William Esau Heard 1835-1938

Born the son of mariner, Richard Heard, in Northam, N. Devon, in 1847, William Esau HEARD moved with his family to Newport, Wales,  where he was engaged as apprentice and office boy, by ship broker, G.W.Jones & Co, at 4/- per week.  Over the years, he passed through all the grades in the office, and executed many important missions on the Continent before rising to be principal partner in 1880, then Managing Director with Jones, when the firm was renamed Jones, Heard and Co. The firm became very closely associated with the import and export trades of Newport, as agents to the many Conference Lines of Steamers trading to and from Newport with various parts of the world. He was a founder of Newport Chamber of Commerce and was  six times president. and was its first representative on the Newport Harbour Commission. He played a leading role in the establishment of Newport's Eastern Dry Dock, an important step in the town's industrial history. William, in top hat and frock coat with buttonhole, went to his office every day, becoming  known as The Grand Old Man of Newport. His business trip to Canada and the USA in 1865 was instrumental in extending company affairs, and his detailed account of this trip, dictated many years later from memory, is now in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia in Halifax and the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa and makes good reading.
He became a representative of many nations in a consular capacity. He was the Consular Agent for the USA for 28 years. He represented 13 nations as  Consul or Vice-Consul, including Russia, Belgium, Greece, Holland, Turkey, Uruguay, Honduras and Peru. He established a precedent for his sons and other company members to take on consular roles. His Majesty the King of the Belgians conferred upon him the Civic Cross First Class. This was immediately followed by the Croix Chevalier de l'Ordre de Leopold, which is the greatest distinction within the power of the Belgian Government to confer. These were in recognition of his valuable services, rendered over a period of more than 35 years as vice-consul and for special war work. 

He was appointed Justice of the Peace for the County of Monmouthshire by the Lord Chancellor on the recommendation of the Lord-Lieutenant of the County. He inaugurated the Newport Devon and Cornwall Society and was its first President. He was presented to The Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York, on their visits to Newport . He was a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Ship Brokers.

He married Julia Griffiths in 1858.  They had 10 children, all of whom survived to maturity. On the occasion of his 100th birthday in 1935 he was attended by a deputation headed by the Mayor of Newport. They made a unique presentation of an album containing the signatures of 750 worthies representing every phase of life in Newport and Monmouthshire. The album contained too an illuminated address which paid tribute to his long lifetime of public service.  "To William Esau HEARD J.P.
On the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of your birthday, we, whose signatures are collected in this album, representing the civic, professional and business activities of the town and port of Newport, present to you this token of our friendship and esteem, and of our best wishes for your continued long life and health."

"Since you entered the firm with which you are still associated, 85 years ago, Newport has seen many great developments which have raised it to the position of one of the leading ports in the country ..."

"The lord-lieutenant of the county of Monmouth, the high-sheriff of the County of Monmouth, the Mayor and corporation of Newport, local and county magistrates, his Majesty's Collector of Customs and Excise, members of the Consular Corps, of which you were for over 35 years an honoured member; corporation officials and police, shipowners and shipbrokers, your business associates over very many years; the Newport Docks manager and his staff, and workers at the Newport Docks, members of the Newport Chamber of Commerce, of which you were one of the founders: lawyers, doctors, and businessmen, your fellow workers for the Royal Gwent Hospital, your fellow members of the Devon and Cornwall Society, members of the Monmouthshire County Club and of the Newport Athletic Club, the Newport Pilotage Board and the pilots of the port of Newport, and others in all walks of life join in this testimonial to the long and useful life you have led, with the development and prosperity of Newport always to the fore in your many and varied activities."
All the well-wishers and their representatives signed, along with the Bishop of Monmouth and the Mayors of Monmouth and Abergavenny, and finally members of William's family who had assembled for the occasion added their signatures.  He retained the honorary position of Chairman of Jones, Heard and Co until his death on 27 Jan 1938. A memorial service was held in his honour in St. Woolos Cathedral, Newport,  on 31 January 1938.

