An informal take on my father Fred (on the right) with his elder brother Arthur and sister Nora. If this really is August 1909, then according to my reckoning Nora must be nearer to one year-old than two. I suppose that could be right. As ever, Arthur looks the more likely of the two boys, to be inclined to get up to some mischief, or anyway, something more interesting than sitting still for a photographer. As indeed his life bore out, he much preferring to join the motor industry in Oxford (Morris cars) than to work for his father/great uncle in the family removals business. I expect this shot was taken in the garden of 64 Kingston Road, Oxford, near Walton Street, and the Methodist Chapel, around which the family’s life probably revolved, at least on Sundays, and where these children’s paternal grandpa, Alfred George Archer, had been (and still was in 1909) a figure in the church hierarchy and a prominent (according to his obituary) local Methodist preacher. He, Alfred, was still around in 1909, living at 7 Tackley Place, a 3 minute walk from 64 Kingston Road, until he died in 1913. Fred, Arthur and Nora’s siblings, the twins Olive and Gladys Elisabeth did not arrive until 1914.
So this is the last year of Edward VII’s reign. One year before all the monarchs of Europe, including Kaiser Bill, came to his funeral, and four years before they were all involved in The Great War of 1914-1918, for which Germany was by this time almost fully prepared to launch their immense land armies against France, in order to “achieve their ultimate destiny as Europe’s dominant race” (see Barbara W. Tuchman’s “The Guns of August”), which is mainly a simple recounting of diaries and official records, in order to bring out the truth of what was going on. These three children would have been unaware that they were about to witness (from a distance) the eclipse of the immense British Empire, and much of what went with it.