Digby reflects on the 1919 Influenza Pandemic in Bulawayo
The 1919 Influenza Pandemic in Bulawayo I’ve recounted how in the late 1940s we used to go and see Mrs Cotterell, the mother of my mother’s oldest friend, at her farm near Bulawayo. Now...
Digby Hartridge
Digby reflects on the Empire Air Training Scheme in Bulawayo
The Empire Air Training Scheme in Bulawayo and other memories of World War II Second World War veterans are fading away. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer of the rest of us can say we even...
Digby reflects on Testing My Memory
Testing My Memory – by Digby Hartridge As an erstwhile oral historian I know that the trouble with a memory is that each time you retrieve it, compose it into a story, perhaps curtailing...
Digby Reflects on a Return to Rhodesia – Kariba
RETURN TO RHODESIA: 2. KARIBA Our trip home to Rhodesia from Australia in 1978 gave us a chance to see Kariba (and another jiggle of the dice of death). I hadn’t seen Kariba since...
Digby Reflects on a Return to Rhodesia – Matopos
RETURN TO RHODESIA: 1. MATOPOS Anne and I returned to Rhodesia in 1978 at the climax of the war for independence. We hadn’t realised how much the situation had deteriorated, though this was wilful...
Digby reflects on visits to the Visa & Immigration Service and Support (sic) Centre, Solihul
Visas & Immigration Service and Support (sic) Centre, Solihull I had to get a special visa when I emigrated, in 1975, from Australia to Britain. My grandparents were, all four, English, but that was...
On this day – 16 April
16 April On this day… 1918, John Christopher Willoughby died. Digby Hartridge has captured his life events in Sir John Christopher Willoughby, Baronet: Position, Patriotism, Pluck, Plunging It’s also National ‘Save the Elephant Day’...
Digby takes to the open road (2)
The Thrill of the Open Road: Can you Survive without a Smartphone? Generation by generation we become less able to cope without specialist help. My grandfather could set up and run a small gold...
Digby takes to the open road (1)
The Thrill of the Open Road 1947-53: In Which Potchefstroom Outclasses Sorrento At the age of six I was taken in a Morris Eight Series E (1939 model, four-door, to export specification, dark blue...
Digby reflects on encounters with famous authors
Some Famous Authors As a development officer in the Gloucestershire County Library Service I got in touch with local authors before Library Week. Most eminent was Laurie Lee (and the most dramatic) but, eschewing...
Digby Reflects further on being an oral historian (3)
Oral Historian is an Ancient Calling, the Essential Craft, my Dream Job: and all they want to read about is politicians I wish now that I’d kept copies of all my transcripts and summaries,...
Digby Reflects further on being an oral historian (2)
Oral Historian is an Ancient Calling, the Essential Craft, my Dream Job: and here’s why it wasn’t perfect I served between 1972 and ’75 as Oral Historian at the National Archives of Rhodesia I...
Digby Reflects on being an oral historian
Oral Historian is an Ancient Calling, the Essential Craft, my Dream Job: and here is my most memorable Winter 1975. It was poor country, low knobby trees, scrub. Wispy grass on stone-strewn sand. Barbed...
Motivations, Highlights & Challenges – part 3
Motivations, Highlights & Challenges – part 3 by Digby Hartridge What have I discovered about editing and publishing, house styles and book production? I had some grounding. Part of my brief in one of...
Motivations, Highlights & Challenges – part 2
Motivations, Highlights & Challenges – part 2 by Digby Hartridge Studying the history of Africa, especially in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, has been instructive. Over the last twenty or thirty years there...
Goromonzi – Digby Hartridge
Goromonzi by Digby Hartridge Now, I could sanitise this, make it more acceptable to 2025 sensibilities, like so many people do, Whites and Blacks. But that would make it unhistorical, and it’s already been...
Motivations, Highlights & Challenges – part 1
Motivations, Highlights & Challenges – part 1 by Digby Hartridge It’s been suggested I write a few words about how I came to write my biography of Sir John Willoughby, 5th Bart, and here...
John Christopher Willoughby – Digby Hartridge #Preview #Biography #Africa
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