Premises of Jones, Heard and Co in Newport

George Maeer's medal for the MBE

Alan Pitts Crick and Ronald Pitts Crick

Alan Pitts CRICK (1913-1995) was the eldest son of  engineer, Owen John Pitts Crick, and Margaret Daw, a sister of Mary Le Patourel, née Daw. Owen had migrated to Canada from Devon in 1908 and Margaret joined him after their marriage in Exeter in 1912.  Their two sons were born in Toronto. The family returned to the UK in 1919. Both boys attended “The Modern” boy’s school in Minehead, before continuing their education at Latymer Upper School, Hammersmith, followed by higher education at King’s College London, where their careers took different paths. Alan read Modern Languages, and also took a Masters in German. He then went to Heidelberg University where he obtained a doctorate in Germanic Studies in 1938. He was appointed Acting Vice Consul, and then Vice Consul at the British Consulate General, in the Free City of Danzig, 1938-1939. His duties involved providing documents for Jews who were desperate to leave the country. He was saddened by the number who could not bring themselves to leave everything behind and start a new life. Returning to Britain at the outbreak of war, Alan joined the Army in 1939, was commissioned in the following year, and appointed an Intelligence Officer with Auxiliary Units , GHQ Home Forces, and Instructor in irregular warfare, 1940-1941; he spent some time in Dorset and Somerset, organising auxiliary forces to form a resistance movement in the event of a successful German invasion of this country. Following the Battle of Britain, Alan worked in field intelligence, and was an Instructor on the German Interrogation Course, in Cambridge, 1941.

In September 1941 he was posted to General Staff Intelligence, 8th Army and became a Field Intelligence Officer, at the 8th Army HQ for Egypt and Libya from 1941-1942. On 1o May 1942 at 8th Army HQ East of Tobruk he was asked to impersonate a German army officer! He received a mysterious summons to Middle East headquarters in Cairo. British troops had captured a German officer who had been on a reconnaissance mission near the southern end of the Gazala Line. It was thought that he might have been fully briefed on Rommel’s plans for a fresh offensive in the desert. Rather than subject the prisoner, a Major Rudolph, to a hostile interrogation, British intelligence officers wanted Crick, who was fluent in German, to impersonate a fellow German officer and ingratiate himself with the hapless Rudolph so that he could glean what  information he could – bearing in mind that the captured German could well be a “plant”. Crick donned the uniform of a second lieutenant in the Wehrmacht and adopted the character and background details of a friend he had known before the war while he had  been taking his doctorate at Heidelberg University. After testing his cover by means of a stern grilling from experienced British interrogators, he was smuggled into the exercise yard of the prison where Rudolph was being held. The ruse was so successful that Rudolph quietly warned his fellow “German” to be wary of two Italian pilots who were also there, because he suspected them of being British “stool pigeons”. A thoughtful man who disapproved of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Rudolph quickly convinced Crick that he was genuine. But he clearly had not been informed of Rommel’s plans. Crick steered the conversation round to the impending German attack.  Rudolph’s analysis – which proved accurate – was that the Germans would be able to take Tobruk, Bardia and Halfaya, but that the stretch of desert between the Egyptian frontier and the Delta would be too much for them. At one point Crick nearly blew his cover by asking Rudolph if there were many Axis troops at Naples. “You must know that,” replied Rudolph sharply, “you were there a week ago.” Crick parried by saying that there had seemed to be quite a few, but he was not sure how many.  Rudolph accepted this reply, and went on to divulge further intelligence which Crick passed to his superiors.  Later that year Crick was to gather intelligence on the enemy defence lay-outs at El Alamein, contributing to the speed of Montgomery’s victory. Rudolph lent Crick a crumpled German newspaper as they parted. “I never saw him again.” Crick wrote in later life. 

