It is difficult to imagine life a hundred years ago when my father, Sir Edward Pickering, was born on this day.  I don’t possess any photographs of him then but the television has been filled with programmes about Titanic and the people aboard in 1912 and the lifestyle and dress put his birth into a context unbelievably different from our current times.  These two photos show him when he was around 25 (above) and then around 50 (below) as the somewhat anxious father of the bride. The time between these two involved the upheavals of World War Two during which he was parted from his family.  His marriage didn’t survive but he continued to encourage and inspire me with a love of words and of music.

His life was totally devoted to journalism in one form or another and we constantly wonder what he would have made of recent years in newspapers.  He was at work in an advisory role right up to his death in 2003. His second family and I only met after his death but we can now have very happy occasions together with children, grandchildren and indeed his great-grandchildren and today we can all raise a glass to toast a hundred years since his birth.