Rory CELLAN-JONES
Clearing out his mother’s and father’s homes allowed Rory Cellan-Jones to piece together parts of his history
Even before my mother died and I had to clear out her shambolic flat, I knew she was a terrible hoarder. Nothing was ever thrown away. There were letters under the bed, in the dressing table, all covered in dust.
But, then, Sylvia Rich was from that letter-writing generation. She had sisters in Birmingham and Bedfordshire, and they used to write to one another every week; she kept all their correspondence. She also kept the carbon copies of every letter she had written while working for decades as a secretary at the BBC after the war. By the time she died in 1996, aged 81, the tiny flat she had lived in for most of her life was full of paper.
She and my half-brother, Stephen, had come to London from Bristol after she had left her husband and moved to a horrendous bedsit with mice near Ladbroke Grove. When we were later granted a one-bedroom council flat in south London, she thought it was wonderful.
Mum first started working for the BBC in Bristol during the war, in the talks department. Then she came to London and met my father, James Cellan Jones. He had joined the BBC in 1955 and went on to be a major public figure, directing drama series like The Forsyte Saga and Fortunes of War.
When I was born in 1958, he was 28 and she was 43. She was a very beautiful woman and always looked younger than she was, and it was only at a late stage that she revealed to him how old she was. They never married, so I was born out of wedlock. He paid maintenance for me, but wasn’t part of my upbringing.
Everybody at the BBC knew about what had happened between my parents. It was a scandal then. They were both in the plays department and my father was exiled to Bristol for two years after she became pregnant. When he came back to Television Centre, an administrator used to make sure that my mother, as a director’s assistant, was not assigned to my father’s plays.
After I was born, Mum had the divan in the living room, Stephen had the single bedroom and my cot was in with him. He moved out when he was 17, after which she and I occupied that space until I was 18 and went to Cambridge.
After Mum’s death, I kept all her papers, the love letters and photographs, which form a remarkable history of her time in television. When my father died 18 months ago, aged 88, he also left behind so much stuff. He and my stepmother had not downsized when they moved to a smaller house. Every corner was crammed with memorabilia, glassware, photographs from his TV career. But I just kept some champagne glasses and a framed cover of a 1970 Radio Times announcing his 13-part drama series, Roads to Freedom.
I never knew him when I was young, but always knew he was my father. We first met when I was 23. It wasn’t until much later on that I realised my parents had never been married because she had our surname changed to CellanJones by deed poll.
Everybody at the BBC knew about what had happened between my parents; a scandal
She was a heroic single mum; she managed her work around the schedules and sometimes I would go to Television Centre with her on Sundays. Once, when I was 12, she took me into the gallery and there was somebody at the front directing. When we left, she told me that was my father.
For her, it was a big love affair. I found a newspaper cutting she kept announcing his marriage two years after I was born, and another from 1976 announcing he had been made head of plays. There are just a few photographs: she had an old box brownie. There’s one of her in a swimsuit and one of my dad behind a car, and another of him with a parachute. There was a box that contained a bit of ragged old cardboard and she had scribbled on it: “Keep for myself and Rory later” and later she had written: “For Rory to read and think about in the hope that it will help him understand how it really was.”
As well as their love letters, there were also copies of letters to her old boss, Geoffrey Grigson, and his wife, the cookery writer, Jane Grigson. One of them, written three months before I was born, said: “Dear Geoffrey, Of course I don’t mind your sharing my letter with Jane. I rather hoped you would. I keep dissolving into tears easily.” Then there’s another from a friend six weeks before I was born which says: “You’re taking even that
[being pregnant] with calm and good humour. If anyone can cope you can”.
I always knew of the courage it took to have me on her own, but having this archive can be overwhelming to read. God, it was hard for her. I still think it extraordinary that she kept me.
Back then, she suffered bouts of depression and, trapped in a one-bed flat, my childhood was grim and grey. But it was interspersed with flashes of light – visits to Television Centre, and summer holidays in Wiltshire with the Grigsons.
In the way that kids disregard their parents, I found her boring and repetitive, telling the same old stories. But finding all her letters has changed my view of her. I discovered she was this extraordinary, vibrant person, a real charmer with a poetic soul. She was fully involved in Grigson’s work with poets like Gilbert Harding and Stephen Spender, before working in drama.
Lately, I’ve had serious ill health, have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and also suffered with cancer, which has affected my eyesight. Doctors always ask if there was anything similar in the family, but I couldn’t find anything helpful in Mum’s archive.
My parents were part of a letterwriting generation, while we think of ourselves today as letting it all hang out on social media. In the future, people won’t be able to rummage around in a cardboard box left under the bed. They’ll be calling Facebook and asking to have access to Dad’s Facebook account, “because I need his old pictures”, or calling Apple “because I can’t get into Dad’s iPhone” – and Apple will say: “Tough.” There’s a risk that memories will be lost.
There’s a performative aspect to social media. The letter-writing generation of my parents gave a truer and more intimate picture of themselves, precisely because their missives were never written to be read by everybody on Instagram. Their letters are the real thing.