My mother was born on St George’s Day<\/p>\n
April the 23rd 1924<\/p>\n
She was born into a middle class family<\/p>\n
Which was facing reduced circumstances<\/p>\n
Due to economic crisis of the times<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She was a talented artist and instead of university<\/p>\n
Found herself studying at a prodigious art school<\/p>\n
It was here that she met my father at the end of the war<\/p>\n
His father had commissioned a portrait of his son in uniform<\/p>\n
And chose my mother after seeing her outstanding work<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In 1946 she found herself in India with my father<\/p>\n
It was an experience that changed her view of life<\/p>\n
His was a colonial posting which was not much discussed<\/p>\n
My mother was there during independence<\/p>\n
And thought this to be India’s biggest tragedy<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My father was later posted to a number of African countries<\/p>\n
Which my mother hated as she thought them to be Dante’s Hell<\/p>\n
She witnessed atrocities that no gentlewoman should have ever seen<\/p>\n
And vowed that her children would be raised in a gentle English county<\/p>\n
Light years away from the terrors of our crumbling empire<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I was of age she told me of her life in great detail<\/p>\n
And although unfashionable her love of the old order<\/p>\n
Which was by now in her view diseased and fast fading<\/p>\n
Through no fault of its own as it had been betrayed by weak and stupid men<\/p>\n
My mother passed away October 2019 having painted her cat on the day before she died<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have her final cat painting in my study<\/p>\n
Along with my fathers many photographs of India<\/p>\n
None of his African photographs have survived<\/p>\n
As he destroyed them all when we returned to England<\/p>\n
He never told me the reason why as I had known the answer for many years<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
From Child of Empire by Clive Stevens-Smith<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My mother was born on St George’s Day April the 23rd 1924 She was born into a middle class family Which was facing reduced circumstances Due to economic crisis of the times She was a talented artist and instead of university Found herself studying at a prodigious art school It was here that she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10350"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10355,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10350\/revisions\/10355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}