A wonderful life story with lessons for us all
If he has a setback he deals with it and moves on, trusting to hard work and common sense
TOMORROW WILL BE A GOOD DAY
★★★★★
Saul David
Arare gleam of light during the Covid-19 lockdown was the sight of a 99-year-old Second World War veteran, still recovering from a serious fall, walking laps of his garden to raise money for the NHS. At a time when the public needed someone to cheer, Captain Tom Moore’s selfless efforts garnered huge media attention and helped to raise the astonishing sum of almost £33million in just 26 days, a Guinness World Record.
Britain fell in love with this bluff Yorkshireman – who seemed to embody all that was good about our island nation – and the accolades poured in: 100th-birthday greetings from, among others, Her Majesty the Queen, Boris Johnson, and the head of the World Health Organisation; and, the icing on the cake, a knighthood. Now comes his memoir.
So who is Sir Tom? Born and brought up in Keighley, West Yorkshire, he was the grandson of a stonemason who, though uneducated, had started a successful building company. Moore recalls an “extremely happy childhood” with loving parents, but it was not all sweetness and light. A younger sister died in infancy, a favourite uncle committed suicide, and Moore’s father, Wilfrid, was “an innately artistic person” who felt compelled to join the family firm after he contracted a virus at the age of 21 that left him deaf.
Fascinated by all things mechanical, Sir Tom bought and repaired a 1921 Royal Enfield motorcycle when he was 15 and dreamed of competing in the Isle of Man TT races. Academically he “wasn’t the brightest boy”, and studied textiles and engineering as cleverer peers learnt Latin and Greek.
When war broke out in 1939, Sir Tom was entering the last year of a three-year civil engineering course at Bradford Technical College. He volunteered for the Local Defence Volunteers and, after his proper call up in September 1940, joined the 8th Battalion, The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (West Riding).
In the summer of 1941, he was sent with an armoured unit to India where he loved the food, the people and a gin cocktail called John Collins. Appointed the intelligence officer, he saw action in 1944 in the Battle of the Admin Box, a defensive victory in Burma. In early 1945, he was promoted to captain and sent back to England to learn about the new Churchill tank.
Sir Tom briefly considered a career in the peacetime Army. But his father wanted him to join the family firm, and he acquiesced like the dutiful and honourable man he still is. When the firm went bust, Sir Tom took work as a manual labourer before reinventing himself as first a travelling salesman and then a company director.
His love life was no less of a roller-coaster. Billie, his first wife, refused to consummate their 18-year marriage and eventually left him for a sex counsellor. His second marriage to Pamela was more successful, though she suffered from bouts of paranoia and mental illness, and left to him the bulk of the night-time childcare of their two daughters. He still lives with his younger daughter Hannah and her family.
Though well-attuned to modern sensibilities, Sir Tom is brave enough to speak his mind on a number of controversial issues. He believes (rightly) that dropping the atom bombs was necessary because, having fought the Japanese, he is in no doubt “that if the war hadn’t ended then there would have been even greater numbers killed”; he acknowledges that the Raj has “much to answer for”, but “also did a great deal for India”; he admires Churchill and was honoured to serve a country of which he is “so very proud”.
What sets Sir Tom apart from later generations is his unwillingness to be beaten down by circumstance. If he has a setback – and he has had many – he deals with it and moves on, trusting to hard work, common sense and the belief that tomorrow will be better (hence the book’s title). It often is. His wonderful and instructive life story – beautifully ghostwritten by the author Wendy Holden – should be required reading for politicians everywhere.