
Before she was married, and, perhaps more importantly, before World War II, my mother was an aspiring actor. She was a student at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in London.
Alumni include Hugh Bonneville, Terence Stamp, Eva Green, and many more. She rubbed shoulders with people like Carry On stalwart Charles Hawtrey, future oscar-winner Peter Ustinov, the golden couple of the 50's and 60's theatre Michael Denison and Dulcie Grey, and Boulting Brothers' regular Ian Carmichael, known to TV audiences as Bertie Wooster to Dennis Price's Jeeves.




There were parties, fun, and immersion in the life of the theatre. Her elder sister, Jane, joined the civil service toiling in a capacity she insisted could not be discussed even after she retired because of the Official Secrets Act. What that work was, we never knew. My mother was dubious. Nevertheless, the possibility my Aunt was some sort of desk bound spy is intriguing.
And then the War came. London was bombed; my mother followed the lead of the young Princess Elizabeth, and joined the Women's Royal Navy and became a Wren. Meanwhile, my other Aunt, the youngest of the three sisters, went to university and eventually graduated as a doctor.
So for my mother, the War was an interruption to her acting career, until she met my father, also in the Royal Navy, a handsome young Lieutenant. When the War ended, they married, moved to Edinburgh, and started a family. Then the interruption was permanent.
She still kept her contacts. When Michael Denison and Dulcie Grey came to Edinburgh in a play at the King's Theatre, my mother and I were invited to Dulcie's dressing room. I remember her saying to my mother that there was a part of a bubbly young thing in the play which would have been perfect for my mother. I asked my mother afterwards if her friend really meant it, and my mother, bubbles long burst, I suppose, explained that Dulcie was just being nice. As far as I knew, the only acting my mother did after the War was as an extra in a detergent commercial. “I had to walk into a shop and buy a box of Omo,” she said.
I don't have a lot of regrets, but not asking my parents more about their early lives, their wartime experiences, their hopes and dreams and fears is the greatest regret, because now it's too late. Why did my mother's parents divorce? Why did my grandfather have permanent custody of three little girls? What happened to my Grandmother? Why did my parents move to Edinburgh when all my mother's family were in England?
When I was 8 or 9, my mother had a visit from a very elderly man called, she told me, Mr. Ernest Thesiger. He came for tea in the afternoon to our ground floor flat in Edinburgh's Morningside. I played outside while they talked. I no have idea what they talked about. The old days in pre-war London, I presume, life since; a path not taken, perhaps. It must have been just a year or two before his death in 1961.

Thesiger was an extraordinary man. He is alleged to have said, when asked about his experiences as a foot soldier in the trenches in the First World War “Oh, my dear,
" he said, "The noise! The people!” There was far more to him, however. He was openly bisexual, and he had an interest in needlework. Wounded on the Western Front, he was sent back to England with damaged hands. In England he developed small sewing kits as therapy and as a possible source of income for soldiers who'd suffered similar injuries to his.
He was a confidante of Queen Mary's, and they spent time doing needlework together. George Bernard Shaw wrote a part for him in Saint Joan, he was directed in Macbeth by John Gielgud playing one of the Witches , and for his acting work and his philanthropy he was awarded the CBE.

But he will always be mainly known for his outrageously creepy, camp as a row of tents performance as Doctor Pretorius in James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein.
I knew none of his history as a child, have only learned much of it since. At the time, I'm certain my parents would never have let me see anything as terrifying as Bride of Frankenstein, and in any case, where would I have seen it?
We didn't have a television, VCRs were decades away. An art house cinema? In Edinburgh? In 1959? If there was one, I'm certain my father would not have approved of it. And of course there was no streaming then, but here it is now on Vimeo, James Whale's' masterpiece , streaming away for free: https://vimeo.com/647112348
But Bride of Frankenstein isn't just a horror film (what horror film is, after all?) The Bride herself has become an LGBTQ+ icon, according to Spencer Bollettieri in this article: https://screenrant.com/bride-frankenstein-lgbtq-icon-history-explained/
Bollettieri says that

"Movies like The Bride of Frankenstein were early examples of LGBTQ+ cinema. Directed by the openly gay James Whale and starring bisexual actor Ernest Thesiger, it shouldn’t be surprising that the film reflected them.
In the role of Dr. Frankenstein’s mentor Dr. Pretorius, who is described in the film as a “queer fellow,” Thesiger was told by Whale to act as an aging and over-the-top homosexual. "
I'm glad he was a friend of my mother's. I'm not sure my father, holder of an exhaustive set of prejudices (Men who kept combs in their pockets! Students in general! Dodgy workmen! Men with beards! “Bearded Wonders” he called them), would have been altogether happy to have That Sort of Fellow in his house. Perhaps that was why Thesiger came for afternoon tea while my father was at work. Perhaps Thesiger was comfortable with my mother's sympathetic and accepting company. I'll never know.
I kept an autograph book as a child, something encouraged by my parents, hoping, I suppose that it would become my “hobby,” something every child should have, they thought. After all, it was one of the standard questions you had to field as a child, when being interrogated by an adult. "And what are your hobbies?" Thesiger signed my little book for me (that's my actual autograph book at the head of this entry), even though I had no idea who he really was, just an old man who had once been a friend of my mother's when she was an actor, years before I was even born.
Here is the page from my autograph book.

And here is the same page with its neighbour -- Dame Flora Robson.'s signature I have no idea how I came by her autograph, but my mother must have a hand in it. Were Flora Robson and Ernest Thesiger in town together? I'll never know.

Regrets.
That’s lovely.