I took advantage of the fact that my regular climbing partner had problems with his staff rota today in order to do one of my “training walks” in preparation for my visit to Italy in September. There is no problem in the Yorkshire Dales National Park in devising walks that will allow you to cover the distance, but elevations are not very great. Consequently I have taken (on these occasions) to climbing a hill more than once in a day in order to build up the metres of ascent. It is not the most interesting way of spending a day walking because the routes I’ve devised are not selected for their scenery. There is a route I’ve used on several occasions in the past that is quite good for this purpose, crossing and recrossing the ridge between the villages of Kettlewell and Arncliffe.
It has been a good day’s walk, but in the absence of much to look at I fell to thinking. It is curious how, under these circumstances, it is possible to find oneself engaged in a kind of free association. Some surprising things can rise to the surface of consciousness. Out of the blue I found myself reflecting upon the ways in which war has touched my life. Perhaps this is not really surprising because, driving up into the Dales I had been listening to the last of the BBC’s “Reith Lectures”, given this year by the historian Margaret MacMillan, on the subject of war. It’s been a good series.
I am the last generation in Britain to experience the direct intrusion of war into the daily lives of the population as a whole.* I was born in 1942, and not only was the entire area in which I lived for much of that time (rural Norfolk) a kind of land-based aircraft carrier, but my father was conscripted into the RAF and left on active service in the Indian Ocean. Some of my earliest memories relate very directly to the experience of war. As I walked today, however, I became aware that there has probably been no year of my life since then in which British forces have not been on active service somewhere or another, and consequently the reporting of war has been a constant part of the background to my life. Tomorrow we leave for a holiday in the South-West of England, which we will spend with one of my sons who is in the Royal Navy.
Perhaps it is too early to speak of “inspiration”. Nevertheless, against the background of my series of studies based upon Italian experience during the Great War, I have begun to ask myself whether (after my period of “resting”) there might be the germ here of a new set of artistic concerns. We shall see.
*Unless, of course, you include the Irish “Troubles”.