Return to the Far Side of Planet Moore!

Return to theFar Side ofPlanet Moore!

Martin Mobberley

Rambling Through Observations,Friendships andAntics of Sir Patrick Moore

Return to the Far Side of Planet Moore!

Martin Mobberley

Return to the Far Side of Planet Moore! Rambling Through Observations, Friendships and Antics of Sir Patrick Moore

ISBN 978-3-319-15779-5 ISBN 978-3-319-15780-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15780-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015934906

Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover Photo Credit: Taken on 1958 February 19 in Patrick’s study at Glencathara, Worsted Lane, East Grinstead. (c) Associated Newspapers/REX. Reprinted with permission.

Printed on acid-free paper

Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Martin Mobberley Denmara Cockfi eld , Suffolk , UK

www.springer.com

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Pref ace

Within days of my Patrick Moore biography being published in August 2013 (entitled It Came From Outer Space Wearing an RAF Blazer! ), I started receiving huge amounts of e-mail. The vast majority of these messages were from amateur astronomers based in the UK, typically aged in their early sixties, who had been inspired both by Patrick and by the NASA Apollo Moon landings of their youth. From childhood or their teenage years, they had always been big fans of the phe-nomenon that was Patrick Moore and it seemed unbelievable that he was no longer around. Of course, as a national institution for more than half a century, there was already plenty of information about Patrick in his books and online; but what these fans craved was the true life story of the man, and it seems my book delivered the goods. It was a ‘warts and all’ account for sure, but not a sycophantic hagiography, which many had feared it would be. I was quite surprised that so many people, including other former TV astronomers, actually phoned me up or e-mailed me, before and after the book was published, expressing amazement that I was brave enough to write an honest biography about such an iconic fi gure. ‘There’ll be a witch hunt’ they warned me. ‘You will be lynched by the baying mob’ some said. One author told me that he had never dared say a bad word about Patrick because he ‘Would surely be beheaded at an astronomy meeting, with a meat cleaver!’ Hmmmmm… Well, none of these things happened, but people continued calling me ‘brave’ and many said I had ‘guts’ to write it, but perhaps the most reassuring praise came from fellow biographers and historians of renown. Dr. Simon Mitton, the Royal Astronomical Society’s Vice President at the time of the book’s publication, described the book as ‘a wonderful record of Patrick, who was by turns an enigmatic character, a spoilt child, a practical joker, an engaging speaker, and a personal friend…’ But perhaps the greatest praise of all came from the noted historian and public speaker Dr. Allan Chapman, who wrote to me from Oxford University, saying ‘I really must let you know how very much I am enjoying your RAF Blazer biogra-phy of our dear late friend Sir Patrick. I think that you have struck exactly the right balance: how to write a sharp and penetrating biography while still displaying a deep affection for the man and his fables’. To me, that single letter more than justifi ed the 11 years I spent on the project, from the fi rst words until its fi nal publication.

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However, what really did surprise me even more was that I started receiving suggestions, within weeks of the book’s release, that I should write a sequel. Amazingly 330,000 words about Patrick was not enough for some readers: they craved even more of Moore! At fi rst I dismissed such a crazy idea. For a start I was mentally drained from the project which had occupied my life for more than a decade. In addition It Came From Outer Space Wearing an RAF Blazer! (or ‘RAF Blazer’ as I shall refer to it from now on) was very comprehensive, covering Patrick’s life from birth to death along with almost everything he did along the way. What more could I possibly write without endless repetition? Well, in many ways those same readers answered my questions as, very quickly, various suggestions and anecdotes fl ooded in. One reader told me he would continue to re-read ‘RAF Blazer’ every year until a sequel appeared (he added that he also re-read Leslie Peltier’s splendid ‘Starlight Nights’ every year as well). Clearly the chronicle of Patrick’s life could not be re- written, but I could still have an entertaining ramble through specifi c parts of his life that I had only touched upon in ‘RAF Blazer’ but which seemed to fascinate the readers.

From the 400+ messages I received it was very clear that readers would like to see some of the drawings that Patrick made of the Moon and planets, especially in his early observing years. So, I have included a section on these, even though, by today’s digital imaging standards, they look rather basic, even childlike. The bizarre and sorry tale of O’Neill’s mythical bridge attracted much interest too, so I have included all Patrick’s sketches of the feature in this new book. His house Farthings was mentioned in many e-mails I received. Many amateur astronomers contacted me saying that Patrick had told them ‘If you are ever in Selsey, do drop in’. They assumed he was joking and so never made it to Selsey. After reading ‘RAF Blazer’ they realised Patrick was not joking. Visitors, as long as they were fans, were always welcome. As a result, many messages were received along the lines of ‘After read-ing your book I am cursing myself for never making it to Selsey… What was Farthings like? What other amateur astronomers lived in Selsey?’ I have tried to address many of these issues and to say more about some of Patrick’s best mates, where readers craved extra information.

So, for those who simply cannot get enough of Patrick, I hope you enjoy these additional snippets about his life. One word of warning though: to understand many of the new tales in this book you really do need to have read the original ‘RAF Blazer’ behemoth fi rst, at least for the anecdotes to make perfect sense. This book has been written purely in response to the original readers’ requests or pleas and for no other reason. This is not an alternative biography of Patrick, but a sequel to my original book. There are, of course, many repetitions and overlaps with ‘RAF Blazer’. This is, frankly, unavoidable. However, I think, and hope, that there is enough new stuff to keep the reader entertained and again temporarily fi ll the void that Patrick left when he departed. Good points and bad points he was a one-off and an endless source of fun and entertainment.

Preface

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Finally, Patrick was a member of the British Astronomical Association for 78 years, an organisation that shaped his life and, essentially, produced the back garden amateur astronomer who became a public institution. It was the BAA that created Patrick’s love of astronomy, not the BBC. To join the BAA (which I highly recom-mend), go to http://britastro.org/ or write to: The British Astronomical Association, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. W1J 0DU.

