Philip Rundall

Diaries …

Philip Rundall

In front of me as I write is the very first diary I ever bought, the Open Road Diary for Walkers: Cyclists: Motor Scooter Users: Motor Cyclists: Motorists and Caravanners for the year 1962. At that time I was 15 and, it being a pocket diary, there is only space for 20-30 words per day, but enough to trigger many memories. So, the idea of keeping a diary clearly struck me early on as being important, but it was only in 1973*, the year I joined the Homerton staff, that I began to keep a page-aday diary – and I’ve kept it up ever since.

My first diary

I have read Samuel Pepys’ Diary and also John Evelyn’s, both I found fascinating, but the diaries that most moved me were those of Victor Klemperer, a cousin of the famous conductor, written in Dresden throughout the Hitler years. It is the immediacy of his diaries that is so striking, written at the end of each day, not with the benefit of the long view with the time and opportunity for further research, reflection, re-writing or editing. There is no going back on what you’ve written, a diary reflects your tiredness, your moods, your poor punctuation and contains the odd spelling mistake as well as your story. Of course, Pepys’ diaries are particularly revealing as they were written in code, whereas Evelyn’s were written with an audience very much in mind. So they are very different. For a start, Pepys’ writing is a lot funnier. For me, Klemperer’s diaries tell me more about his daily life than anything he might have written had he written an autobiography long after the war had ended. It’s a period of history so closely related to my own and I was fascinated to know how a particular German civilian reacted on a daily basis to his unfolding reality. He couldn’t stand hearing Hitler shouting over the radio. What was it like to be an academic in a university where one’s status was being steadily eroded week by week and one’s colleagues taking advantage of this? He had particular contempt for them and he wrote that there wasn’t a lamp-post high enough from which to hang them. Being a Christian convert from Judaism and married to a Roman Catholic, he escaped being transported to a death camp until the very eve of the bombing of Dresden, which in fact, saved his life. His is an extraordinary story.

Back in March 2020 it was clear we were entering something beyond anything else we’d experienced during our lifetimes, so I began to write a parallel Coronavirus Diary in a rather beautiful Flame Tree Notebook that I’d purchased some months earlier at a garden centre. It was a very attractive notebook with a detail from the glorious Wilton Diptych on its cover. It was such a lovely book that I dared not use it – it was just too beautiful! With the pandemic hitting us like a wave it felt entirely right to enlist the help of its angels along with Mary and Jesus.

First page

The great advantage of a notebook is that it allows one to write more than just one page a day (my older diaries contain around 17,000 words per year on average), and I had a lot more to say during 2020. I began on 16th March and one year on I’m currently on Volume 5. I have really enjoyed the freedom to write more, and after a few weeks I gave up writing my regular diary as it was just a waste of time and effort writing both, and I will continue with the notebooks.

Wilton Diptych Notebook

I’ve mentioned the Wilton Diptych cover, so the selection of covers became important too. Volume 2 was Hokusai’s Wave as I anticipated a massive surge in infection numbers, something that our Prime Minister was clearly incapable of seeing coming. For any fan of our present government, I can tell them now that my diaries will make an uncomfortable reading. Volume 5, however, has a detail of Van Gogh’s Almond Blossom, a more hopeful sign for the future.

Along with the Coronavirus Diaries, I began to write a family history, urged to do so by my eldest son’s motherin-law when we met over Christmas in 2019. In this project Pepys’ Library and his diaries get a mention in connection with my great-great-grandmother on my paternal grandmother’s side. She was called Elizabeth Jennings, the ‘Wingate heiress’, who lived in Harlington House, now called Harlington Manor, in Bedfordshire with her husband, George Pearse JP, who was a solicitor, Deputy Lieutenant and later High Sheriff of Bedfordshire. If you check out its website, Harlington Manor is now one of the best B&Bs in England, according to Alastair Sawday and others. Several years ago I contacted the present owner and he kindly invited myself and Patti over for tea. He gave us a tour of this fascinating old house and later I sent him more information about the history of the Wingate family.

Incidentally, lots of members of the Pearse and Rundall families, both male and female, have been given the name as a middle name, including my father, my elder brother and my son, Nick. The website refers to Francis Wingate JP ordering the arrest of John Bunyan and his being detained overnight in the house. However, it refers to him incorrectly as Sir Francis; in fact it was his son, also called Francis, who was knighted when he married Lady Anne Annesley, the daughter of Arthur Annesley 1st Earl of Anglesey, Lord Privy Seal and treasurer of the Royal Navy under Charles II. Annesley was, for a while, Pepys’ boss, and is mentioned in his diaries (and also in John Evelyn’s) and it was Lady Anne’s brother, the 2nd Earl, who paid £23 to move his library to London from Clapham, where Pepys died, and then £18 to move it on to Magdalene College, Cambridge. Apparently, he offered the librarian £10 per annum forever. I only learnt about all this after the RSMA visit to the Pepys Library and so I didn’t get to ask whether she was still getting the money! Apart from the link to Pepys, what really interested me was that by marrying into the Annesley family, who were sympathetic to the Dissenters and had family connections with John Wesley, all of Francis Wingate JP’s children became sympathetic to Bunyan. Moreover, the Jennings branch have connections with the dissenting academy in Kibworth Harcourt and later Warrington Academy, the latter being the beginnings of what is now called Harris Manchester, in Oxford. With this background perhaps it is not surprising that I ended up teaching in a college with dissenting roots and one which now has connections with Harris Manchester College.

Finally, what did I write in my diary on my first day at Homerton, on Thursday 27th September 1973? I’ll quote just one thing in relation to College, the rest not being of particular interest: “I went into Cambridge by bus. On arrival at College I met a post-graduate girl from Farnham Art School. She was complaining about the school-like regimentation of Homerton. She’s quite right, and what’s amazing, the girls straight from school are totally unconcerned about this aspect.” Anything else you want to know?

[I am not sure whether this question is directed at you, the readers, or me … but I think you should know that Philip’s portrait shows his “Covid hairstyle”. Ed.] *Afterword: I've just been re-organising my studio, clearing the loft etc and I've now removed all my diaries from the 2 boxes that contained them and they're on a bookshelf again. I have now realised that they go back to 1971. I thought that I had started prior to arriving in Cambridge!

17th

Dining Hall up to first-floor level September2020, only one week behind schedule. Underground heat exchange system being installed under the lawn.