He remained with Middle East GHQ as a General Staff Officer 3, 1942-1943. In 1943 he was appointed General Staff Officer 2, Instructor on War Intelligence Course at the School of Military Intelligence, Matlock, where he prepared intelligence officers for future operations. In the last stages of planning for the D-Day invasion of Normandy he joined General Eisenhower‘s staff at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, and acted as link officer between intelligence and the planners throughout the North-West Europe campaign, serving as a Major, General Staff Officer 2, Operational Intelligence, G2 Division, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF), from 1944-1945. After the German surrender, Crick was posted to Montgomery’s staff at Tactical HQ 21 Army Group and HQ British Army on the Rhine, as a General Staff Officer 2. He was appointed as Deputy Head of the Political Intelligence Section, Headquarters British Army of the Rhine, 1945, where he helped in the transition from military to political intelligence. He was demobilised in Dec 1945. He was mentioned in despatches. 
 

School of Military Intelligence, Matlock, Derbyshire

 With his background he was a natural choice, on being demobilised at the rank of Major, for the newly-formed Joint Intelligence Bureau at the Ministry of Defence. He was a Senior Research Officer there from 1946-48. Then he was at the Joint Services Staff College in 1948. He became the  Deputy Assistant Director, Joint Intelligence Bureau, from 1950-1953; He went to Washington, for a spell, from 1953 to 1956, where he was seconded to the British Joint Services Mission. In 1957 he returned as assistant director of JIB . He was appointed to OBE in 1956. He climbed rapidly through the hierarchy of his department, which changed its name to the Defence Intelligence Staff after a reorganisation in 1964. He was made Assistant Director, Joint Intelligence Bureau, 1957-1963 and appointed to the Imperial Defence College,  in 1960. He returned to Washington from 1963-1965, where he was Counsellor at the British Embassy. Then he was made Chair of the Joint Intelligence Staff at the Cabinet Office from 1965 to 1968; then Assistant Director (Economic Intelligence), Defence Intelligence Staff, Ministry of Defence, from 1968-1970; and Director of Economic Intelligence, Defence Intelligence Staff, Ministry of Defence, 1970-1973.

 After his retirement from the MOD he became Deputy Chief Adviser to Commercial Union Assurance Company Limited, from 1973-1978 retiring for the second time in 1978. Thereafter he spent much of his time indulging his lifelong passion for writing poetry, especially nonsense verse. Several of the latter were published by Penguin in More Comic and Curious Verse while in 1992 Crick brought out his own anthology In the Caves of the Mind, containing his more serious poems in addition to his light verse.

Alan's publications include; Die Persönlichkeit Johann Christian Günthers (translated by Alan J.Pitts Crick),Heinrich Fahrer, Heidelberg-Handschuhsheim, Germany, 1938 ;

Existence and Being  by Martin Heidegger (translated by Alan J.Pitts Crick and R F C Hull, et al. ) Vision, London, 1949;

Ostasien denkt anders (The Mind of East Asia) by Lily Abegg  (translated by A. J. Crick and E. E. Thomas) Thames, London, 1952:
 
In the caves of the mind. Poems by Alan Crick (Privately published, Rye, Sussex, 1992).

HMS Illustrious

The IGA now has more than 6,000 members and raises over £1.5 million every year to fund research and screening programmes around the world. Its research is now directed at the genetic causes of glaucoma, and in 1991 Crick negotiated a collaboration between the IGA and Professor Mansoor Sarfarazi, molecular geneticist at Connecticut University, and Anne Child, clinical geneticist at St George's Hospital. This joint approach has made a great contribution to the identification of loci of glaucoma genes, which researchers hope will result in effective treatment for glaucoma.

In the 1950s he worked with Dr. Clifford Hoyle at King's and the Brompton Hospital, on sarcoidosis, which can affect the eye, and together they wrote important joint research papers on this topic. Also in the 1950s, Ronald had a pioneering role with Keeler instruments to develop the operating microscope for use in eye surgery. This resulted in the first British model being shown at the 1958 Oxford Congress. Two years later a model had been developed which surgeons-in-training used at the Royal Eye Hospital. This prototype microscope was later donated to a registrar returning to India and it is still in working order.

