Budleigh Past and Present

  Journalist Najam Sethi, speaking up for the free press in Pakistan A Cambridge college honoured one of its distinguished former students last year at a ceremony marked by the presentation of an artwork sculpted by a Friend of Fairlynch. Sculptress Angie Harlock Wilkinson, who works from a studio in Otterton, created a bronze figure 'Isadora, Joy' which was presented to the journalist Najam Sethi. A prominent journalist in Pakistan who studied at Clare College from 1967 to 1970, Mr Sethi is known as a convinced democrat, an advocate of moderation in foreign policy, and an opponent of religious extremism and violence. On numerous occasions he has incurred the anger of autocratic governments. He was imprisoned for two years by the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime in the 1970s for siding with the Baloch nationalist movement. In 1984 General Zia ul Haq imprisoned him for a month for publishing a book - From Jinnah to Zia - by a former chief justice of Pakist...

Alan Tilbury wearing his chain of office as Chairman of Budleigh Salterton's Chamber of Commerce Photo credit Ray Ambrose   www.randacreative.com    Not everyone knows that Fairlynch Museum is a member of Budleigh Salterton's Chamber of Commerce. In spite of being a charity the Museum shares many of the Chamber's interests. It has a shop, it depends for its income on attracting visitors to the town and it even shares a President in the person of Fairlynch co-founder Priscilla Hull. Alan Tilbury retired recently as Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. His wife, born in Budleigh, is a volunteer steward at Fairlynch and he has always had a soft spot for one of the town's best-known landmarks. Both are Friends of the Museum. Here he looks back on a career in retail which gave him over more than half a century an intimate knowledge of the town's commercial life.   Originally a Londoner he feels sufficiently naturalised in our ...

Murray and Audrey Levick returning from Canada in 1939 A noted sportswoman, Audrey Levick was the wife of Surgeon Commander Murray Levick RN, the zoologist and medical officer on Scott's Antarctic expedition of 1910-13.  She played an important role in helping to run the expeditions of what became known as the British Schools Exploring Society which her husband had founded in 1932.  The couple moved in retirement to East Devon, where they settled just outside Budleigh Salterton. Edith Audrey Mayson Beeton was born on 30 July, 1890. Her grandmother was Isabella Beeton, the compiler of the celebrated book on cookery and household management pictured above.   She was the second daughter of Sir Mayson Beeton (1865-1947), a former Daily Mail journalist and friend of the newspaper proprietors Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) and Harold Harmsworth (later Lord Rothermere). Mayson Beeton had investigated the sugar bounty qu...