Wednesday, April 26, 2006


One of the reasons I have been quiet the last few days is that I have been finishing off the last lesson in my Xara Extreme course. I made this collage as one of the excercises. It is based on the events of the night of Nov 14th 1940 in Coventry where I then lived.
My own account of this is now archived at:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/26/a2044126.shtml
I wrote this, (which some of you have already seen) for the BBC's People's War series.
The collage is based on a page from my Dad's diary which I was recently given to look after and to extract anything useful for the family history.
Dad set out from work at his usual time but didn't get back to us till the following morning because of the severity of the raids that night. The collage attempts to show an event that occurred in the City while he was trying to get back to us and while we were being bombed out.
In the top right is a picture of the new cathedral which was built attached to the remains of the old old one, kept as a war memorial.
I had my degree ceremony in there when I gained my PhD. Splendid place for such an event.

I have a few more ideas for pages from this diary and other bits and pieces that are in the package.

4 comments:

Sally Webster said...

Wow Dorothy, what powerful work.

Stitching with Schnauzer and Siamese said...

Brilliant- thank goodnesss you could archive it. Where did your grandma live? Maggie H

Dorothy Gibbs said...

Thanks Maggie. Grandma lived at Tadmarton near Banbury. My Dad was born at Broughton and then they lived in Tadmarton after that. There had been Gibbs' in Broughton since the 1740's but I haven't been able to trace where they came from before that.

Digitalgran said...

Oh, Dorothy that was a very good account of a frightening night for you all. How lucky you were to survive. Brought back memories for me too, I was never in much danger, but I do remember being in a shawl on my mother's arm, I can still remember that shawl, late at night watching a plane fight between a German plane and spitfire over the village and the German plane crashing into the mountainside. There are more gory memories of that day that your account brought back.