10:16am Friday 29th January 2010
By Melanie Dakin
Upstairs at Watford Central Library an entire wall has been given up to a display chronicling World War Two, from outbreak to victory. The exhibition has been put together by library staff Vanessa Lacey, Emma Scott and features illustrations by Carolyn Ward, but Letchmore Heath resident Roger Jordan has made the largest contribution by lending a tranche of newspapers.
The exhibit was originally designed to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of the war last year, but the logistics of storage proved problematic and so all the pages have been painstakingly photocopied.
After seeing the library display, I decide to pay Roger and his wife Barbara a visit to see more of his historic collection.
Sifting through the individually wrapped papers, my eye is caught by iconic headlines such as: Hitler Dead, A Diary of the War and beneath a picture of Winston Churchill waving on the balcony with the Royal family, Nation’s VE Outburst of Joy: All Night Celebrations. These are just a few of Roger’s treasured publications, which are stored lovingly away in cupboards and hang on the walls of his home.
“It’s not a popular hobby as you need storage and short of getting Barbara to live in the shed, I can’t display everything,” says Roger with a wry smile.
His interest in the press began as a schoolboy delivering newspapers in Derbyshire in the 1950s. An accountant by trade, Roger moved to Hertfordshire in 1983 but tells me he has been collecting papers in earnest since the 1970s and comics, which he used to sell, since the 1980s. His earliest paper is a copy of The Times dated 1791.
“It’s the earliest I’ve ever seen as the paper only started in 1785.”
Roger directs me towards a faded document hanging in a frame. It contains a report of the Battle of Waterloo, dated Tuesday, June 22, 1815.
“I bought this from a framing shop that used to be on Water Lane. It includes a list of all the British killed and wounded in the battle from the dignitaries, on down to the captains and lieutenants, it doesn’t get down to the ordinary Joe.”
Roger remarks on how the reportage of modern warfare, where the death of a soldier might take up a whole page, is in stark contrast to world war coverage.
“Back then, only a few column inches described the deaths of more than 80 individuals. We have no concept of war on that scale and I hope we never will again.”
Roger shows me Christmas cards his father Arthur sent during the war.
“He was fighting in the western desert and later on in the Italian campaign,” Roger recalls. “He left in June 1940 and was sent abroad in February 1941. My first impression of him was on a Sunday afternoon when I came back from Sunday school and there was this big man sitting at the table. I was five. Of course, he wasn’t all that big really, he was only five foot four but he seemed so at the time.”
As well his father’s wartime medals, Roger has a newspaper his dad saved for him marking the Apollo moon landing, titled Man on the Moon and dated Monday, July 21, 1969. Roger points out the much smaller headline on the righthand column which reads Kennedy Faces Charge, detailing the Chappaquiddick incident in which Mary Jo Kopechne drowned in a car belonging to Senator Edward Kennedy. “Often on the front page you’ll find these unexpected gems tucked away and that’s what makes it so rewarding. I read all the cricket and the football scores; even though it’s happened, it’s still interesting.”
Roger’s display is shown alongside Watford at War – photographs from The Greville Collection at Watford Cenral Library. Details: 01923 471333
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