Cockfi eld, UK Martin Mobberley January 2015

Preface

http://britastro.org/

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to many, but especially to the following people for their e-mails, let-ters, replies, help, encouragement and stories about Patrick: Peter Anderson, Laurence Anslow, Richard Baum, Michael Bean, Denis Buczynski, Allan Chapman, Sean Clarke, Jamie Cooper, Philip Corneille, Doug Daniels, Tom Dobbins, Jane Foster (Fremantle Media International), Alicia Giambarresi (née Brinton), Filip Firlej (BBC Motion Gallery/Getty Images), Tim Kearsley, Ken Kennedy, Kevin Kilburn, Nick James, William Joyce, Bill Leatherbarrow, Mark Leslie, Bob Marriott, John Mason, John C. McConnell, Richard McKim, Pete Meadows, James Muirden, Gerald North, Sitesh Patel (Press Association/PA Images), Damian Peach, Trudie Rayner, Dave Scanlan, Ian Sharp, Jeremy Shears, Andrew Stephens, John Thorpe, John Carl Vetterlein, John Wall, Ian Welland, Andrew Wells, and David Whitehouse.

Thanks also to the Offi cers and Council of the British Astronomical Association and to Jennifer Satten of Springer and Mrs H. Ritya of SPi Content Solutions.

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Contents

1 Patrick’s Best Mates ............................................................................... 1 Gertrude Lilian Moore (née White) (1886–1981) ..................................... 2 Woody, Alias Mrs Hester Woodward (1901–1991) .................................. 4 The Reverend John Missen (1889–1980) ................................................. 6 William Sadler Franks (1851–1935) ......................................................... 8 Pat Clarke and Sons .................................................................................. 10 Dai Arthur… Friend Then Foe! ................................................................ 11 Leslie Ball (1911–1992) ........................................................................... 16 Gilbert Fielder ........................................................................................... 17 Bernard, Paul and Chris Doherty .............................................................. 19 Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) .................................................................. 21 Peter Cattermole and Iain Nicolson .......................................................... 25 Colin Ronan .............................................................................................. 28 John Mason ............................................................................................... 37 Henry Brinton, Major Levin and Some Selsey Mysteries! ....................... 39 Frank Hyde ................................................................................................ 47 Phil Ringsdore ........................................................................................... 49 Rossie Atwell and Reg Spry ..................................................................... 51 Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Iremonger ................................................... 56 George Hole .............................................................................................. 59 The Grangers of Peterborough .................................................................. 60 J. Hedley Robinson 1905–1991 ................................................................ 63 Cdr Henry Hatfi eld .................................................................................... 65 Ron Maddison ........................................................................................... 77 John Fletcher ............................................................................................. 79

2 Memories of Patrick ............................................................................... 83 Laurence Anslow’s Memories: “I Had to Sit on Them!” .......................... 84 Kevin Kilburn: Some Manchester Memories ........................................... 87 Doug Daniels: The Answer’s a Lemon! .................................................... 89

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Tom Dobbins: WBW and a Maneater ....................................................... 91 Allan Chapman: Galileo and Patrick Had Much in Common … ............. 92 Michael Bean: ‘A 100 % Genuine Bloke’ ................................................. 93 John Wall: The Inventor of the Crayford Focuser ..................................... 94 William Joyce: Patrick the Burglar! .......................................................... 95 Trudie Rayner: Filming with Mario .......................................................... 96 Peter Anderson: Patrick Visits Brisbane ................................................... 97 Ian Welland: A Visit to Selsey in 1978 ...................................................... 99 John Thorpe: BAA Memories from the 1980s .......................................... 101 Dave Scanlan: Happy Days at Selsey ....................................................... 102 Ian Sharp: The Police Thought We’d Pinched Patrick’s Banana! ............. 103 Ken Kennedy: Dundee Memories from the 1970s .................................... 103 Sean Clarke: A Plant for Mrs Moore ........................................................ 105

3 1956 and the BBC.................................................................................... 107 Guy Porter and Others .............................................................................. 107 Early Books and BAA Roles .................................................................... 109 Them in the Thing! ................................................................................... 112 Paul Johnstone .......................................................................................... 114 Seeing Stars ............................................................................................... 127 Classic Sky at Nights ................................................................................ 129

4 Memorable Books and Magazines ......................................................... 135 Guide to the Moon .................................................................................... 136 Suns, Myths and Men ............................................................................... 139 Flying Saucer from Mars .......................................................................... 140 The Amateur Astronomer .......................................................................... 144 The Observer’s Book of Astronomy 1962 ................................................ 145 Space in the Sixties 1963 .......................................................................... 147 Practical Amateur Astronomy 1963 .......................................................... 148 Moon Flight Atlas ..................................................................................... 149 The Atlas of the Universe .......................................................................... 152 Can You Speak Venusian? ......................................................................... 153 Challenge of the Stars (with David A. Hardy) and Futures: 50 Years in Space: The Challenge of the Stars .......................................... 156 How to Recognise the Stars 1972 ............................................................. 157 The Sky at Night Books ............................................................................ 158 Mrs. Moore in Space by Gertrude L. Moore 1974 ................................... 161 The Astronomy Quiz Book 1974 .............................................................. 162 The Guinness Book of Astronomy, Facts and Feats 1979 ........................ 162 Out of the Darkness: The Planet Pluto 1980 ............................................. 165 Bureaucrats: How to Annoy Them! by R.T. Fishall 1981 ......................... 166 The Unfolding Universe 1982 ................................................................... 170 Countdown! or How Nigh Is the End? 1983, 1999 and 2009 ................... 171 TV Astronomer: 30 Years of The Sky at Night 1987 ................................ 171

Contents

xiii

The Wandering Astronomer 1999 ............................................................. 172 Planetarium Magazine 1967–1969 ........................................................... 174

5 Patrick’s Pseudonyms, Letters and Postcards ...................................... 181 The Venusian Markings Correspondence.................................................. 188 Crank Mail ................................................................................................ 190 Weasels, Foxes and Chocolate Blancmange ............................................. 194 TLPs, Moonblinks and Crater Extinction Devices ................................... 201

6 Farthings: A Guided Tour ...................................................................... 211 39 West Street ........................................................................................... 215 Books Everywhere! ................................................................................... 220 Up the Stairs to More Books! ................................................................... 224 The Farthings Observatories ..................................................................... 230