Ronald (left) at the presentation of a Goldmann tonometer and slit lamp microscope

With Roger Trimble he co-wrote A Textbook of Clinical Ophthalmology (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1986). He delivered many lectures around the world and was awarded the Medal of Achievement by the American Society of Contemporary Ophthalmology. I

Ronald was a great admirer of Winston Churchill and was delighted when he was invited to Chartwell in a professional capacity to see Lady Churchill; on one occasion he watched the film The Big Country with Winston in his private cinema, and had the great man's pet bird perch on his shoulder, and peck at his ear.

Professor Fred Cornish 1930 - 2020

Mayor of Exeter, 1952

Richard Wayland Smith, born to a farming family in Gloucestershire in 1890, won a scholarship to King's School, Worcester in 1904. He went on to  study medicine at Edinburgh University, qualifying as Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery in 1913.

He had been a member of the Officers’ Training Corps there, and  joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as Lieutenant at the outbreak of war. He arrived in France on 9 November 1914 . He was on the Western Front for three years before suffering a gunshot wound in June 1917. He was returned to England, and was treated at Exeter temporary war hospital No 7, which was in Exeter University's Streatham Hall, now called Reed Hall. It was one of the Exeter's seven temporary wartime treatment centres for troops. After treatment at Hospital No 7 Richard was passed fit for home service and the Army posted him as the Resident Medical Officer to the Exeter war hospital No 5. This was in Little Castle Street, Exeter, now called Bradninch Hall. Richard was a Captain at the end of war. He was awarded the Victory Medal, the British War Medal and the 1914 Star.

In March 1921 he was admitted Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. He came back to Exeter, first as house surgeon and later as consultant. He married Gladys Butler in 1922, the niece of William Sydney Nelson Heard.  They had one daughter, Anne.

In 1922  Richard was appointed Surgeon of HM Prison Exeter. It was his duty in that job to witness the executions of condemned prisoners, and to certify their deaths, a duty he performed frequently.

He was elected as Sheriff of Exeter in 1927. In 1939,  he and Gladys were living in Pennsylvania, Exeter, with a cook, a parlourmaid and a housemaid.  He was then described as a consulting surgeon. He was made  Mayor of Exeter in 1952.

Richard died in Exeter in 1967, Gladys died in 1979 in Exmouth.

Arthur Beresford King-Smith 1931 - 2021

King-Smiths married the granddaughters of  William Esau Heard. Arthur Beresford KING-SMITH was born in Keynsham, Somerset. He was a cousin of Dick King-Smith, author of The Sheep Pig, which was made into the film Babe. He was educated at St Peter’s School, Weston-super-Mare, where Roald Dahl had been a pupil, and then at Sherborne School.  After National Service with the Royal Artillery in Gibraltar, he started a degree at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, but dropped out and joined the family business, Golden Valley Paper Mills, in Bitton, South Gloucestershire.

He became involved in music groups, and in 1955 founded the Bath Cantata Group which is  still active. He was a gifted composer and choral conductor. He determined to leave the family business and in January 1964 he joined the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's management team.  He was responsible for running the orchestra from his very first day, dealing with the practical details of  concerts, from setting up music stands and organising refreshments,  managing the musicians, to ferrying soloists around the Midlands and further afield. He organised extensive tours in Europe, both East and West of the Iron Curtain Beresford handled the situation when Hugo Rignold, the conductor, was briefly arrested by Soviet border guards as a suspected spy during the 1968 Czechoslovakia tour, and he negotiated with Yugoslavian officials when players were mistakenly detained during the 1972 Eastern Bloc tour.

When  the CBSO’s chief conductor and general manager both departed abruptly in April 1978, the most serious crisis of its postwar existence, it fell to King-Smith to pick up the pieces.

He and George Jonas, who headed the council of management, brought in Erich Schmid to conduct, while the arrival of Ed Smith as general manager five months later led to the appointment of a young Simon Rattle as music director in 1980. Over the next 18 years King-Smith often drove Rattle, who did not drive, from concert to concert, and he came to know the conductor well.

