40s and 50s Memories
the high central column was the only one of his
kind not to have demanded anybody's wrist-
watch. I was still in Vienna at the time of the
failed Kennedy-Khrushchev Summit there in
June 1961. Possibly the Soviets were already
making their preparations for testing JFK in what
became the Cuban Missile Crisis the following
year, or did they simply underrate Kennedy at
the Vienna meeting?
Towards the end of my contract in Austria, the
said 'Joe Shell' announced that I was to work
next in the Cameroons, both the British and
French colonies then facing fierce independence
campaigns, with the rebel groups armed
respectively by China and Czechoslovakia. I
decided it was time to settle back with my
growing family in peaceful England.
However, working for a big industrial company
in Britain did not really work for me. In the
early sixties East-West relations were entering
a more hopeful phase (it was not to last long!)
and Russian studies started growing both in
schools and universities. That is how I came in
1964 to be teaching languages - not including
Kiswahili - at Marlborough College. One of the
interesting parents with whom I had to deal was
Robert Maxwell, the so-called 'bouncing Czech'
whose fall to his death off his luxury yacht,
still remains a suspicious mystery. Another
character encountered was Commander
Anthony Courtney RN (ret'd.), former wartime
Naval Attaché in Moscow, then subsequently
an MP, until he fell victim, possibly the first
example, to sexual entrapment by the KGB. He
was offering my Marlborough 'A' Level pupils
tuition in speed-typing Russian using a new
keyboard he had had invented.
After ten enjoyable years at Marlborough,
able to bring up my children quietly in the
country, I received an unexpected offer of a
job in London. It was to take over the Great
Britain-USSR Association. It had been set up
under Parliamentary auspices in Prime Minister
Macmillan's time, and with funding via the
Foreign Office. Its most important function was
to be a reliable, non fellow-travelling vehicle
for developing cultural and intellectual links
between individuals on different sides physically
of the 'great divide'. I thus found myself for
nearly twenty years in the company of the 'great and good' in British cultural and political life.
However, this meant working on the 'great and
very bad' in the Soviet hierarchy, or if possible
giving them the slip, in order to earn the trust and
friendship of very remarkable creative geniuses
trying to make the best they could of their lives
under a regime that they quietly despised, as
I did. If anybody wants to know more of that
story, they can look at David Cornwall and J.
C. Q. Roberts the book I was asked to write a
while after my retirement in 1993. It is called
'Speak Clearly into the Chandelier' (published
in 2000) and it has a long Foreword by John
Le Carré. One of my many adventures was
taking him around Russia to meet people, at his
invitation, when he was preparing to write his
book 'The Russia House'.
J. C. Q. Roberts with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow
In retirement I keep up my contacts with Russia,
although I dislike the direction it has taken in
recent years. I have been awarded one or
two post-Soviet honours and prizes, among
others, for the subsequent Russian-language
edition of my book. I am Hon. Chairman of the
international board of a major cultural centre
in Moscow. I do a little translating, if asked,
and am currently working on a translation of a
book about the early XIX century writer, Nikolai
Gogol, for the Gogol Museum in Moscow. A
recent project was to bring to the British stage
in translation a one-woman show I had greatly
admired in Paris. The production of "Colour
of Poppies"enjoyed great success in London
and then toured all over the country including
a stop at The Brewhouse in taunton.my rather
mixed 'career' would not have worked were I
not someone who rubs along easily with people
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