Alastair Denniston was not only my favourite uncle but also a very special godfather. How lucky I was that my Mother, always deeply proud of her brother, asked him to undertake this extra duty! It made us especially close.
This special warm relationship began when I was shipped off to school in Kent at the age of 13. At the beginning of each term he would meet a very fearful child off the train from Leeds at King’s Cross and take me quietly across London to the ‘school train’ at Charing Cross. In spite of the heavy burden he must have been carrying at this time, 1936– 38, he appeared to me to have all the time in the world for a very nervous homesick youngster, chatting warmly about his very special sister (my mother) and all our family ‘doings’, and telling me of the holiday escapades of his beloved son and daughter, my cousins Robin and Y.
I remember once he told me that he had decided to swap birthdays with his son Robin, who was born on Christmas Day. He and his wife had decided that a small boy should not have to cope with birthday and Christmas Day on the same day, so that was why Robin should always celebrate his birthday on 1 December. He would be very happy to have his on Christmas Day, and so it was until Robin was grown up.
Holiday times often brought the two families together, either with us up in Yorkshire or in the South. I was invited down to their cottage at Barton-on-Sea. Uncle Alastair met me again in London and the drive down was yet another chance to get to know each other. He said to my mother after one trip that getting me past Walls Ice Cream ‘Stop Me and Buy One’ bicycles was like getting a dog past lamp posts! I remember that the sun always shone at Barton!
Perhaps one of the happiest and most recent memories of Uncle Alastair was well after the war when he would come up to Yorkshire to stay with my parents in Upper Nidderdale. My father had a grouse moor and shooting days were full of expectation and excitement. Beaters sent out to drive the birds forward were an integral part of the organisation. Uncle Alastair, who had no wish to use a gun, lined himself up with the beaters with his white flag and stumped across the heather. Everyone loved him and you could hear the other beaters call, ‘Come on Uncle Alastair!’ or ‘Are you alright there Uncle Alastair?’ Everyone really enjoyed his company, not remembering that he had won the war for us, but because he was such a genuine quiet loveable person.
Libby Buchanan