King-Smith was subsequently appointed Deputy General Manager and later Deputy Chief Executive. After serving as part of the team that implemented the expansion of the Orchestra in 1988 and the move to Symphony Hall in 1991, he took early retirement in 1993 to complete the orchestra's official history Crescendo! published by Methuen in 1995 to mark its 75th anniversary. He became Honorary Archivist,  creating an archive of CBSO documents and recordings, answering inquiries about the orchestra's history, and writing a regular history column in the CBSO's in-house magazine Music Stand, which he founded and edited. He remained in that unpaid role until January 2014, by which time he had completed 50 years with the orchestra. To many music lovers in the Midlands and beyond, King-Smith was, after Simon Rattle, the public face of the CBSO, giving talks about its work to clubs and societies.

Early music and choral music remained a passion for him.  He was Chair of the Midlands Early Music Forum, and  music director of the Circle Singers of Royal Leamington Spa. His other performing groups included Merrie Madrigall, a semi-professional group of costumed singers,  Quadro, a small instrumental group; and the Holborne Consort of Recorders.

He died on September 28 2021, aged 90.

Professor Everitt G. D. Murray 1890-1964

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1890, Everitt George Dunne MURRAY went to England for his university and medical education. He attended Christ's College, Cambridge, and trained at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, being awarded a B.A.(Hons) (1912), M.A. (1918) and his Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery of the Society of Apothecaries in 1916 at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

During World War I he served with the rank of Captain in the British Army Medical Corps, not only being on the research staff of the War Office's Central Cerebro-Spinal Fever Laboratory, but working in Mesopotamia to control dysentery, until stricken with it himself. He was sent home, and appointed in 1917 to the Staff of the Vaccine Department of the Royal Army Medical College at Millbank..

He also was one of the British representatives at the Allies' Medical Services Conferences in Paris in 1917, next year becoming a member of the War Office Committee on dysentery and in 1919 appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (Military Division). In 1917 he married Harriet Winifred Hardwick 'Freda' WOODS, daughter of Captain Thomas Hardwick Woods J.P. of Blundeston Manor, Suffolk, and the granddaughter of William Esau Heard. Freda was a nurse in British Army Hospitals during the First World War and after her marriage helped at the Royal Army Medical College, Millbank.


Dr. Murray' academic career began at London's St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1919 when he was appointed Senior Demonstrator in Pathology. He moved on to Cambridge, where in 1921 he was a research bacteriologist with the Medical Research Council, at the University of Cambridge Field Laboratories, Milton, Cambridge. He was appointed Fellow of Christ's College, 1923-1931, was Lecturer in Pathology, from 1926-1930, and Director Of Medical Studies from 1925-1930. Murray went to McGill University, Montreal, in 1930 as Professor and Head of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology, a position he held until 1956 when he went to the University of Western Ontario as Guest Professor of Medical Research. While at McGill he was also a Municipal Councillor of the City of Montreal, representing McGill.

Murray published numerous papers in the fields of bacteriology and immunology, and during his time at McGill was also Bacteriologist-in-Chief and member of the Medical Board of the Royal Victoria Hospital (1931­-1946) and of the Children's Memorial Hospital (1938-1948) as well as holding other positions in the university and Montreal community.

During World War II he acted on several sub-committees of the National Research Council, and served as Chairman of the Biological Warfare Committee and Superintendent of Research at the Directorate of Chemical Warfare and Smoke, National Defence Headquarters, a secret Canadian National Defense biological warfare research program linked to  similar efforts in Britain and the USA, for which he received the US Medal of Freedom.

In retirement Professor E.G.D. Murray O.B.E., Medal of Freedom, U.S.A., M.A. ,L.M.M.S.A., M.D. (Hon), F.R.C.S. and his wife Freda lived in London Ontario, where he was Visiting Professor of Medical Research at University of Western Ontario.