7 Eclipse Trips and Foreign Adventures .................................................. 235 Lunik III Takes Priority ............................................................................. 237 Total Solar Eclipse Trips Experienced by Patrick ..................................... 240 The Monte Umbe ...................................................................................... 245 1981 to 1998 Travel and Eclipses ............................................................. 252 Cornwall .................................................................................................... 257

8 A Red Book, a Spoof and a 56th Birthday ............................................ 263 Trapped in a Lunar Rover! ........................................................................ 264 The Sky at Night that Wasn’t! ................................................................... 282 Midweek ................................................................................................... 288 Comedy Lab 1998 ..................................................................................... 296

9 Patrick’s Observations ............................................................................ 299 The Infl uence of Will Hay ......................................................................... 299 Gamma Cassiopeia .................................................................................... 309 The Earliest Lunar Sketches ..................................................................... 311 Wartime Flights Over Scotland ................................................................. 313 Lunar Work ............................................................................................... 316 O’Neill’s Bridge Revisited ........................................................................ 329 The Enduring Mystery of the Lunik 2 Flash ............................................. 337 Charting the Lunar Domes ........................................................................ 342 Observing the Solar System ...................................................................... 346 Venus and Mercury ................................................................................... 352 Jupiter ........................................................................................................ 355 The Janus Mystery Revisited .................................................................... 359 Return to England ..................................................................................... 364 Mars .......................................................................................................... 366 Pluto .......................................................................................................... 371 Saturn ........................................................................................................ 372 The 1990s and the Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impacts ........................................ 376 Variable Stars ............................................................................................ 381

Contents

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10 Post 2012 Developments… ..................................................................... 385 The Will .................................................................................................... 389 The Fate of the Ark! .................................................................................. 389 BBC Memorial .......................................................................................... 391

Appendix: Patrick’s TV Appearances Since 1956 ....................................... 395

Index ................................................................................................................. 413

Contents

1© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 M. Mobberley, Return to the Far Side of Planet Moore!, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15780-1_1

Chapter 1 Patrick’s Best Mates

“Help yourself to a drink: Colonel Iremonger’s rules apply in this house!”

During Patrick’s long career in astronomy (he was a British Astronomical Association member for 78 years!) he had many friends. Of course, when someone is famous they tend to attract friends for all sorts of reasons, but genuinely devoted fans were always welcome in Patrick’s world and inside his house. However, Patrick expected his friends to always be totally, unswervingly, loyal, and his defi nition of loyalty meant that you agreed with him on all of the fundamental pillars that supported his view of the world. A friend could never write a bad review regarding one of his books, or even point out any minor errors. Such a review would see the friend rapidly relegated to his personal ‘Serpent Kingdom’! Patrick’s erroneous view that the major lunar craters were created by volcanic action could never be challenged by his clos-est friends and neither could his belief in the existence of Transient Lunar Phenomena or TLP. Since his teenage years Patrick had been infl uenced by Robert Barker and Percy Wilkins within the BAA Lunar Section and they certainly did not believe in a changeless world, or one whose surface was cratered solely by meteoritic impacts. So, impact theorists and TLP sceptics would rapidly be labelled as ‘Serpents’.

Outside the world of astronomy Patrick’s political views were distinctly right wing, although his hatred of blood sports ran counter to this. Therefore, if you had the view that the English were the best race on Earth (sometimes he was willing to extend this to the British!) and that immigration must be banned forthwith and that women should be banned from certain activities (such as being on TV and working as teachers or in publishing) you were almost certain to be eligible for his select group of friends. Confusingly, Patrick did have a few exceptions to these rules in cases where he really did like the person in question. For example, Bill Granger of Peterborough, who readers of ‘RAF Blazer’ will recall had a wife Ethel with a 13-in. waist and who invariably had a cat on his shoulder named ‘Treacle Pudding’, was a communist! Yet he was allowed into Patrick’s inner circle of friends and even appeared on the second edition of The Sky at Night .

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Clearly, when you have lived such a long life, with more than half a century in the public eye, you will have lots of friends, or at least, lots of acquaintances, but I have tried to concentrate here on the people who Patrick felt most at ease with and who he regarded as his very closest friends. This list of Patrick’s best mates is therefore very selective and many friends have been left out if they had no eccen-tricities or if there is little exciting to relate. I have deliberately omitted people like H. Percy Wilkins who I covered to exhaustion in ‘RAF Blazer’ and I have specifi -cally included people who readers asked me to write more about. In addition, within Patrick’s huge circle of friends there are some people who were such extraordinary and eccentric characters that they just had to be included. So, essentially, this chap-ter is the result of reader requests for more information about specifi c people, along with some of my own personal preferences.

I will start this list with Patrick’s best ever friend, his Mum.

Gertrude Lilian Moore (née White) (1886–1981)

When Patrick attempted to write his fi rst astronomy book, aged 8, he made it clear that he was “Going to keep it simple, so that even Mother can understand it!” Despite this apparent youthful insult to his mother’s intelligence she remained, without ques-tion, his best friend in life until her death on January 7th 1981, at the advanced age of 94. Gertrude Moore’s death was a hammer blow to Patrick, and those who knew him well think that his character permanently changed in January 1981. His mother had shared his whole life and he was her only child. Patrick had never been that close to his military father (an accountant following injuries sustained in a gas attack in the trenches in World War I) and after he died, just before Christmas 1947, the bond between mother and son became even closer. Due to problems with Patrick’s

Fig. 1.1 Patrick’s mother Gertrude Lilian Moore née White (1886–1981) during her 80s. From a photograph in Patrick’s collection, copied by the author with his permission

1 Patrick’s Best Mates

3

heartbeat he was educated at the family home, rarely mixing with other children until the age of 15 or so. Therefore Patrick grew up as a very unusual child, whose mother, father, cousins and tutor were his sole friends until his teenage years.

