Interview with Antonia Lister-Kaye

 

Educated Boarding school at Cane End near Reading, Armagh Girls High School, Claremont School, Llandrindod Wells, Durham and Edinburgh University

 

Born on 22 November 1931 in Cardiff, two months premature. Mother was returning from an army cocktail party. Christian Scientist mother kept Antonia in a chicken incubator (father's brother was a farmer). Antonia slow to walk. Massage twice a week. Father Colonel Price was decorated during the First World War and was 40; mother was 20 years younger. Father played rugby for London Welsh and was a middleweight boxing champion in the army. Mother was a horsewoman, played polo and was described as having “the best seat in Yorkshire”. Loved animals and parties. Her father was killed in the trenches; she died of tuberculosis when Antonia was 11. At the age of five Antonia was separated from her parents who went to Agra in India; her sister Veronica was three months old. They went to stay with her maternal grandmother in York along with a nanny and a governess called Miss Moss. Maternal grandmother lived with her mother in a mid-Victorian terrace in Clifton, York. Childhood games. Difficulties walking. Abuse from other schoolchildren. Antonia's disability was not mentioned at home. In 1939 family moved to Northern Ireland so father could train troops in Armagh. Mother had to go to a sanatorium in North Wales and then a Christian Science nursing home. Great-grandmother very deaf, told fairytales and cleaned silver. Public library at Lendal Bridge. Difficulty writing. Armagh Girls High School. Boarding school at Cane End near Reading - various pranks led to Antonia being expelled. Headmistress Miss Clutton sent Antonia to a child psychologist who taught her the facts of life.

 

Antonia bit her grandmother's ankles. Banbridge Academy in Northern Ireland. Beetle drives. Trips out in the army car. Childhood crush on Major Wilson who had one arm. Going to Wednesday matinees at York Theatre Royal. Playing Lady Bracknell and Caliban in school plays. Trips to London to see a consultant - diagnosed with Dr Little's disease. Mother's lack of physical affection. The love of dogs - Kerry Blue, spaniels. Father smacked three-year-old sister for poking a dog in the eye. Antonia locked sister in the tool shed. Father received OBE. Christian Science School Claremont in Llandrindod Wells, Wales.

 

 

 

Parallels between autobiographical novel ‘Camilla Bloody Imbecile’ and Antonia's own life. Father born in Wales in 1890 and died in Monmouthshire at the age of 88. Army officer for 35 years rising to rank of lieutenant colonel. Played county cricket and rugby for London Welsh. Paternal grandfather was a corn chandler. Paternal grandmother Annie wanted to be a teacher and had five daughters who became teachers. Antonia's father had a bullet wound in his shoulder from the Somme. Antonia's mother Helen was born in 1909 in York and died when Antonia was 11. Her father and grandfather were land agents from the upper-middle-class. Mother called Antonia a ‘bloody little imbecile’. Disability was not mentioned despite Antonia's falls and her messy eating. Instead of swimming Antonia used to go to York repertory matinees. Stole a sovereign from her grandmother and sold it to a jeweller in the Shambles in York. Antonia's grandmother was very rich and had a maid called Dorothy, a cook who was an Austrian refugee, a nanny, a char and a gardener. Grandmother was an air raid warden when 70 bombs fell on York in 1943 - Sevres china was broken and four horses were killed in a nearby field. Playing in Rowntree Gardens. Visiting the library on Lendal Bridge. Debrett's peerage and grandmother's stocks and shares.

Antonia learnt the facts of life at the age of nine from an evacuee called Maureen. Antonia's mother hitting her with a hazel switch. Soldiers and Airmen's Families. Antonia's grandmother made ‘lady bountiful’ visits to a family in Water Lane. Antonia inherited this philanthropic streak in later life. At the age of six Antonia bit her grandmother on the ankle in Coney Street. Humiliation of falling into a china window display at Miss Welsh's Tea Rooms near Mansion House. Riding a bicycle between the Mount and Clifton. Concussion from a fall - sent to bed.

 

 

Tried drinks from parents’ cocktail parties at the age of eight. Tried smoking Philip Morris cigarettes at the age of 18. Seven years at Christian Science School Claremont in Esher. Phyllis Cooper teacher. Disability was never mentioned at school because illness was seen as error. Antonia given a Zost typewriter to do her exams. She took part in lacrosse, hockey, netball, tennis and swimming. Elocution lessons. Antonia given character parts in drama. In later life Antonia's sister Veronica refused to see her when she was dying of cancer and Antonia hired a private detective to find her. Childhood incident when Antonia locked four-year-old Veronica in the tool shed. Veronica went to Monmouth School for Girls, later married an Italian prince. Antonia turned down by five universities but was accepted by Durham University. History professor Miss Scott.

 

 

 

Antonia's fear of boys at Freshers' Ball and a humiliating fall. Hitchhiking in Europe. Broken rib falling off a bus. 21st birthday party. Imaginary boyfriend Robert. Breakdown after stress of exams. Postgraduate diploma in sociology at Edinburgh University. First boyfriend a geologist; second boyfriend a lawyer from Ghana. Antonia failed exams at the age of 22 but became a history teacher at Claremont, her old school. Shirley Butler, classics teacher. Graduate association dances and meeting Lucien Freud at the Slade. Father's attitude to boyfriends.

 

Antonia became involved with a Bohemian group in the early 1950s when she went out with a German baron from the Sudetenland. Hitchhiking in Europe in a refrigerated sausage van on the Rhine and in a steam roller in Bavaria. Antonia's great-grandmother married a German officer around 1900. Travelling from Paris to Naples.

