New for November
The great actor, singer, and socialist Paul Robeson died on this day in 1976. He was a great friend to the mining community in Britain. Here he sings for miners during a visit to Britain in 1949. This song was played at my Dad’s Humanist funeral and is a great favourite.
I grew up hearing and loving Paul Robeson’s voice and in the year that my Dad lived in Cornwall before we were able to join him (I was only 6 years old) Mum played ‘Just a Wearyin’ for you’ every evening and it can still bring me to tears as I remember how much I missed my Dad and it’s only now that I realise that she wasn’t playing it for me but for herself. How they must have missed each other that year. They’d already had five years apart during the war and now Mum had three of us to look after and a fourth on the way who was born just ten weeks before we eventually moved to Cornwall and were all together again and living by Pill Creek as I wrote about here.
We have just come home from watching Official Secrets, the story of Katharine Gun, whistle blower extraordinaire. See it if you can.