A number of people have suggested that Patrick may have had a form of Asperger’s syndrome, but I am reluctant to do what has become a modern obsession, namely putting everyone into a psychological box and ticking it. Patrick was unique and I feel the isolated ‘only child’ upbringing by his mother must have played a major role. To go from this unusual childhood to then become an RAF Offi cer, a schoolteacher and then a TV astronomer and a national institution was a journey that only he experienced and only his mother witnessed fi rst hand. What would his father have thought if he had lived beyond 1947? Ten years later Patrick was on BBC Television each month and by the early 1970s he was a household name, known to everyone in the UK and adored by millions. Only Gertrude Moore witnessed Patrick go from childhood to international fame and only she, surely, really understood her son. So, when she passed away it was a hammer blow to Patrick.

In 1929 Mrs Moore had sparked Patrick’s initial interest in astronomy by show-ing him a book she had owned for many years, namely The Story of the Solar System by G.F. Chambers (published in 1898). Patrick read it in a couple of days and his mother then passed the companion volume to him, namely The Story of the Stars . The young Patrick had other interests too, especially playing the xylophone, playing the piano and playing with the family cat, but it was astronomy that would dominate his interest from the age of about 10 onwards. It was not at all clear that Patrick

Fig. 1.2 Captain Charles Trachsel Moore (1885–1947). This painting was never publicly displayed in Patrick’s house, unlike the dozens of paintings and pictures of his mother

Gertrude Lilian Moore (née White) (1886–1981)

4

would end up as an amateur scientist and prolifi c author though, as his mother told the Daily Express columnist Jean Rook in July 1978:

He was the untidiest, oddest little devil as a boy and he hasn’t changed. Life with him is a bit strange, but not bad when you stop worrying about what could happen next.

In fact though, 5 years before that newspaper interview, and before she appeared alongside Patrick on This is Your Life and Parkinson , both in 1974, she appeared on her own in a 10 min. TV slot fi rst broadcast on Thursday February 22nd 1973 on BBC 2 at 9.15 p.m. Sandwiched between part 2 of ‘Weir of Hermiston’ and an epi-sode of Horizon entitled ‘How much do you smell?’ Mrs Moore related the true story of being Patrick’s Mum in the BBC series ‘Times Remembered by Proud Mums’. Her account of Patrick’s genuine heart rhythm problem totally preventing his schooling was a little different, as she stated that it was amazing to see him so full of energy on TV, because: “as a child he was thoroughly lazy…he only put up with going to school for one year!” The Daily Mirror reporter Mary Malone sum-marised the show in the next day’s newspaper on 1973 Feb 23: ‘For something out of this world, look no further than star gazer Patrick Moore of telly fame— especially the way mum tells it. In that splendid new series “Times Remembered by Proud Mums” (BBC 2) he was yet another of the famous to be bared. That scraggy, wind-swept look is all his own apparently. Mum has spent years trying to tidy him up. But no matter how carefully she packs his bags, he still goes off with little more than a toothbrush. “He just doesn’t care what he looks like” she said, shaking her head with happy regret. By the way, did it occur to any of you that wild man Pat resem-bles more than somewhat those delightful drawings his mother does of creatures in outer space?’

Gertrude Moore, an accomplished Opera singer in her youth, defi nitely provided the initial astronomy spark, but a series of remarkably lucky coincidences steered the young Patrick fi rmly towards astronomy as his main interest. The family moving to live at East Grinstead, within a few hundred yards of a well-equipped amateur observatory, was a major slice of luck, but so was the presence of the observatory’s resident astronomer, W.S. Franks, as we shall see shortly.

Woody, Alias Mrs Hester Woodward (1901–1991)

Patrick and his mother employed a variety of housekeepers throughout Patrick’s life and the longest duration ones seemed either to have had W or ‘Wood’ in their sur-names. First there was Maria Woodford, who originally, as a girl, served Patrick’s maternal grandparents in Camberwell, then Patrick’s parents at East Grinstead and Patrick plus his mother up to about 1950. Then in the late 1950s, up to 1965, there was Mrs Wheeler (nicknamed Mrs Weasel) who lived at 25 Upper Close Forest Row, but carried out the daily chores at the Moore’s house Glencathara at Worsted Lane. Miss Denny, an elderly family friend and companion of Patrick’s mother, also served as a housekeeper from time to time during the 1960s and into the early 1970s


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when she suddenly became ill and died. However, during the late 1970s and 1980s and up to March 1991, one woman looked after both Patrick and his mother and that woman was Mrs Hester Woodward, affectionately known as “Woody”. Woody was even dragged away from her housekeeping duties at night if Patrick was excited by the view through his eyepiece and wanted someone to share the experience with. So, on May 27th 1980, he recorded an unusually prominent view of the Ashen Light on Venus and mentioned that Paul Doherty and Woody confi rmed the sight in his log-book entry. Woody’s nickname also appears now and again in his lunar notebooks, as a witness, when TLP are reported by Patrick. From the 1950s the Moores’ house-keepers were invariably middle-aged or elderly (and so reliable) and lived locally. Many acted as a friend and companion to the widowed Mrs Moore and would travel with her if she fancied a short break somewhere. So, they were part-time employees, but family friends too, and who would not want to be a friend once Patrick became so famous and with him being so generous and entertaining?

As Patrick’s mother grew older and more frail (and certainly after her death in January 1981) Patrick would make it clear to anyone in the Press, who asked about who looked after him, that it was “Woody” and without her he did not know what would happen. On chat shows on TV or on the radio, from Michael Parkinson to Sue Lawley to Michael Aspel, he would invariably mention how useless he was at all practical and domestic chores and that it was Woody who kept him and the house going. I never met Woody in person, although I spoke to her on the telephone a few times during the 1980s, and she clearly understood Patrick’s strengths and weak-nesses very well. In many ways she was like a spare mother fi gure to him as she was more than 20 years his senior. During the grim years of the late 1970s and 1980, through to Mrs Moore’s fi nal days, she became an almost permanent nurse maid to Gertrude Moore. In 1980 there was a rosta system at Farthings with Woody doing the day shift and Patrick doing the night shift, while catching some sleep in the daytime when he could. This enabled Patrick to do some observing at night too, if his mother was sleeping soundly. After Gertrude Moore died, Patrick was, under-standably, devastated. However, Woody was able to bridge the gap in Patrick’s life and share his pain, because she had become more of a family friend than a house-keeper in recent years.

