Scotland, Edinburgh: Jutland Letters

Available for over a year

EH1 1EW How do you mourn when you don’t have a body and your son has just vanished at sea? Kathleen Dickson had two midshipman sons - Archie aged only 16 and Bertie just a year or so older. Both went to Jutland, but Archie was on the battle cruiser HMS Queen Mary which sank with few survivors. Kathleen’s letters to her surviving son and the scrapbook she kept for her lost son are heartbreaking but also unusual because she writes with real candour about her feelings as a mother and you can see how she deals with having no funeral for Archie. She was the wife of the man who became the first National Librarian of Scotland, and so the letters are a precious collection at National Library where curator Alison Metcalfe showed them to us. Bertie’s daughter and Kathleen’s grand-daughter Elizabeth tells us more about her family and their loss. Gerda Stevenson reads from the letters.