Remembering Simona on her 100th birthday
Had she lived a few years longer, Simona would have been celebrating her 100th birthday today. I thought it an opportune time, therefore, to look at her life in a little more detail.
Born in 1916, her older childhood and adolescence are well chronicled in Pigtails and Pernod; reading that book showed me a young woman quite different to the Grandmother I had known - slightly disapproving and not full of mischievous fun in the way one might have expected from the book. I suspect that much of her childhood behaviour was inspired by her cousin Johnny, and I think he remained one of the only people to bring out this side of her in later life. Simona had written a companion work to Pigtails and Pernod, that describes both her younger childhood and her early adulthood as a drama student. Fortunately she had shared a draft of this work with my father so I have that manuscript waiting to be read later in the year.
Simona's life and family always seemed very glamorous; one of the first times I became aware of this was discovering that my father's godfather was Lord Longford. A lord!! As I have mentioned before, despite Simona's father having no contact with her she remained on good terms with his immediate and extended family, one of whom was Edward Pakenham, the 6th Earl of Longford. Her family and friends even sounded glamorous, with names such as Mimi, Clarissa, Pinkie and Inthia - all very exotic to the young me, in 1970s Cheltenham.
As I subsequently discovered, Simona's friends weren't restricted to those with exciting names; many of them led exciting and famous lives. Perhaps that shouldn't have been a surprise as she studied at two of the leading drama schools: the Central School of Speech and Drama and then at The Old Vic. Her contemporaries included Kenneth Connor, Marius Goring, George Woodbridge (human star of Pipkins), Alec Clunes (one of her old flames - in another life my dad might have been Martin Clunes!) and Jill Balcon and Elizabeth Jane Howard, two of her continuing closest friends.
After finishing drama school Simona was cast in a production at the Oxford Playhouse and soon after joined one of Edward Pakenham's productions at The Gate Theatre in Dublin, by the Noel Iliff Company. And so my grandparents met and my father arrived!
My father's unconventional birth announcement in the Daily Mirror. They got both of my grandparents' names wrong!
Simona continued acting in Noel's company when my father was a child, roping him into some work as an uncredited extra during his school holidays. The company was another source of famous friends; Tony Britton and Jean Anderson were among the players. I wonder whether Simona's career may have continued in acting had Noel been more supportive of new developments in drama; he was not a fan of television and chose to work almost exclusively in the theatre and on the radio. Simona did appear in two films, however, The Kingdom of God (1947) and And So to Bed (1949), neither of which appear to be available anywhere, much to my disappointment.
The loss of Simona to acting did lead to her moving into writing, with the publication of her book about Ralph Vaughan Williams. Whilst her writing career was limited - six published books over a 50 year period - it was something she loved and she generally kept to writing about what she wanted to, taking only occasional commissions. It does seem that she could have turned her hand to pretty much whatever career she wanted; when she and Noel decided their Canonbury home needed central heating, rather than calling a plumber she fitted everything herself. By law, the boiler had to be fitted and connected by the gas board, but when the heating failed to work the problem was not with any of the work Simona had done, but by the gas board fitting the boiler upside down!
When I started this project a friend suggested my ultimate aim should be to get on Woman's Hour, and the more hidden stories I find out about Simona the more I think her story would fit right in. At a time when it was far harder for women to carve out a successful career Simona did it several times, an example of early feminism if you will, though that would have been a epithet she would have hated. OK, she may not have achieved success that made her a household name like some of her contemporaries, but that was because she did things on her terms. I'm very proud of my grandmother.