I know of only one major interview with the press where Woody was interviewed alongside Patrick. This was in a July 24th 1983 Mail on Sunday article by Angela Levin, more than 2 years after Gertrude Moore’s death and with Patrick then being 60 years of age. It was clear who was in charge though—Woody! Patrick had nipped out to the Selsey Post Offi ce on his famous lethal bicycle, which had no brakes, and so came to a halt when the friction from the soles of Patrick’s size 13 shoes over-came the forward motion! He had hoped to get back quickly in time for the inter-view but had phoned home to see if Angela Levin and the photographer had arrived. They had, and Woody came out with some interesting quotes in the interview, prov-ing that she was now fi lling the role of a governess scolding a naughty schoolboy. “I wish to God he’d get rid of his bike. It’s 50 years old, you know. The wheel has come off. He’s taken it to the bike shop and he wants to wait until it’s repaired.” When Patrick phoned home Woody was in no mood for excuses: “You just come

Woody, Alias Mrs Hester Woodward (1901–1991)

6

back this minute. They’re already here!” Regarding Patrick’s mother she said “He hasn’t got over her death at all. I don’t think he ever will. He’s 60 now, poor poppet. They were so close. These things are terrible for the one that’s left.” At the time of that interview Patrick was driving his bent, yellow, rusting, L registration Ford Cortina estate with 300,000 miles on the clock. It suited Patrick’s character per-fectly but Woody hated it: “I wish you would change it sir. It’s a dreadful old thing, full of rust. You should be ashamed of it!” In reply Patrick said he would like to buy a replacement British car but now he was just too big to fi t into one!

Well, following that interview, Woody kept Patrick and Farthings going for another 8 years, until she too died in March 1991, aged 90. It was remarkable that she lived that long because, by all accounts, she was a chain-smoker, with her half- smoked cigarettes to be found all around the house! In a 1999 interview in the Independent newspaper Norris McWhirter even mentioned Farthings and Woody regarding life expectancy: ‘Patrick used to have a marvellous old housekeeper who lived to 90; his mother lived to 94, and their cat lived to 19, so it’s a great place for longevity.’

Not surprisingly, Woody eventually died of lung cancer, which had suddenly spread rapidly, and her fi nal demise happened very quickly over the course of a day or two. I well recall the BAA Council meeting at the end of March 1991. Patrick could not attend due to Woody’s death and various councillors reported that friends had descended on Farthings to help Patrick to survive, to clean the house and to do his shopping! There was some concern as to whether Patrick could possibly survive without his much respected housekeeper. Woody was an absolutely critical fi gure in Patrick’s life from the late 1970s to 1991 and it is hard to see how he would have mentally survived his mother’s death at all without her support and hard work. After she died Woody’s son Barry and his family moved to Selsey for a while and were very welcome visitors and helpers, but they eventually left and moved to Yorkshire. This left Patrick on his own, in a big house, at the age of 68, and he no longer had the resources to pay for a professional full time housekeeper. After a while various friends came to stay at Farthings on a part-time or more permanent basis. These included his friend Roger Prout and Patrick’s godson Adam. Godson’s fi anceés were also very welcome as friends who could do some cooking, although Patrick had become a regular customer at the local Selsey Curry House by the 1990s. So, post-Woody, Patrick survived for another 13 years until he fi nally gave in to having professional carers look after him, despite the crippling fi nancial cost.

The Reverend John Missen (1889–1980)

From the age of 6 to 16 Patrick’s main teachers were his mother and father and the rector of the nearby parish of Coleman’s Hatch, Hartfi eld, in East Sussex, the Reverend John Missen. Patrick’s early diagnosis of a heart rhythm problem meant that he only attended school for a single term and so, from that point on, he stayed at the family home of Glencathara, in Worsted Lane, East Grinstead for his school-ing. The vast majority of this education was provided by a local tutor, the aforementioned


7

Reverend John Missen. He travelled from his nearby parish to teach Patrick various subjects, including History, Geography, English and Mathematics, of which Maths was the only subject Patrick struggled with, but as the rector said in 1974: “If he didn’t know any particular subject well he would try and prove he was a great fool and did it so cleverly you knew he wasn’t a fool, whatever else he might be…” John Missen remained a valued family friend of Patrick and his mother after Patrick’s father died in December 1947, and right up to him and his mother’s departure to Armagh, in 1965. They were reunited again on Patrick’s This is Your Life broadcast in 1974, which I cover in Chap. 8 . It should be stressed that the Reverend John Missen was not the only tutor that Patrick had during his school years, but he was, by far, the most important and the most regular visitor to Patrick’s parents’ home. Originally, Patrick had been sent to the prestigious Dulwich preparatory school in South London (a school well known to his mother’s side of the family and a few hundred yards from his grandparents’ home). However, that didn’t work out and (as mentioned earlier) his mother stated to the media that “as a child he was thoroughly lazy…he only put up with going to school for one year.” As I’ve mentioned already, in July 1978 his mother told the Daily Express reporter Jean Rook that: “He was the untidiest, oddest little devil as a boy and he hasn’t changed. Life with him is a bit strange…” After the aborted Dulwich attempt at schooling his parents hunted around for a suitable school near to East Grinstead, but the nearest one that was even vaguely suitable was Hill Place School, near to Goffs Manor, Crawley, some 10 miles away. Eventually they found what Patrick described as ‘a coaching establish-ment at Tunbridge Wells’ where a group of tutors, many of whom were local vicars, offered their teaching services. Patrick’s main tutor was chosen to be the Reverend Missen. As Patrick said many years later to John Missen, on that same This is Your Life show: “I wasn’t awfully easy I know, and if he hadn’t taught me simply bril-liantly I simply wouldn’t be here”. Of course, the Rev. Missen was not an expert in every subject and Patrick, while he excelled in History, English and Music, found Mathematics, beyond the basics, a hard subject. So, occasionally, when he was fi t,

Fig. 1.3 The Reverend John Missen (1889–1980) was, during the 1930s, Patrick’s tutor. He was in his 80s at the time of this photograph, from Patrick’s collection, copied with his permission

The Reverend John Missen (1889–1980)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15780-1_8

8

or when John Missen was unavailable, he would spend a few days at the aforemen-tioned Hill Place School at Goffs Manor. Remarkably, there is even a school photo-graph, taken in 1935, when Patrick was 12, which shows Patrick in the picture, alongside mainly younger pupils! (Fig. 1.4 )

But despite (or maybe because of!) this unorthodox education Patrick took the Common Entrance exams and passed, giving him (helped by his parent’s connec-tions) a place at Eton he never took up, due to his health. He subsequently acquired the right number of School Certifi cates to ‘matriculate’ to university. You had to get fi ve all at once, and Patrick’s included distinctions. It is a matter of fact that he gained a place at Clare College, Cambridge to study Geology, but decided not to, after the War ended, despite him having a right to do so, even aged 22.