Murray belonged to some 25 scientific societies and won many awards, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1948. He died in 1964, Freda died in 1990. They were both buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, London, Ontario. 

Le Patourel Family

L to r, Herbert Wallace Le Patourel VC, Mrs. Mary Le Patourel née Daw,
Edith Le Patourel, Professor John  Herbert Le Patourel

Herbert Augustus LE PATOUREL was born to a modest family in St. Peter Port, Guernsey in 1875.  Father was James Carré Le Patourel, a baker and later a miller. Herbert Augustus  was the youngest in a family of four sons and three daughters.  He started work as a solicitor's clerk in Guernsey, in the chambers of  Advocate W. Carey  and from 1900 to 1903 studied for his degree at Caen University. To be a graduate of Caen University for someone from Guernsey  normally meant one had earned a Certificat d'Études Juridiques Françaises et Normandes (Certificat) from the University, an essential requirement to becoming an Advocate in Guernsey. This certificate focuses on Norman law and French legal systems. On 1 July 1905 Herbert was sworn in as Advocate of the Royal Court, having obtained the diploma of Licencié en Droit (Caen) and successfully passed the examination in local law. After the swearing in he took his seat in Court wearing the traditional gown and cap.

Royal Court of Guernsey, with Advocates in traditional robes

In 1908 this Guernsey barrister married a farmer's daughter, from Crediton, Devon,  a Heard cousin, Mary Daw. How did they meet? They lived in Guernsey, one of their homes there being named Kyrton, the ancient name for Crediton.  Advocate Le Patourel was kept busy with the affairs of the Royal Court, prosecuting and defending in civil cases. He was a staunch churchman, and his interests extended outside his profession into ecclesiastical and military affairs, while his wife Mary was very much concerned with domestic matters. They had three children. The eldest, John Herbert LE PATOUREL, born in 1909, suffered from poor health as a child, and his schooling was disrupted. He spent a year with his grandparents in Devon. But wandering in Exeter cathedral, and among the ancient rocky shores of Guernsey, he managed to absorb interests, awareness and knowledge that would enrich his career in later years. In 1928 he went up to Jesus College Oxford with a scholarship.  He joined the Archaeological Society, later to become its President then a Life Member. He graduated with a BA in Modern History in 1931. He continued at Jesus as the Goldsmith's Company's Senior Student from 1931 to 1933.

In 1933 he gained an Assistant Lectureship at University College London, and was made a Lecturer in 1936. He achieved his DPhil. and published his doctoral thesis in 1937. In 1939 he married Hilda  Elizabeth Jean BIRD (1915-2011). She was then a secondary school teacher.  Then war broke out. John was declared unfit for military service. For a while he was seconded to University College, Leicester. As well as founding the Local Defence Volunteers he became involved in Adult Education. But at the end of 1940 he rejoined University College London, first based at Bangor, then from 1944, back in London. During these years he contributed much to Forces Education and gave Current Affairs classes. In 1945 he was appointed Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leeds. He remained in that post  until  1970. He was then a Research Professor at Leeds until 1974 when he retired with the title Emeritus Professor.

Professor John Herbert Le Patourel

While at Leeds he became the Vice-Chancellor's Deputy. He was a founder member of the Guernsey Society, which was established in 1943 to represent the interests of the Nazi-occupied island to the British Authorities. In 1967 he was a founder and the first Director of the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, until 1970.  In his wider academic world, he was Archivist to the Royal Court of Guernsey from 1946 onwards, and President of the Thoresby Society, of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society and of the Leeds Philosophical Society. Beyond the University and these societies he lectured widely, to other groups of students from other universities and colleges, to local branches of the Historical Association, and the Council for British Archaeology. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1972. He continued with research and publication until his death on 22 July 1981.

In 1979, the graduate student research office at the Institute for Medieval Studies was named the 'Le Patourel Room' in his honour.

John's magnum opus was The Norman Empire published in 1976. He had numerous books, papers and pamphlets published throughout his life.

