-law the following year. In 1783 at the age of 67, Brown collapsed outside Holland’s home in Mayfair after returning from dinner with a former client Lord Coventry, and died.

Women Wartime Spies

From Mata Hari through to Noor Inayat Khan, women spies have rarely received the recognition they deserve.

They have often been trivialised and, in cinema and popular fiction, stereotyped as vamps or dupes.

The reality is very different.

As spies, women have played a critical role during wartime, receiving and passing on vital information, frequently at considerable risk.

Often able to blend into their background more easily than their male counterparts, women have worked as couriers, transmitters and with resistance fighters, their achievements often unknown. Many have died.

Ann Kramer describes the role of women spies during wartime, with particular reference to the two world wars. She looks at why some women chose to become spies, their motives and backgrounds. S

he looks at the experience of women spies during wartime, what training they received, and what skills they needed.

She examines the reality of life for a woman spy, operating behind enemy lines, and explores and explodes the myths about women spies that continue until the present day.

The focus is mainly on Britain but will also take an international view as appropriate.

More information >> Women Wartime Spies

A letter to the Editor of the Carlisle Journal has become key to the history of a recently discovered 111 year-old Christmas pudding.

Headed, Christmas Cheer for the Naval Brigade, Miss Agnes Weston asks for support from readers to send food and welfare parcels to the Boer War front lines in time for Christmas 1889.

The 111 year old plum pudding has only recently been found

One of the Christmas puddings, dated 1900 and sent to the Naval Brigade  has been given to The National Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, after having been left in the back of a food cupboard for years.

Collections Manager, Victoria Ingles explains: “We received a call from a lady wanting to know if we would be interested in a tinned Christmas pudding.

“It had been in her kitchen cupboard since her husband’s death but she knew little else about it other than it had been in his family for many years so this sparked our interest to try and find out more.”

“Stored in a decorative tin, the 111 year old plum pudding is clearly showing signs of age but the message can still be read: “For the Naval Brigade, In the Front, With Miss Weston’s Best Christmas & New Year, 1900, Wishes.”

Who was Agnes Weston ?

Miss Agnes ‘Aggie’ Weston, known as the Mother of the Navy, took up hospital visiting and parish work and subsequently began a correspondence with a sailor who asked her to write to him.

This developed into her being the devoted friend of sailors, superintendent of the Royal Naval Temperance Society and ultimately founder of the Royal Naval Sailors’ Rests at Devonport and Portsmouth.

Shortly before her death she was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1918 and was buried with full naval honours.

Miss Weston’s values are carried through in every detail on the front of the pudding label: “Peek, Frean & Co’s Teetotal Plum Pudding – LONDON, High Class Ingredients Only”. The other side of the tin is an illustration in an Oliver Twist style showing children holding out their plates.

The label also carries the following instructions: “This pudding is ready for use but may be boiled for an hour if required hot.”

Further research into Miss Weston’s work has found reference to the puddings in a letter to the editor of the Carlisle Journal, dated December 08, 1899.

The letter asks for “Christmas Cheer for the Naval Brigade. At The FRONT” with Miss Weston describing the Sailors’ Battle and how she is anxious to cheer the hearts of the brave boys at Christmas and the New Year – “There are between 600 and 1,000 men at the front, and I want to send each a Christmas pudding…” She then continues to ask for help, gifts and aid in the form of cheques or postal orders.

“As Christmas drew near it occurred to one of us that a Christmas pudding for each man of the Naval Brigade would be a nice little present. Messrs. Peek, Frean & Co. carried out the order, and the puddings went off, each in its tin, “With Miss Weston’s good wishes,” in time to reach the front. They were passed on and were not hung up any-where.”

Having discovered the personal background to the production of the pudding, Victoria Ingles adds: “It is quite remarkable that the pudding has survived for over 100 years. It is the only example we know of issued to the Naval Brigade still in existence and quite possibly the oldest surviving Christmas pudding too!”

The pudding will undergo some conservation work but will be temporarily on display in the museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard’s Victorian Festival of Christmas (Fri 25th – Sun 27th November, 2011 www.christmasfestival.co.uk), along with some WWI and WWII navy rations including an orange and some chocolate, as well as a more recent Christmas box sent to the Navy on operations in Iraq.

An intimate and powerful installation called, In Our Own Words: Soldiers’ thoughts from Afghanistan,  has been created by the Cumbrian artist Derek Eland at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester.

In Our Own Words: Soldiers’ thoughts from Afghanistan Pic - IWM / Derek Eland

Eland, a former paratrooper turned artist, reflects on individual experiences on the front line of a contemporary conflict.

From the remarkable to the mundane, the extraordinary to the everyday, soldiers from 16 Air Assault Brigade recorded their honest and personal thoughts on small pieces of card.