William Sadler Franks (1851–1935)

Without a doubt the next most signifi cant friend, after John Missen, in the young Patrick’s life was the man who would become his fi rst astronomical mentor, William Sadler Franks. One could argue that if Franks had not existed the modern world of

Fig. 1.4 A 12 year old Patrick Moore is fourth from the right in the back row in this school pho-tograph taken at Hill Place School, Goffs Manor, Crawley, in 1936. While Patrick was normally tutored at home he did occasionally attend school on days when his heartbeat was regular and when home tutors were unavailable, or for certain subjects


9

astronomy would be very different indeed, because he infl uenced the young Patrick in his most formative years. Maybe if not for Franks Patrick’s prime interest would have turned to music and not astronomy? As I have mentioned, Patrick, by his own admission, had hardly any friends of a similar age up to his mid-teens, so an elderly man living locally, operating a splendid 6-in. refractor, sited just a few hundred yards from Patrick’s parent’s home in Worsted Lane East Grinstead, became his best friend from the age of 10 or 11. This continued until Franks’ unfortunate death, following a cycling accident, when Patrick was 12. By the time of Franks’ death, on June 19th 1935, Patrick had been a BAA member for 7 months and would remain one for the remaining 77 years of his life. The year spent learning how to use the excellent 6-in. refractor at Brockhurst, working alongside Franks, must surely have made him the most experienced 12 year old astronomer in the country and, thanks to the Brockhurst estate owner F.J. Hanbury’s trust in the young master Moore, access to this telescope would continue until Hanbury’s own death on March 1st 1938, just 3 days prior to Patrick’s 15th birthday. Patrick’s friendship with Franks was certainly brief com-pared to a human lifetime, but at that impressionable age a year of friendship can alter a person’s entire future and it may have well have resulted in a whole half-cen-tury of astronomers being infl uenced by Patrick (Fig. 1.5 ).

Fig. 1.5 William Sadler Franks was Patrick’s fi rst astronomical tutor, at Brockhurst Observatory, a few hundred yards from Patrick’s childhood East Grinstead home. This photograph, taken between 1924 and 1934, shows Franks using the 24-in. refl ector of T.W. Bush, which was located at Brockhurst Observatory in those years. The photograph was given to Richard Pearson by Patrick Moore and was acquired by this author from Jeremy Shears

William Sadler Franks (1851–1935)

10

Pat Clarke and Sons

Shortly after Patrick passed away on December 9th 2012 the details of his will were made public. If not for the fi nancial help of the Queen rock guitarist Brian May in his fi nal years there would have been nothing for Patrick to leave anyone, but fortu-nately Brian’s kindness enabled Patrick to avoid selling his beloved Farthings house to pay for the eye-watering carers’ fees he was facing after 2004. Patrick left the bulk of his estate to lifelong friends who were his adopted ‘godsons’, namely the sons of like-minded parents, or even the grandsons of like-minded grandparents, who Patrick had known since his youth.

Two of the benefi ciaries of part of his £420,000 estate were the brothers Lawrence Clarke and Matthew Clarke. Patrick had known their father Pat since the late 1930s and they had served in the East Grinstead Home Guard together and both decided to join the RAF around the same time. Indeed, Pat Clarke was one of the few non- celebrities to appear on his This is your Life TV programme in February 1974, accompanied by his son Lawrence, then aged 22. Although Patrick had a near infi n-ity of adopted ‘godsons’ he always maintained a special father fi gure status to those who had lost one (or both) parents relatively early in life. Patrick’s own father had died in December 1947 when Patrick was 24 years old, so he knew how traumatic such a premature loss could be. He also felt a duty to do what he could to help the sons of deceased friends and act as a father fi gure to them, in their time of bereave-ment. I feel that another factor is important here too. Once you are famous, many

Fig. 1.6 Patrick greets Lawrence Clarke while his father Pat Clarke looks on and Eamonn Andrews holds the big red book. From This is Your Life in 1974. Copyright Fremantle Media International


11

so-called ‘friends’ are simply attracted to you by your fame, whereas those you have known as friends in the pre-fame days can be considered the genuine article. Sadly, Pat Clarke died in his 50s, in the late 1970s, when his sons were just 26 and 22 years of age, but Patrick reinforced his father fi gure role to the two young men at that time and even more so when their mother died a few years later. Indeed, even before that time Pat Clarke stated that it was Patrick’s mentoring of Lawrence that got him through college and on to get a fi rst at Oxford in the early 1970s.

During the 1970s Patrick often took Pat Clarke’s sons to the BBC TV Centre to see The Sky at Night or other shows being made and Lawrence Clark had a role in illustrating a few of Patrick’s books, such as the 1972 Corgi mini book ‘How to Recognise the Stars’, for which Lawrence drew the constellation patterns. Matthew Clarke now runs the Torbay bookshop at Paignton in Devon where Patrick was happy to sign copies of his latest books on various occasions; he was responsible for getting Matthew his fi rst job in publishing.

Dai Arthur… Friend Then Foe!

