Budleigh Past and Present

Continued from 26 Jan 1942: Fighting with ‘The Forgotten Air Force’:  SERGEANT DERYK VAUGHAN SAUNDERS (1920-42)     https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/12/ww2-75-26-january-1942-fighting-with.html Writing about Budleigh and WW2 it’s impossible to ignore Joyce Dennys’ books, ‘Henrietta’s War’ and ‘Henrietta Sees It Through’. Published respectively in 1985 and 1986, both books are based on letters purportedly written by Henrietta Brown, the doctor’s wife in a small Devon coastal town to her childhood friend Robert. Front page of the 12 May 1915 issue, featuring Rita Jolivet, British actress who survived the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.  Photograph by Foulsham and Banfield, Ltd.  The letters are dated from 1939 to 1945 and were originally published in the ‘The Sketch’, a glossy illustrated weekly journal, which focused on high society and the aristocracy and ran for 2,989 issues between 1 February 1893 and 17 Jun...

Continued from 1 February 1942  (Part i. The Admirals’ Grief):  Second Lieutenant John Barham Leahy (1920-42) https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/09/ww2-75-joyce-dennys-book-henrietta-sees.html Photo of John Barham Leahy Courtesy of Wellington College Well, there was a real live Admiral in Budleigh Salterton and he did have a wife.   And the chances are that the couple were friends of Joyce Dennys and her husband Dr Tom Evans. Engineer Rear-Admiral James Palmer Leahy CB, OBE, had retired to live in Budleigh Salterton with his wife. According to parish records, she was Agnes Rowan n ée MacAuslan, not Alice, as in Henrietta Sees It Through .  She died on 21 April 1969, but in 1939 they are recorded in Kelly’s Directory as residing at Glenholme, a fine house at 24 West Hill, on the west side of Budleigh Salterton.    A visit to St Peter’s Burial Ground on the town’s Moor Lane wi...

As part of my research into life during WW2 in Budleigh Salterton I’ve been dipping into the ‘Henrietta’ series of books. They originally appeared in the form of letters published in the wartime Sketch magazine, and were intended to be read as letters from a local GP’s wife to her childhood friend Robert serving overseas.  'Henrietta’s War' and ' Henrietta Sees It Through' by Joyce Dennys, were published in book form in the mid-1980s. Some people find her brand of humour too arch for words, but I enjoyed the author’s humorous description of conditions in a Devon coastal village in wartime, especially as it’s clearly Budleigh Salterton – or Salterton – as the place might have been better known in those days. Dipping into other writings by Joyce Dennys I came across her autobiographical 'And Then There was One', published in 1983.  A World War One VAD ...