Tag: Letters

Young hopeful

Sunday Express – Sunday 03 December 1972

My former history teacher, now in his seventies, was for many years a housemaster at a school in Egypt.

Among the favourite tasks was producing the school play, but he still remembers how difficult and time-consuming it was stopping the rather excitable Egyptian boys from continually waving their arms about on stage.

One small boy, however, who was particularly good-looking and intelligent, evnetually responded to the teacher’s coaching and learend top keep his arms still.

My teacher likes to think it was this strict training that later helped the lad make such a success of his career.

The boy’s name? Omar Sharif.

H. Macrory, Courtlands Avenue, London, SE 12

‘Everything is suffering from change…’

[AWH – Possible start to booklet? Out the window modern, cube-shaped flats and maisonettes were springing up. In just xx months, his house would be demolished.

Maybe try to find the Catford letter.]

The Rev A. Miller Hagerty, sat in his soon-to-be demolished vicarage near its soon-to-be-demolished church, hammering out a letter that railed against change. “”Everything in this age and generation is suffering from change,” he wrote, as modern flats and maisonettes sprung up around him.

That change “inflicts itself on the community life socially, economically and even religiously,” he added in his letter to the Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette’s “You Tell Us” page. “Road traffic bewilders us, housing is an ever growing problem, the equitable adjustment of wages and prices, the turmoil of strikes, with thier dislocations, are a nightmare.” Beyond Courtlands Avenue, things were even worse. “The international strife of the powers breed the fear of the possible disintegration of civilisation.”

He kicked off a tradition of Courtlands Avenue letter writers. Though they were less angst-ridden as time went along.]

Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette – Friday 16 September 1960