In the immediate post-war BAA there were few young men of Patrick’s age who were devoted observers of the Moon. However, D.W.G. (Dai) Arthur was arguably the one man of Patrick’s generation who, for a time, had almost identical interests

Fig. 1.7 A couple of very blurry pictures from Patrick’s Lunar logbook pages show Dai Arthur and Patrick posing individually outside the Henley Fort Observatory in 1949


12

and aspirations and who, briefl y, also regarded H.P. Wilkins (a fellow Welshman) as a mentor. Like the young and enthusiastic Patrick, Dai Arthur was, originally, very keen on visual observations of the lunar surface and was a regular attendee of BAA meetings in Piccadilly, where, like Patrick, he often contributed or delivered a talk. Also, just like Patrick, he wrote a number of BAA papers for the association’s Journal. He too was interested in making some money as an author, although Dai’s technique was somewhat different to Patrick’s success in writing for a major pub-lisher. Patrick’s big breakthrough in that area was being heard delivering his ‘Guide to the Moon’ lecture to the British Interplanetary Society by a New York publisher’s agent, who just happened to be in London at the time. It was Arthur C. Clarke who had asked Patrick to give the talk. Patrick’s breakthrough on Television, as we see later, largely came about because of his vocal scepticism of Flying Saucers and (confusingly) his friendship with a Flying Saucer believer Desmond Leslie! Who knows, if those two big breaks had come Dai Arthur’s way maybe he would have ended up presenting The Sky at Night ? However, I somehow doubt if anyone else around at that time would have had Patrick’s skill at delivering loud and concise presentations in front of a live TV camera. Today very few people have heard of Dai Arthur, but millions remember Patrick Moore. Yet, in the late 1940s and early 1950s they were kindred spirits with little to separate their interests or enthusiasm for lunar observing. In ‘RAF Blazer’ I quoted a few recollections of Richard Baum of those exciting times and one of them is worth repeating here:

I remember my second attendance at a BAA meeting. It was in 1948. I recall two events, a talk by Peter Lancaster Brown on comets, and the walk back to Euston along Piccadilly in the company of H. P. Wilkins, Patrick Moore, Robert Barker and D. W. G. Arthur. It was a dark, damp and cool evening. Dai Arthur, I remember, was carrying rolls of lunar photo-graphs—at the time he had access to the great Paris Atlas and was making black and white prints from its large sheets and selling them to members who wanted them at around fi ve shillings each!

The BAA meeting records of the late 1940s and 1950s, and the BAA Journal itself, featured many mentions of Dai Arthur and a number of short lunar-related papers. Specifi c craters he studied and sketched included Posidonius J, Bond, Demonax and Ptolemaus and, at the 1948 December 29 BAA meeting, he delivered a talk entitled ‘The Graphical Interpolation of Detail from Lunar Photographs’. In those exciting times, when the visual observer was still king and probes had not been sent to the Moon, there was often much discussion about the nature of the lunar surface at BAA meetings, with differing views about whether the craters were formed by volcanic action or meteoric bombardment. Patrick, of course, clung dog-gedly to his entrenched view that the craters were volcanic, even in the face of overwhelming proof that they were not; many others in the BAA of that era held similar views. The crater Plato was one of those which attracted much interest, especially the visibility or not of the tiny fl oor craterlets. H.P. Wilkins delivered a talk on this subject at the 1949 November 30 BAA meeting and it drew recorded comments from Dai Arthur, F.H. Thornton and Arthur C. Clarke. Dai’s comments are recorded as: ‘I would like to support Mr. Wilkins’ observations concerning the supposed darkening of Plato’s fl oor. Under low illumination the fl oor has the


13

appearance of black velvet. Under high illumination I see it as bright grey when examined through an occulting eyepiece. In my opinion the alleged darkening of the fl oor towards noon is a myth.’ Whereas Arthur C. Clarke’s comments were: ‘I have seen photographs of the Moon, when it was about 2 days old, in which the markings on the whole disk could be clearly discerned by the refl ected earthlight. As far as I can remember Plato, and the surrounding regions then looked exactly as they did under full sunlight, which suggests that there is no change in Plato between mid-night and midday.’

At the 1950 Feb 22nd BAA meeting Dai Arthur delivered a paper about his observations of crater chains and Patrick’s comments at the meeting were recorded as: ‘It is very possible that crater-chains occur in considerable numbers close to the Moon’s limb. For instance, there is an excellent example south of Demonax. Others could probably be detected with small instruments, and this seems a fruitful fi eld for investigation.’ Four months later Wilkins installed Dai, not Patrick, as the Editor of the new Lunar Section publication ‘The Moon’. Dai was keen on publishing his lunar work too, but unlike Patrick he did not get lucky and clinch a deal with a major publisher. So Dai self-published fi ve issues of his own magazine, called Contributions to Selenography , mostly containing lunar crater measurements he had made from glass negatives, obtained from Mount Wilson and Lick. Anyone who studies Patrick’s lunar observing logbooks will come across Dai’s name now and again from the late 1940s and up to the mid-1950s. Indeed, inspired by their mutual inter-est in crater chains Patrick’s logbooks of the 1950s contain a couple of sketches of the Hyginus cleft and Vogel labelled ‘Crater-Chains: Structure (After D.W.G. Arthur, F.R.A.S.)’

The reader of ‘RAF Blazer’ will recall that Patrick did not have a large aperture telescope at his mother’s East Grinstead home until he fi nally acquired the 12½-in. refl ector ‘Oscar’ and got its run-off shed working in November 1951. However, with his motorbikes ‘Vesuvius’ and ‘Etna’ he could travel to other observatories within an hour’s travel from East Grinstead. These other locations included H.P. Wilkins’ home at 35 Fairlawn Avenue, Bexleyheath, George Hole’s home at 44 Sanyhils Avenue, Ladies Mile, Patcham (near Brighton) and various other sites. One observatory he often visited along with Dai Arthur was at Henley Fort where a 6-in. refractor was installed. I must admit that when I fi rst saw the rather blurry pictures of Patrick and Dai Arthur at the Henley Fort observatory I assumed I was looking at a much younger Patrick visiting the Brockhurst observatory that he used (and was the Director of) in the mid 1930s at East Grinstead. Patrick’s notes indi-cated a 6-in. refractor, just like the one at Brockhurst, where his original mentor Francks had inspired him, and even the building looked very similar. However, on closer inspection the observatory design was similar, but not identical, and Patrick’s notes reveal that this was a post-war visit to Henley Fort.