Marking the tenth anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan Eland visited Afghanistan and created a ‘diary room’ experience for troops, providing them with blank cards and offering them the opportunity to write down their thoughts.

The comments written on the cards are raw, honest and varied.

The reality of everyday life for troops sits alongside emotional accounts written in the immediate aftermath of battle.

“Your mind clicks into a gear that you never knew you had, and you bark orders like your life depends on it… and GUESS WHAT: IT DOES!”

“My abiding memory of Afghanistan? … It will be a humble local farmer who one day took me by surprise by asking after my family. “You are far from home. You must miss your family very much. We are very grateful.”

Comments from members of 16 Air Assault Brigade in Afghanistan. Pic Derek Eland / IWM

On display

Mr Eland also collated message cards written by a range of other personnel, including engineers, pioneers, medics, dog handlers, interpreters and members of the Afghan National Army.

Covered with sand and weather stains, some comments were even written on sections of ration boxes or held together with tape.

Artist Derek Eland said: “It was an enormous privilege to spend time with these soldiers at the front line and to help create this extraordinary piece of artwork.

“It is essentially a unique self-portrait of this modern conflict, written at the time by the soldiers in their own words. This is their story.”

Colonel Hugo Fletcher, Deputy Commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said: “Derek Eland is an accomplished artist who focuses on people’s interaction with their surroundings and circumstances.

“His genius has been in capturing the soldiers’ own thoughts during the operation; the display is their story; it offers an informed insight into the arduous and challenging operations in Afghanistan, reflecting their intelligence, stoicism and wit.”

The message cards written by troops will now be shown at Imperial War Museum North, displayed in a similar manner to how they were originally posted in Forward Operating Bases in Afghanistan.

The exhibition, part of the Museum’s Reactions series, can be seen at The WaterWay, 1 October 2011 – 24 June 2012.  Free Entry,  (donations welcome). www.iwm.org.uk/north

A collection of oral history, photography and written stories examining the unique experience of Polish expats is to open in Worcester.

The project ‘From Exile to Freedom’ is created by Polish Expats Association in Birmingham and is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Tomasz Piotrowski, MIRA Project Coordinator for Worcestershire said “The exhibition portrays the new wave of Polish arrivals to the UK after the enlargement of the European Union in 2004.

“It also provides the historical context of previous Polish migrations to the British Isles with a special focus on the West Midlands region.”

The stories of young and old generations of Poles have been collected in order to present their experiences and socio-political context connected with their arrival to the new country.

The organisers have interviewed representatives of three different generations of emigrants: those who arrived to the Great Britain just after the Second World War, during the years of communist regime in Eastern Europe and those who arrived after 2004.

These stories give a unique insight into how the new community is being formed and the reasons of current and previous waves of Polish migrations to the UK.

‘From Exile to Freedom’ is written by the migrants themselves and is dedicated to them.

To gather these stories Polish Expats Association have been working with a group of young volunteers, who conducted interviews with members of the Polish community.

The project also portrays the process of community integration and sheds light on the rich and positive history of Polish presence in the UK.

The collected stories, photographic evidence and recorded interviews can be seen free of charge at the exhibition which is going to be shown at the Worcester Commandery from 15th Oct until 11th Nov or for more information visit www.fromexiletofreedom.org.uk

Bletchley Park is to host a photographic exhibition called “Churchill’s Finest Hour 1940 – 1945”, produced by Danish photographer, Niels Bjerre.

Sir Winston Churchill famously visited Bletchley Park in secret on 6 September 1941 to see the work of the codebreakers.  It was after this eventful visit that he released more funding for the work taking place at Bletchley Park, which enabled them to continue their work that shortened the war by two years.

The late John Herivel, a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, described the visit as “Our Finest Hour” and had the honour of being introduced to the Prime Minister. He describes the visit in his book Herivelismus. “We saw before us a rather frail, oldish looking man, a trifle bowed, with wispy hair – then he spoke briefly but with deep emotion.”

Niels Bjerre has been interested in Churchill’s life since the early 1990´s. However, it was visits to the Cabinet War Rooms in London in 1987 that gave him the keen interest in and admiration for this “Greatest Briton”.

“Like many other countries which were occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War, we Danes see Winston Churchill as the saviour of the free world. He succeeds in not only kindling the spirit of the British people, but also everyone else who wants to fight against dictatorship!”

The exhibition will be on display until 25 October 2011 in Hut 8.

Blue plaque unveiled on the former home in London of Arctic explorer John Rae.

The English Heritage blue plaque, at 4 Lower Addison Gardens, Holland Park, London, is outside where the explorer lived for 24 years, until his death in 1893.

English Heritage blue plaque for Arctic explorer John Rae. Pic English Heritage

The plaque was unveiled by bushcraft and survival expert Ray Mears.