 

 

 

After teaching for three years, Antonia married Hugh, a geologist, on 28 December 1957 at Lancaster Gate and moved to Nigeria. Antonia's mother-in-law described her as “a Welsh spastic gypsy”. Father-in-law was a brigadier. Hugh meeting Antonia's father. Honeymoon in rainy Devon in January 1958. Midoogu south of Lake Chad. Colonial wives. Antonia became pregnant and return to the UK in May 1958 to live with her mother-in-law in Guildford. Two weeks before the birth of Sarah, Antonia's mother-in-law told her that all disabled women should be sterilised. Breast-feeding. Conflict with mother-in-law and ‘Nanny Polly’ about caring for her daughter. Antonia took Sarah to Nigeria and became pregnant with Frankie. Hugh changed jobs (laying oil pipelines in Lebanon with John Brown)

 

Hugh becomes an aerial surveyor in South Africa. Works for African Explosives, owned by ICI and Oppenheimer's. Hugh had a first-class degree and a doctorate in maths - moved into operational research and then computers. Two-bedroom bungalow in Johannesburg. Antonia teaching in an Indian School. Antonia selling aluminium coffins wholesale to churches in the locations in Soweto. Mr Fellini, the Anglican vicar.

 

 

Indians in South Africa. Antonia landed a job at the University of Johannesburg history department - three years there happiest of marriage. Had three babies Sarah at 26, Frankie at 28 and Matthew at the age of 30. Antonia's mother-in-law and husband didn't talk for two years - feud about his choice of wife. Decision to come home because of the apartheid regime. Returned to live with Antonia's father on his farm. Hugh got a job at a steel company in south Wales. After six months moved to Hampton Hill near Twickenham. This caused a neurological breakdown and Antonia was sent to the Burton Institute in Bristol. WEA classes and teaching in higher and further education. Hugh's temper. Moved jobs from Rolls-Royce in Derby to IBM. Antonia was working in Bermondsey so moved house to Wimbledon. 

 

 

 

School in South Africa for people with cerebral palsy. Antonia became the youngest marriage counsellor in Johannesburg at 27. Marking University history papers with Professor Morrell. Antonia facilitates two pupils with cerebral palsy to enter mainstream education; one becomes a lawyer. Black Sash ‘do-gooders’. Rand Daily Mail and Donald Woods. Policy of job reservation for whites. Incident with Mr and Mrs Pretorious and the washing machine. People's attitude to black nanny Violet. Antonia becomes involved with a night school run by South African Cultural Education Trust. One of her pupils was future South African President Thabo Mbeki, who sat London external examinations at the age of 19.

 

Description of Thabo Mbeki as a young man. Practice of wrapping library books in brown paper if returned by black servants. Liquor in the locations. The social lives of white people. Decision to come back to father’s farm in Monmouthshire in 1963. Exodus of liberal whites. Bought a house in Cardiff. Working with Spastics Society social worker Audrey Davies trying to encourage a 30-year-old man with cerebral palsy to get out of bed. Lunch with Bill Hargreaves, the employment officer of the Spastics Society.

 

 

 

Renting out part of a house to a Fijian family from Kingston University. Battle with Abbey National Building Society over the mortgage ended in a sit-down protest at Abbey House. WEA classes in Russian literature. Teaching at The Monkey Club finishing school in Pond Street with Mrs Johnson-Hicks. PGCE at Roehampton Institute. Three-wheeler ‘cripple car’ - learning to drive, being stopped by police on the motorway. Teacher training. Becoming a student counsellor. Teaching at St George's Square, Kennington - involved in a protest over closure of the school library. Admitted to West Middlesex hospital with pneumonia. Moved to Bermondsey. Divorced husband in 1974. The effect on Antonia's children.

Download transcript of tape 8

 

Broken ribs from a fall – physio. Teacher training. Computer dating. Yeats memorial course in Sligo 1976. Abbey Theatre Dublin. Acupuncture. Teaching a Chinese child film star. Teaching Sociology in Bermondsey. Gave up teaching at 50. Six-monthly medical examinations to be able to teach. Writing a novel. Visiting prisoners’ wives in Battersea, Roehampton and Peckham. Volunteered at clinic for alcoholics. Trained at Westminster Pastoral Foundation. Became a psychotherapist in her mid-fifties.

 

Moved to Brighton aged 66 for family. Managing back pain. Scoliosis. Reflexology. Importance of walking. Painkillers. Smoking a joint in 1970s. Growing cannabis. Obtaining hemp from fishing shop. Read article in The Independent about person with MS, Liz. Paul Flynn, MP for Newport and Private Members’ Bill, 1992. Appeared on TV in “Pub Night”.

 

 

Company growing cannabis for medicinal purposes, for MS, glaucoma and cancer pain. Second thoughts about cannabis. Married again at 50 to a poet called Richard. Living in Brighton for eight years. Reflections on current life. Attitude to fellow disabled people. Working for a neighbour mediation service. Graeae and portrayal of disabled people. On Yorkshire Television with Miriam Stoppard.

 

January 2004 – breast cancer diagnosed. Mastectomy.

 

 

 

Talking through photographs. Nanny Cole buying Antonia a pink teddy – 1934. Antonia’s baby Sarah – nine pounds and two ounces. Mother-in-law’s view that disabled women should be sterilised. Sarah got malaria in Nigeria.

Sarah cut her sister Frankie’s hair off. Antonia’s third baby Matthew – nine pounds and four ounces. Dogget, Antonia’s pet Collie. ‘Passing for white’ – trying not to look disabled. Arguments with her father. School photos. Attitude to being photographed.

Download transcript of tape 11

 

Download transcript of tape 12