Let's start at the beginning

My grandfather, George Albert Grinsell, was originally from Staffordshire. He married Jane Williams in 1885 and moved to Wishaw, Scotland where my father, George Arthur, was born in 1900, along with his only sister Harriet (Ettie) in 1897.

Father grew up in Scotland but his parents died when he was young: he lost his father at the age of 15 and his mother at 17. He joined the Army towards the end of the First World War when he became18, before moving to find work in Manchester, where he lived with his Aunt Sophie for a few years. He then moved further south to work as an accounts clerk at the Ely sugar beet factory in Cambridgeshire.

My mother, Elsie May Ablett, was born in 1898 in Ely, Cambridgeshire, one of twelve children; six boys and six girls.



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The Ablett family, my mother Elsie is 2nd  from the right on the top row.


My father met my mother through a colleague at work, Cliff Cousins, who was a member of Ely Operatic Society to which Mother belonged. They were married in 1927.

The marriage of George Arthur Grinsell and Elsie May Ablett, 1927

I was born on July 8th, 1934, the year when Adolf Hitler was officially installed as Fuhrer of Germany. The Nazis and the rise of fascism were matched by communist purges in Russia, illustrating the polarisation of political power in Europe. Here at home, the Queen Mary was launched, driving tests were introduced, Henry Cotton won the British Open Golf Championship and Robert Graves wrote I Claudius.

[If you click on the photos to zoom in you will see the detail of their clothes - the shoes in the wedding photo for instance...Trish]