A peek inside the diaries of a country gent
Archives staff to blog 1939 extracts
A unique and fascinating insight into the period leading up to the declaration of World War Two, 80 years ago, is to be presented by staff at Stirling Council archives.
In blog posts over the next 12 months, they will publish extracts from the 1939 diaries of a prominent Port of Menteith landowner.
Thomas Winter Sheppard Graham was born on March 4, 1873, and inherited the Estate of Rednock, near Port of Menteith, from his uncle in 1919.
As a career soldier from 1893 and a participant in both the Boer War and the World War One, he brought military knowledge and experience to his diary entries and an awareness of national and international politics.
Thomas’s diaries comprise 14 handwritten notebooks and 21 folders and were lodged with the archives by a descendant of his.
They provide a record of his family life on the estate plus local events and international affairs as the storm clouds of war gathered over Europe in 1939 .
Senior archivist Pam McNicol said they would be posting over the coming months the diary entries on the day they were made 80 years earlier.
She added : “The diaries allows us to see how local people prepared for those world-changing events of 1939 from the perspective of one man who lived through it.”
Thomas Winter Sheppard was born at Emsworth, Hampshire, to Major Thomas Winter Sheppard and Margaret Anges, nee Nisbet.
Thomas attended Wellington School in Berkshire and then went on to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He joined the King’s Liverpool Regiment as a second lieutenant on February 25, 1893, just before his 20th birthday.
He was promoted to lieutenant on September 20, 1895, and captain on March 21, 1900, just before he travelled to South Africa to fight in the Second Boer War. He remained there until 1902. Thomas also served in the First World War