Dr Anna Green, and old scholar of Sidcot School, and Professor of History at Exeter University, gave the Easter Lecture at this year’s Old Scholars weekend. This was highly relevant to me, for my recordings of Old Scholar’s memories of school.

'Coffee and Bun, Sgt Bonnington and the Tornado: myth and place in Frankton Junction'


‘Ask the fellows who cut the hay’ George Ewart Evans, 1909, recording oral history

‘Often it is the trivial, the comment on the side, that reveals attitudes’

The Guardian, 4th April 2009 - p19 - about memory not being very objective.

Memory is essential to our sense of self.

Douwe Draaisma - ‘Why life speeds up as you get older’

Emotion/meaning/sense of experience plays an important part in laying down long term memory

Senses in stimulating memory - sight, smell, sound.

Reminiscence bumps - we tend to remember unhappy rather than happy things. Sight and sound will act as triggers.

We lay down memories from age 15 to 25, this is the first ‘reminiscence bump’. Memory is less important in our 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, then in our 60’s + we remember the teens and twenties very strongly.