One of the most interesting new books I’ve read recently is the historical novel June, by Helen May Williams. Williams, who formerly taught at Warwick University, has previously written extensively on twentieth-century poetry. June is in part based on her mother (June’s) handwritten memoirs, with Williams using a combination of local research and imagination to fill in the gaps.
June was born in Stranraer in 1922, and lived here until her mother remarried and they moved to England in 1936. The book finishes in 1939 with June being sent to Switzerland to learn French, before returning home with Europe on the verge of war. The vast majority of the book is set in Stranraer however, with the pages full of familiar street names and surnames. The High School, Academy, Ruddicot, Adami’s, Bonugli’s, Kinema, Gallowhill and the Glebe Cemetery – where June’s grandparents are buried – all feature.
Having had the privilege of meeting the author during a research visit in 2019, I can testify to her diligence in trying to fill in the gaps in her mother’s memoirs as accurately as possible, and she acknowledges her indebtedness to Stranraer and District Local History Trust and our local librarians.
My own particular interest in Helen’s work stems from the fact that June’s grandfather was the Revd Wesley Allan Rodger, minister of my own congregation from 1896-1917. An unpublished family memoir of him notes that his family of nine children were the first to introduce mixed bathing in Stranraer, with others gradually following suit. The family remember ladies bathing boxes, with shafts for horses, which were drawn up on the shore. The Rodger girls were also remembered as the first ladies in Stranraer to be seen on bicycles. There are plenty of other historical titbits in the book, which gives a vivid eyewitness account of what it would have been to grow up as a young woman in Stranraer in the inter-war years.
Although her grandfather died four years before she was born, June and her widowed mother lived with her grandmother, and Wesley Rodger’s memory was still fragrant in the town as June grew up.
He was particularly remembered for his generosity. On one occasion his wife had a shock when he had to confess that, having just received his quarter’s salary, he had given it to the milkman, who would otherwise have had to sell his horse and cart to pay some pressing debts. Although the Rodger family were never repaid, they had indefinite free milk!
In fact, whenever he went out, his wife would only allow him to take sixpence in his pocket, because she knew he would give away to needy parishioners whatever sum he carried with him at the time. When he died after a protracted illness, and she finally went to pay large outstanding bills at the butcher’s, grocer’s, etc., payment was generally refused, with words of gratitude to her husband.
Wesley Rodger was clearly a man of widely varied interests – contributing an article to the Encyclopaedia Britannica on snails, as well as being something of an Egyptologist who enjoyed deciphering hieroglyphs on monuments and papyri. Yet he was undoubtedly a man of the people, serving his largely farming flock with distinction and even appearing in court on a number of occasions to plead the cause of a parishioner.
I certainly found it challenging to read of someone doing the same job that I’m doing just over 100 years later and seeing the impact that he had on this town. And surely there’s a challenge for us all in terms of how people will remember us once we’re gone. As the Bible tells us, ‘the memory of the just is blessed’. (Proverbs 10:7).
I also found the book to be another reminder that though times change, human nature doesn’t. Although she was brought up a century ago, June shared many of the hopes, dreams and fears that we do. The memoir is also a cure for nostalgia for a simpler time. Although the book is beautifully written, some of it is hard to read, particularly when it details the abuse that June faced from members of her extended family. A simpler time it may have been, but the human heart was still ‘desperately sick’ (Jeremiah 17:9).
All in all, the book gives us a vivid picture of Stranraer as it once was and will be of interest to many Free Press readers.
The book is available to buy on Amazon, or direct from the publisher, Cinnamon Press.
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 1st July 2021
NB: Copies of the book are available to purchase directly from the author for £10, including postage. Contact us for details.
For more info on Wesley Rodger, see our previous post.