Three photographs taken sometime in the mid thirties of the last century plus another one taken in the early years of this century testify to the lifelong relationship I have had with my dear cousin Robert. Two of the early photographs show the two of us playing in the sand by the sea at Fleetwood. In one of them our two mothers are watching over us. The third one shows us with my mother in Wesham. We all look contented even though the great depression which had put both of our fathers on the dole was still raging. The twenty-first century picture shows a beaming Robert in a family group outside the house of Janet and Paul in Staunton Harold, Leicestershire. Between and beyond those pictures Robert lived a complex and full life which merits a biography. All I can do is to draw from the richness of his life a few details that reflect my relationship with him.

Robert was one of the most significant figures of my boyhood and adolescence. Going to stay overnight with my aunty Jenny and uncle Bob in Ashton during the war years and afterwards was an eagerly anticipated experience. This was largely due to Robert. To begin with, he had the complete range of Meccano sets. With these he would build complicated models which fascinated me, such as a working model of a traction engine. Incidentally his dismantling of such a creation illustrates one of his chief characteristics, meticulousness. He would carefully arrange each separate component on a table before putting the nuts and bolts, the flanges and axles, the pulleys and rubber bands in their allotted places in the box. Later on I would experience this quality as I looked at his scrap books and collections of his travels, of contemporary events, and of the material he gathered about his extended family.

During this period, I marvelled at the fact that he took lessons in Russian and German, and became an accomplished performer on the accordion. It was then too that I realised he was – to use Bryan Rawstrone’s phrase – a mine of information. As we walked along Preston’s Strand to the Ribble, he would tell me about work carried out in Dick Kerr’s factory during the war and about the various cargoes that were unloaded in Preston’s then flourishing port, and he would intersperse this with anecdotes about “Owd Isaac Ball” and his doings in the steam engine business.

Robert, who loved to drive fast in his Prius, was a great traveller both in his own right and as a teacher who took parties of school children to Germany. He was a person who never ceased to be interested the wider world. In addition to travels in Great Britain and Europe, he visited Australia and America. In the U.S.A. he traced distant relatives in Texas and the west coast, as well as staying at our home in the mid-west.

In later years, after my move to the United States, he and his mother, my beloved aunty Jenny, became important in the lives of my family as we made a point of coming up north to see them on our annual summer trip to England. Robert took care of his mother for the last several years of her life. No mother could have wished for a better son. After her death, he was a gracious host when we called. While I lament and grieve for the suffering he has undergone in the last two years of his life, I shall always remember him as a man who loved to talk to his friends about history, while being involved in local affairs. He truly enriched my life.