Liza’s Story

I was born on January 20th 1950. At 9am in the morning. This happened in the nursing home that my mother was staying in, in Smethick – the glamour capital of the world! We them moved home to the paternal grandparents in Winchester.

Shortly afterwards Dad went to work at Aldershot Repertory Theatre as a stage manager. We followed, moving to a minute cottage, called ‘The Kennel’, in Weybourne just outside Farnham in Surrey. The house was small but the garden was enormous. My parents even had another house in the paddock, and we had a lovely boxer called ‘Bella’.
The friends my parents made then have remained close for the rest of their lives. In particular Alice Allender and her girls, and Philip Gardener, a horsemaster, an extraordinary man who guided me through life. His wisdom and knowledge was awe inspiring – a horse whisperer before the term had been invented.

I remember those early years as being very happy. My sister arrived when I was two and though I was appalled that my parents seemed determined to keep her; I couldn’t understand why they didn’t take her back. But, of course, I got used to her. We fought, Maria and I, but mostly got on well. From an early age we shared we shared a passion for horses and would go to Phil Gardner’s riding school for lessons. Mostly I remember going round in circles, bouncing, without stirrups and crying, with Phil lying on the floor shouting at us.

When I was eleven we moved to Frensham and we had our own ponies. I had just got into the Farnham Girls Grammar School, from St. Polycarps Primary in Farnham, and had to get the bus to school every day; mucking out and feeding the ponies and chickens and rabbits first. It was drummed into me at an early age, to look after the animals before myself. I still adhere to this. Even on those cold, wet winter mornings. But the joy of the holidays and weekends. Out all day on our ponies, galloping about. Pretending to be roundheads and cavaliers, I was always a cavalier. They had better outfits. Or cowboys and Indians. But always with out pony-mad friends.

We competed in local gymkhanas and shows, the work trying to make our sturdy ponies into show hacks. I went hunting every winter, my pony, Mousie, had been a Whipper In’s horse and loved to go hunting but wouldn’t go home until the end. The Chiddingfold and Leconfield Farmer’s Hunt was not smart and not good at catching foxes. I never saw one killed. We used to frequently lose the hounds too but a lot of galloping around went on.

I still support hunting, mainly because alternative methods of killing foxes are far crueller. We had a fox crawl into our yard, having been shot badly, and it was slowly dying an agonising death from gangrene. The smell and fear in the animal’s eyes was heart rendering so we put it out of it’s misery. Unfortunately I’ve also seen a dog poisoned with dingo bait in Australia and no animal should die like that. But that is what will happen to foxes if and when fox hunting is banned.

My father, who had started in Aldershot Rep., went to the BBC as a floor manager. And from there to director and to producer. During our childhood he wrote, produced and directed many children’s dramas including the “Mr. Pastry Show”, “Three Golden Nobles” and for adult drama “Sherlock Holmes” with Douglas Wilmar and Nigel Stock and “Kipling” with Joss Acland taken from “Tales from the Hills”.

We used to visit the sets and if any riding extras were needed, we were there.

Ifirst decided to act when I was six, my father was working on Jesus of Nazareth, starring Tom Flemming. It was live TV in those days and the actors performed on Thursday nights or Sunday afternoons. They needed some children for the scene where Jesus says “suffer little children come unto me”, so Dad took Maria and I. She cried and had to be sent home but I loved it. So sitting on Jesus’ knee on live television I was blessed with the desire to act.

Dad wouldn’t let me be a child actor, much to my furry. Hayley Mills was! So I appeared in school plays and joined a local amateur dramatic group, the Junior Tilford Players.

Then, when I was fourteen, Joan Knight, who was running the Castle Theatre in Farnham let me work there in the school holidays as a student ASM. I was like a pig in clover, I made props, costumes and sets. And coffee. Was prompter, sound and lighting. Technician and understudy if anyone was off ill. It was fortnightly rep and I loved every minute of the theatre hour days. The ponies took a bit of a backseat from there but, luckily, Maria took over there.

Then in 1965, my father decided to emigrate to Australia to become Head of Drama at the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, based on the BBC) in Sydney.

We had to leave our cosy life in Surrey for the unknown halfway across the world and didn’t like it one bit. I sulked for six weeks on the boat out there.

My father’s family, the Goddards, came across our lonely channel with William the Conqueror. My ancient ancestor was the accountant for the invasion and so, I suppose, we can be blamed for much of that French drivel in the English language. For my ancestor’s efforts he was awarded the modern county of Wiltshire.

A few hundred years later, my Grandpa Fred pushed a handcart from Somerset to Derby and started a successful market stall. A close friend, Mr. Marks, wanted to open a full time shop with my perhaps blinkered Grandpa. Had he agreed you would be buying your socks and undies from Marks and Goddard, rather than Marks and Spencer.

Eventually Grandpa Fred did well and opened his own shops. His children were well educated and my Grandfather, Gaga, went to “that place in the fens where they do maths”, Cambridge. He went on to be the science master at the oldest school in England, Winchester College in Hampshire.

My grandmother, Eva Oliver, married Gaga in her home town of Burton on Trent. Gaga and Granny lived in Winchester. Gaga was a Winchester College Housemaster and the first person to prove, through complex mathematics, that 1+ 1 can equal 3. Someday I’ll show it to you but not now.

Anyway, Gaga and Granny had four children. The first, Maurice, joined the Motor Torpedo Boat (MTB) fleet and was killed in a dawn raid in the English Channel. David, my father, was the second born but I will come back to him later. Mary, the only girl, married a New Zealander, Pat Towle, and emigrated to Auckland where we still keep in contact with our cousins. Last but not least is Tony, who also went to live in New Zealand. Sadly none of them are alive today but they are all remembered fondly.

My mother’s family are all from the Birmingham area. One cousin had a famous nut and bolt factory that used to employ thousands. My mother’s mother married a Mr. Wyton, who’s own mother was of French descent, a Mrs. Allared. My grandfather made bicycles and his own car, which was famously unreliable. On one occasion, with my mother, a child in a basket, he drove his car at a log in the road. Under the impression that the log would give way to superior automotive machinery, he attacked it at full power. For the car’s last time. For the first and last time: Nature 1, Machinery 0.

My Grandmother’s sister married George Maxwell, who went to live in the Eric Gill community in Sussex. It was an idyllic place to visit as a child. My Auntie Sis kept bees and made the most delicious bread. The women did all the manual labour in the community. They kept pigs, chickens and sheep, grew all the vegetables, spun wool, made cloth and looms, and made all their clothes. A hard life by the toughest standards.

My mother lived there during the Second World War and she remembers longing for store bought cakes and clothes. My mother’s father died in 1941, so she went and joined ENSA and had a whale of a time.

My parents, David and Clare, met in Germany, at the end of the war. My mother was enjoying herself with a Russian prince, Prince Nikolai Obelensky, and getting into trouble travelling between the British, American and Russian zones of Berlin. My father had been part of the British defence team at the Nuremberg trials, defending the indefensible. He then became the public prosecutor on the Island of Rhodes, in the Mediterranean. Dad always told me that he spoke ancient greek to the locals, as he was a classics man, and they understood him perfectly. It was only recently, when I read “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin”, with the character of Bunnios, that I wondered if maybe they were just humouring my young father.

Somehow my mother and father met.