War
wearing
cloak of grief
denoting dead
loss.

Love
stronger
than outrage
overcoming
hate.

Banished to Tomi where the wintry sun
Failed to abate the cold, repenting sin
He wrote continually. Pleading as one
Among barbarians to be let in
To civilised society he cried
Protested, cringed. Rich, gifted from his birth
Drawing-room darling, pervert courtier, sighed
For those who once had shared his piquant mirth.

But brittle water, frosted streams, ice, snow
A simple life, the bracing Northern wind
Though weak to change perversity and slow
To break a lifetime's habit or rescind
That loathed and hateful banishment decree
Bestowed — ironic gift — longevity.

Despite the great difference in our ages, (Margaret Jones was of my parents' generation) Margaret and I quickly found we had much in common when we first met. It was through her companion of many years, Edward Prichard, that we first became acquainted. Margaret was a governor at the school I was teaching at and Edward had come with her to a school function. I was librarian at the time and Edward came browsing through my library. As an Anglican priest, Edward was deeply interested in the new non-stipendiary priesthood that was just developing in the Church of England and which I was training for. Margaret and Edward, my wife and myself hit it off at once. I still use the communion set Edward gave me when I was ordained and we remained good friends ever after.

Of course, it was through our common love of poetry that Margaret and I became very close. Both of us were poets. Both of us shared common interests in literature and education; for Margaret, like myself, spent her entire working life teaching, though her range of experience as an educationist far out-stripped mine. Not only had she qualifications in English, French and Education, in her forties she began studying Law and was one of only two women called to the Middle Temple in 1951.

Margaret was a remarkable woman in a remarkable century. Her life almost spanned it and reflected the vast social and political changes that took place in it; particularly the change in the role of women. She was born in Gloucester in 1906 into a poor working-class family, another common factor in our lives. Her parents like mine sacrificed greatly to send her first to the local grammar school on a scholarship, and then on a grant to Bristol University where she studied English and French, and graduated in 1928 before completing a post-graduate year in education. I think it's worth mentioning, that prior to university, she had to take part-time work to see her through her sixth-form at school. She went out to work three evenings a week; and when the rest of the family had gone to bed, she worked at her studies at night — by the light of a gas-lamp in the street outside her window. I wonder what sixth-form youngsters today would make of that.

When Margaret left university, she went straight to France as an au-pair when au-pairs earned nothing but their keep. She paid for a weekly copy of the Times Educational Supplement to be sent to her and went through some anxious months awaiting replies for jobs back in England, then in the throes of the 1929 depression. Nothing was heard for weeks, but at last a reply came. She left for Le Havre and caught the night boat to Southampton. At 6 am she sat in a local park until the more respectable hour of 9 am when she could present herself at a private school for Easter Holiday work for one day. They let her stay overnight and she travelled next day to London where she obtained a year's work at a small Hospital School in Epsom Forest. From there she went to teach at a T.B. sanatorium. The sanatorium was in a village which had no gas, no electricity and the water was drawn from a standpipe. Margaret found lodgings and brought a younger sister from Gloucester, paying her to housekeep while she taught. They both went home in the holidays via cross-country 1930s motor coaches and in after-years, the daughter of this sister said it had been the happiest period of her mother's life. Though she had no family of her own and never married, Margaret had a very motherly nature as members of her family and many of her friends can vouch for.

In 1932 there was a ten per cent cut in teachers' salaries and Margaret could not manage to send money home to her mother. She returned to Gloucester and landed the headship of St Michael's Primary School, where she taught from 1932 to 1938. It was there she met Revd Edward Prichard who was rector of St Michael's and who later became her lifelong companion.

Their home was open house to their friends and I spent many happy hours with them. Margaret nursed Edward through his final illness in 1986 at the age of 89 and felt his death keenly. Theirs, indeed, was a marriage of like minds and spirit which they shared with others, and it was at this time she wrote some of her best poetry.

Margaret held various teaching posts, each one an advancement, till in 1949 she became an Education Officer with Gloucester Education Authority; a post she held until 1956 During that time she also studied for the Bar and was called to the Middle Temple in 1951. During the same period she also became a Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and thoroughly enjoyed a year's break away from teaching, immersing herself in her first loves — literature and language.

When she returned to Gloucester in 1956, she was advised to apply for a higher post and successfully landed the position of Principal at St Katherine's Teacher Training College, Liverpool. Because of the war, the college was working on three sites: in Liverpool, the Lake District and Southport. Margaret had the daunting task of re-organising and modernising the college. This she did during the last nine years of her working-life; till in 1965, she retired to Shrewsbury to share her home with Edward — and begin writing that astonishing output of first-class poetry.

A letter sent by her successor, Dr Geoffrey Barnard, who regrets he can't be here today, bears testimony to both her achievement at the college and the affection in which she was held.. Dr Barnard writes:

"My greatest debt to Miss Jones, and indeed the College's debt, must be to acknowledge the ways in which, with great patience and sensitivity, she eased the community into accepting a more liberal view of student life and participation — student involvement in Chapel Services, a Staff/Student Committee, a less narrow view of the curriculum, the judicious appointment of men to the staff of a women's college, and so on..."

"Margaret Jones' life was one of service, gentle, self-effacing self-giving."

There is much more I could say about Margaret — her Youth Hostel tours through Nazi Germany in the 1930s and how she rumbled Hitler and his movement long before British politicians and others took it on board. Her hikes through Norway as a young woman, which she re-visited in her eighties. And above all her accomplishment as a leading British poet, a poet unsung by the national press; unknown virtually by the so-called pundits, but loved, honoured and acclaimed by small-press publishers in Britain and abroad; and honoured, too, by many prizes, especially those from the Land of Poetry, Wales, where she won cups from a variety of eisteddfords.

Margaret's time as a recognised poet of national standing has yet to come. And I truly believe that from all the successes of a rich and full life, it will be Margaret Alice Bartlett Jones' poetry which will be her lasting memorial.