When my Grandparents came over for a mammoth visit after we had moved to England, I had an old Canadian TV and VCR to watch the tapes we’d brought with us. My Granma brought me a bunch of old movies, which is what she always did when we spent time together. She introduced me to some of the greatest films I have ever seen and, also, that good movies do not also need to be made in colour. On this trip, knowing me as she did, she brought me a copy of an RKO Picture called Spitfire.
One of the defining moments of my young life happened on a raining autumn day in 1988 on a family holiday to London. We visited Barnardo’s, where my father had spent a brief period with his sister after they had been taken from their mother. We sat in a dull office and a rather officious woman explained to my father that his father was a German POW named Herman. A brief moment of shock and pain for my Dad, who was finally learning a truth about his life he had never known.