Quite how an astronomical observatory came to be at Henley Fort is information I have, so far, been unable to unearth. Indeed, there is more information about the whereabouts of Lord Lucan than the history of the observatory! I suppose it is not inconceivable that after the Brockhurst owner F.J. Hanbury died, in 1938, the entire telescope and observatory was relocated to Henley Fort (with some modifi cations)


14

but surely Patrick would have mentioned this in his logbooks? Nevertheless, using the 6-in. refractor there, inside a similar observatory to the one he used from the ages of 10 to 15 must have brought back great memories. Henley Fort was used in the Second World War by the Home Guard, but was actually the most westerly fort in a 17 mile long chain that was used to form a secondary line of defence to protect London in the 1880s, should the French choose to invade. The fort is based near Guildford in Surrey, at the end of the ‘Hog’s Back’ ridge. At the time Patrick and Dai Arthur used the observatory his colleague Dai was living at 35 Vastern Road, Reading, in Berkshire.

In 1956, one year before Patrick became a TV presenter, the work of Dai Arthur was highlighted by Joseph Ashbrook in an article in Sky & Telescope . Arthur’s self- published 5 volume work ‘Contributions to Selenography’ contained an enormous amount of work. Volume 1 was a list of 1,400 crater diameters measured by J. Young; Volume 2 gave precise positions for 490 features in the Mare Imbrium; Volume 3 added 300 features in the Oceanus Procellarum; Volume 4 gave formulae for con-verting the X–Y positions observed on a lunar plate to their positions at zero libra-tion; and Volume 5 listed 580 points around Copernicus. Even by the standards of Patrick, who could churn out books and articles at lighting speed, this was an impres-sive achievement, even more so when one considers that the demand for Dai’s work was very low, with only 50 copies of some of the volumes being printed and sold.

However, like so many of Patrick’s colleagues in the astronomy world, after Patrick became the nation’s TV astronomer, in 1957, Dai decided to become a pro-fessional astronomer, just like Ewen Whitaker, and he emigrated to America in 1959. His fi rst employment was at the Yerkes Observatory and, while there, using mainly a 24-in. refl ector, he made sketches of the Linné, Argaeus, Hevel, Riccioli, Darwin, Damoiseau and Grimaldi and Littrow regions, which the Lunar Section Director, Gilbert Fielder, reproduced in the 1960 September Journal. Dai Arthur went on (with Ewen Whitaker) to become a founding member of the University of Arizona’s Lunar & Planetary Laboratory and he ended his career in the 1970s and 1980s at Flagstaff, where he analysed many of the Viking lander photographs of Mars. In later life he gave up astronomy as a hobby and took to building model railways. However, less than a decade after Dai went to Arizona his opinion of the now famous Patrick seems to have been very negative. Indeed, he even exchanged vitriolic correspondence with Patrick’s ‘mother serpent’ Henry King, famous for writing scathing reviews of Wilkins’ and Patrick’s books. A number of remarkably anti-Patrick BAA Lunar Section letters in the possession of Leslie Rae were acquired by Denis Buczynski many years ago and illustrate how much Dai Arthur and others now disliked Patrick’s attitude and the fact that Patrick’s fame appeared to have brought him the power to be beyond criticism within the BAA. Some U.S. astrono-mers even accused Patrick of blatant plagiarism!

Arguably the most scathing letter, from Dai Arthur at least, seems to have been triggered by a paper in the June 1966 BAA Journal by a very young David Allen, later to become the director of the Anglo Australian Observatory. Allen had origi-nally presented the paper, about the lunar limb crater Caramuel, at the 1966 February 23rd BAA meeting at Burlington House. Patrick was the BAA Lunar Section


15

Director at this time, between 1964 and 1968. In the paper, and in Patrick’s comments after the paper, there were implications that BAA amateurs had drawn the crater correctly, whereas US professionals (including former BAA Lunar Section members like Arthur & Whitaker, and Alika Herring) had misrepresented the crater. Allen commented in the Journal: ‘Alika Herring produced a rectifi ed drawing of the region which is reproduced in Communications of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, vol. 1, no. 19. This drawing is rather idealized—and the details are somewhat suspect.’ Patrick also commented: ‘This valuable paper by Mr Allen is most welcome, and is an excellent example of one branch of the work being under-taken by the Lunar Section. Caramuel, though a large and imposing feature, has not been well known. It is misplaced both on Wilkins’ map and on the U.S. atlases, so that this new chart will be most useful. Caramuel is named ‘Einstein’ on the U.S. atlas. Wilkins’ ‘Einstein’ is the Simpelius D of the I.A.U. map.’

Anyway, the letter, from Patrick’s former friend Dai Arthur, to Patrick’s enemy, Dr Henry King, the Director of the London Planetarium and the BAA Papers Secretary at that time, is reproduced below. Interestingly, just a month later King stood down as the BAA Papers Secretary. Ultimately, it was his responsibility that the paper by David Allen, his enemy’s disciple, had appeared in the BAA Journal!

D.W.G. Arthur 3936 East Hardy Tucson, Arizona 85716 September 8, 1966

Dr. Henry Charles King Scientifi c Director of the London Planetarium Marylebone Road, London, N.W.1, England

Dear Sir, Mr Wood has shown me the correspondence between yourself and him and also

the rather amusing letter from Moore to you dated 31 August 1966. I am reluctant to get involved in a time wasting controversy originating from the reckless and men-dacious assertions by Moore, but as a material witness there are one or two things which I had better make clear. First the insolence of this poseur in referring to Wood as a boy. Mr Wood is in his middle twenties and has a degree. His academic back-ground involves a knowledge of physics and geology. What is more relevant in this context is that he has earned his living for the last 5 years as a professional selenog-rapher, spending much of his time in measurement, interpretation and correlation of lunar photographs. I believe that Moore’s maximum academic achievement corre-sponds to that of an uncertifi cated teacher. You must judge for yourself the relative degree of competence for Wood and Moore. In the circumstances I must regard Moore’s letter as a piece of ill-mannered impertinence—but quite typical of Moore.

I was present when Mr Wood came across the paper by Allen in J.B.A.A and I can assure you that he was shocked, so much so, that his fi rst remarks were incoher-ent. He is genuinely of the opinion that something very dubious has happened. My own experience with the B.A.A. in recent years supports this conclusion. I have sent


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