His wife Jean Bird had graduated in History at Bedford College, University of London, and gained a Diploma In Education in 1939.  After her marriage to John, they worked together on archaeological and historical research on Guernsey. After they moved to Leeds they both became involved in research on Kirkstall Abbey, with excavations sponsored annually by the City of Leeds museums from 1950 to 1954.   Jean took responsibility for the study of the medieval pottery found there. Largely through Jean's work, the knowledge of Yorkshire medieval ceramics was transformed from general awareness to precise understanding of forms, fabrics, chronology, regional patterns, and even in some cases to specifics re kiln sources. Over the following years Jean's research further enriched the knowledge about Yorkshire medieval ceramics. Jean's contacts with  John Hurst, national expert on medieval pottery and coordinator of medieval rescue excavations for the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments resulted in her undertaking a number of such excavations in Yorkshire. This prompted her interested in moated sites, and she was involved in several studies of such sites. At the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy, Jean worked on the ceramics from there with Hurst. Work there led to Jean leading excavations at Knaresborough Castle. This led to further research on moated manors sites, such as West Haddlesey, alongside the formation of the Moated Sites Research Group, which later merged with the Deserted Medieval Village Group to form the Medieval Settlement Research Group.

Hilda Elizabeth Jean Le Patourel , BA, FSA

She was appointed to a lectureship in History and Archaeology in the then Department of Adult Education and Extra-Mural Studies in the University of Leeds in 1967, and to an Associate Lectureship in the Department of Archaeology in 1976. She was appointed to the Chair of  a newly-formed Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society.  A member of the Society’s Council from 1968 to 1971, she was elected an Honorary Vice-President in 1986, a post she held for twenty five years. She was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1960. Alongside her work on medieval ceramics, Jean became the world's leading expert on the archaeology of dog collars.

John's international academic network meant that Jean and her work also became well-known and widely respected abroad. Jean and John lived for much of their lives in Ilkley, Yorkshire, where they brought up three sons and a daughter.

Jean's publications include ; Kirkstall Abbey Excavations: the Pottery; 1950-4
A Cistercian Ware Kiln of the Early Sixteenth Century at Potterton, Yorkshire; Antiquity (1966)
Documentary Evidence and the Medieval Pottery Industry, Medieval Archaeology (1968)
Four Medieval Pottery-Kilns on Woodhouse Farm, Winksley, near Ripon, W. Riding of Yorkshire, Medieval Archaeology (1970)
The Moated Sites of Yorkshire (1973)
A Select Bibliography of the Publications of John Le Patourel 1935–1975, Northern History (1975)
Les sites fossoyés (moated sites) et leurs problèmes (l'organisation de la recherche en Grande Bretagne), Revue du Nord (1976)
"Documentary Evidence", "The Excavation of Moated Sites" and "The Significance of Moated Sites", in Medieval Moated Sites (1978)
Eds. Hilda Elizabeth Jean Le Patourel, Moira H. Long, May F. Pickles, Yorkshire Boundaries (1993)
"The Dog Collar" in Late Viking Age and Medieval Waterford (1997) John Herbert Le Patourel had a younger brother , Herbert Wallace LE PATOUREL (1916-1979) Herbert, too, lived a life of great achievement, though very different from his brother. Brigadier Herbert Wallace Le Patourel's story has a place here in our Roll of Honour.

On 18 July 2015, a blue plaque was unveiled at their childhood home in Fosse Andre, St Peter Port, Guernsey celebrating the lives of Professor John Herbert Le Patourel DPhil, FBA and his brother, Brigadier Herbert Wallace Le Paourel VC.

Brigadier Herbert Le Patourel VC, with his wife Babette Theresa Le Patourel

Anthea Bell (1936-2018)

After attending a boarding school in Bournemouth, Anthea BELL, great-great-granddaughter of our Mary Berry of Crediton,  read English at Somerville College, Oxford.

