The fortunate few who were able to attend this year's AGM on 16th September at St Paul's Church Centre, Cambridge, had a very enjoyable time - and I apologise to those three people who went to a different church thanks to a postcode error made by me in the original announcement. Thankfully, they arrived in time for the two wonderful talks. Somehow, we always seem to find great speakers for the AGM and invariably we are given new or previously-overlooked information about Siegfried Sassoon, his work and his friends.
This year, by something of a fluke, our two speakers were both Cambridge residents. I mean to say that we chose the venue before we had finalised the speaker programme and we were lucky to get two local people who are experts in their particular fields as well as being members of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship.
It was lovely to see Kayleigh Fitzgerald again. Those of you who have been members for more than five years will remember Kayleigh as a committee member, but recent years have seen her having to interrupt her academic studies, as well as her work on a biography of W H R Rivers, because of ill health. She is now studying theology at St John's College, Cambridge, and we were very happy to see her looking so well. Kayleigh and her boyfriend are both preparing to be ordained as Anglican priests and we wish them every success in their future careers.
Kayleigh's interest in William Halse Rivers Rivers [sic] goes back to her schooldays, and the opportunity to study at St John's, where Rivers was a Fellow and where he died suddenly in 1922 (Or was it? Apparently there are conflicting versions of the story), was one she couldn't resist. In her scholarly and comprehensive talk, she gave us a whistle-stop tour of his life and career which was much appreciated by the knowledgeable audience, concentrating particularly on his investigations into the repression of memory, a phenomenon to which he could strongly relate because of his own personal experience and which helped him treat patients like Siegfried Sassoon.
Our second speaker, Anne Penton, is the great-niece of David Cuthbert Thomas, Siegfried's closest wartime friend. David was only 21 when he died, and might have done great things if he had not become a victim of the carnage of the Western Front. Anne has researched his life and family background in great detail, and has already written several fascinating articles on the subject for Siegfried's Journal. The audience was very excited when she produced several artefacts that had belonged either to David himself or to his family. These included his school rugby cap and his service book. Perhaps because of his youth, he had not written anything like the number of personal notes into the book as Sassoon did. Sassoon mentions in his diaries that he recalled David taking notes on his poetry while they talked, but no such notes have been found; they have probably gone the way of most students' lecture notes and it seems unlikely we will ever see them.
At the end of the afternoon, we were joined by Nick Jewers of BBC Wiltshire, who is in the process of preparing a radio programme about Sassoon and happened to be in Cambridge on that day. Nick interviewed the Chair and Vice Chair, and even followed us to the pub for additional informal conversation (some of which will, no doubt, need to be excised from his recording for reasons other than length!) We are looking forward to hearing more about his programme in the future.
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