John Rae was largely an unsung hero of Arctic exploration during his lifetime, and only relatively recently has his contribution to modern survivalist techniques been fully appreciated.

His expeditions in the Canadian Arctic saw him cover a remarkable 13,000 miles by boat and on foot and survey more than 1,700 miles of new coastline, filling in some of the last gaps on the world map.

As the twentieth-century explorer Vilhjalmur Steffanson noted, Rae far outdid his contemporaries “in miles, speed and comfort” and was, in exploration terms, “as new as Darwin”. Rae was notable for having befriended the Inuit and used their survival techniques; they called him “Aglooka” meaning “he who takes long strides”.

Rae also identified the only north-west passage around America that is navigable without icebreakers, thereby signposting the end to a centuries-long quest.

At the time, however, his having ‘gone native’ was viewed with suspicion, and he was unfairly traduced as the bearer of bad news about the grim fate of Sir John Franklin’s expedition.

Orkney links

Rae was born in Orkney in 1813 and studied medicine at Edinburgh before being appointed surgeon aboard the Hudson Bay Company ship Prince of Wales.

From 1834 he served as surgeon at Moose Factory, the Company’s post on James Bay, where he treated the local population as well as Company men. Having learned the rudiments of surveying, Rae was chosen to lead an expedition to survey of the northern coastline of North America in 1846-67.

More than 600 miles of Arctic shoreline were mapped; the expedition was also significant for its unprecedented success in living off the land through an Arctic winter, which Rae later described in his Narrative of an expedition to the shores of the Arctic Sea in 1846 and 1847 (1850).

In search of the Northwest passage

The writer R.M. Ballantyne encountered Rae on this journey, and recalled him as “very muscular and active, full of animal spirits” and as possessing “a fine intellectual countenance”. Arctic exploration was one of the biggest challenges of the age, and one of the most dangerous: it is to Rae’s credit that he lost just one man in his entire career.

By 1848 concern was growing as to the fate of Sir John Franklin and his expedition, who had set off to find the Northwest Passage three years earlier. In 1854 Rae, who had joined two earlier search parties, encountered a party of Inuit who, through interpreters, told him of a group of Europeans who had starved to death, and produced artefacts that showed beyond reasonable doubt they were describing the Franklin expedition.

Aware that others were looking for the expedition in completely the wrong place, Rae hurried back to London and made a full report to the Admiralty, which included the Inuit’s harrowing accounts of evidence of cannibalism among the starving men. Much to Rae’s dismay, this report was made public; it was met with hostile incredulity, not least from Franklin’s widow, Lady Jane Franklin, who memorably described Rae as “hairy and disagreeable”.

Even Charles Dickens waded in with criticism, and Rae was accused of returning only for the £10,000 reward on offer and derided for accepting the word of Inuit “savages”.

He almost certainly knew nothing of the reward, which he shared with his men, and thereupon retired from exploration in 1856.

Recent forensic work on the Franklin expedition appears to have vindicated Rae and his Inuit informers.

From 1857 to 1859 Rae lived in Ontario and married Catherine Thompson in 1860.

Retirement

They afterwards sailed to England and lived mostly in London thereafter, though they continued to visit both Orkney and Canada. In retirement, Rae lectured extensively and was the author of some 30 articles relating to Arctic exploration, survival, flora, fauna and anthropology.

Elected to the Royal Geographical Society in 1880, Rae gave papers to numerous learned institutions and served on the British Association for the Advancement of Science’s research committee on ‘permanently frozen soil’, or permafrost.

He died of an aneurism at his London home in 1893 and was buried in Orkney. The navigable passage he identified through the Canadian Arctic is now named the Rae Strait; a plaque marks the approximate site of its discovery.

John Rae is remembered in St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney

Rae also has a plaque in Hamilton, Ontario, and fundraising is underway for the rescue and restoration of his Orkney ancestral home, the Hall of Clestrain, which is grade A listed (in the Scottish statutory list) but presently in a state of severe dereliction.

Number 4 Lower Addison Gardens, originally known as 2 Addison Gardens South, is the only surviving London address with a strong and proven association with John Rae.

The three-storey terraced house dates from very shortly before the Raes moved in there in 1869; the road was only half complete when they did so.

For an Arctic explorer from the Orkneys, London may not seem the most obvious place to retire, but he relished London and its connections to intellectual life.

After his treks in the Arctic, Holland Park was just a short stroll away for Rae from the learned institutions at which he lectured.

Rae was also a good shot and belonged to the London Scottish Volunteer regiment. Howard Spencer, English Heritage historian added: “When Roald Amundsen sailed the north-west route around America in 1903-06 he readily acknowledged his debt to Rae as a surveyor and a survivalist. Rae paved the way for the explorers who walked in his footsteps and learned from the strong connection he forged with the land and its indigenous people.”