My earliest memory of a Victorian lady in a large feathered hat was around the end of the Second World War when, as a very young lad living in my grandmother’s house in war-torn Ramsgate on the Kent coast, I used to see her lodger, a very stern, and at times particularly argumentative, old lady called Miss Newby. She was a complete throwback to that earlier generation, as she determinedly made the ascent to her rented apartment way up on the top floor, climbing the steep, creaky stairs in her high black lace-up boots, long black dress, black shawl and, of course, a large black hat with black and white feathers! Looking back she seemed, to my childlike imagination, to be like one of Charles Dickens’ darker characters or, at the very least, dressed for a funeral. I kept my distance from this sinister presence, this spooky ‘Eminence Noir’ and with Miss Newby around, who needed the Luftwaffe!
