DEARMAN & MOLLETT

I loved my grandmother very much and I will write a lengthier memoir elsewhere.  This will serve as just an outline of her life.  She was the only grandparent I knew, and was a constant, loving presence until my twenties.

Born in the 1880s when people moved around on foot, and by some form of horse-drawn vehicle, with the occasional bicycle, and very occasional motorcar, my grandmother died at the beginning of the swinging sixties when jetplanes were commonplace.  What huge changes had taken place in her lifetime - she lived through two world wars, revolution in Russia, female emancipation and the beginning of the computer age.  I cannot imagine what that must have been like.

These huge changes are also mirrored in the changes in her appearance - I look at this portrait of her as a young woman and can see no trace of the ‘old’ lady I knew - at least in the facial features.  But at least we have one or two photographs.  Such a clear-eyed gaze.