Blog 003 About me and about the book
About me and about the book:
- Grandson to Thomas Kermode
- Inherited much of interest (letters, etc) for use in eg a book or several websites
- always had a hankering to write a book or books
- co-edited a family history book on my mother's family in 1987
- in c 1996 started to type in to computer the family letters handed down through my parents and now kept/filed in about 15 A4 sized lever arch folders
- first became aware of the existence of the Thomas Kermode World War I letters after the death of my father in 1998, they had never been mentioned during his lifetime, kept in a locked box
- these letters were kept secret due (I suspect) to their sexual content which must have been thought too personal by my father
- I am sufficiently removed from my Grandfather that this doesn't bother me, in fact I think the sexual content adds interest and personalises/humanises/emphasises the strength of the bond between my Granfather Thomas and his beloved wife Emily May (nee Mobbs)
- This bond is powerfully revealed through these 80 or so letters and was perhaps crucial to sustaining Thomas through the mental stress of his army experience in the 8th/32nd Battalion AIF
- Thomas Kermode died aged 68 years. I am already 67 years so had better get on with it.
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