She married the publisher and writer Antony Kamm in 1957 . She began her career as a translator at the end of the 1950s when the German publisher Klaus Flugge asked Antony Kamm if he knew anyone able to translate Der kleine Wassermann, a book for children by Otfried Preussler. Kamm recommended his wife; Bell's English version entitled The Little Water Sprite was published in 1960. Eventually, she translated Preussler's entire works.

Over the decades, Bell translated numerous Franco-Belgian comics of the bande dessinée genre into English, including Asterix – for which her new puns were praised for keeping the original French spirit intact. Peter Hunt, Professor Emeritus in Children's Literature at Cardiff University, wrote of her "ingenious translations" of the French originals which "in a way display the art of the translator at its best". Other comic books she  translated include Le Petit Nicolas, Lieutenant Blueberry, and Iznogoud.

She specialised in translating children's literature, and re-translated Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales from Danish for the publishing house of Putnam. She also translated the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke and the Ruby Red Trilogy by Kerstin Gier. Other works include The Princess and the Captain (2006), from La Princetta et le Capitaine by Anne-Laure Bondoux.

Bell also translated into English many adult novels, as well as some books on art history, and musicology. She has translated W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz (plus other works by Sebald), and Władysław Szpilman's memoir The Pianist (translated, at the author's request, from the German version). Her translations of works by Stefan Zweig have been said to have helped restore his reputation among Anglophone readers, and that of E. T. A. Hoffmann's The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (originally Lebensansichten des Katers Murr) has had a positive effect on Hoffman's profile as well. In addition, Penguin Classics published Bell's new translation of Sigmund Freud's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life in 2003. Oxford University Press published her translation of Kafka's The Castle in 2009.

She contributed an essay titled "Translation: Walking the Tightrope of Illusion" to a 2006 book, The Translator as Writer, in which she explained her preference for 'invisible' translation whereby she creates the illusion that readers are not reading a translation "but the real thing".

Bell was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours for her services to literature and literary translations.

In 2014, Bell faithfully retranslated Erich Kästner's 1949 German children's novel Das doppelte Lottchen into English as The Parent Trap, after Disney's popular film adaptation of the book. Bell's translation was published in the United Kingdom and Australia by Pushkin Press, replacing Cyrus Brooks' 1962 English translation, which is still published in the United States and Canada as Lisa and Lottie. In 2020, Australian actress Ruby Rees recorded an unabridged narration of Bell's translation.

The special nature of Bell's work is evidenced by the numerous literary awards she won.

She received the German Federal Republic's Order of Merit in 2015, and the many other awards as listed here.

1987 – Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Hans Bemmann's The Stone and the Flute
1996 – Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation – for Christine Nöstlinger's A Dog's Life translated from German
2002 – Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, Goethe Institute – for W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz
2002 – Independent Foreign Fiction Prize – for W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz
2002 – Schlegel-Tieck Prize for W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz
2003 – Schlegel-Tieck Prize – for Karen Duve's Rain translated from German
2003 – Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation – for Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Where Were You Robert? translated from German
2007 – Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation – for Kai Meyer's The Flowing Queen translated from German
2009 – Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize – for Saša Stanišić's How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
2009 – Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Stefan Zweig's Burning Secret
2017 – Eric Carle Museum Bridge Award for contributions to children's literature

Mildred L. Batchelder Award
The Mildred L. Batchelder Award is unusual in that it is given to a publisher yet it explicitly references a given work, its translator and its author. Its intent is to encourage the translation of children's works into English in order "to eliminate barriers to understanding between people of different cultures, races, nations, and languages." Anthea Bell, translating from German, French and Danish, has been mentioned for more works than any other individual or organisation (including publishers) in the history of the award.
 
Anthea Bell and Antony Kamm were divorced in 1973. They had two sons.  After her sons left home, she lived and worked in Cambridge.

As a result of her forced retirement, the 37th book in the Asterix series, Asterix and the Chariot Race (published in October 2017), was translated by Adriana Hunter.

She died on 18 October 2018, aged 82.

Her life and work has inspired the competition  The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators, launched by the Queen's College Translation Exchange in 2020.