Free Dare to Be a Daniel by Tony Benn

everyone. I certainly recall weeping when she left, though I have only vague memories of her.
    Our next nurse was Olive Winch, who was engaged by Mother in 1928. She was born on 1 January 1900, and she told us that her mother couldn’t think of a name for her, so she picked on Olive because she had rubbed the new baby with olive oil. Nurse Olive had previously worked for the Horniman family and had also been in America working for a Mr Stuart, a journalist with the
New York Times
; she told us that on one occasion he had come back ashen-faced having witnessed an execution.
    She lived at the top of our house, and was assisted by a series of nursery maids who also lived there. It seems odd now, but was common then for middle-class children to be left in the care of nannies for long periods at a young age. Earlier, I mentioned that in 1926 my parents had gone to visit the Middle East and Russia while I was a baby, and subsequently between 1931 and 1934 they were away on a tour of Germany, the USA, Japan, China and the USSR again.
    Nurse Olive became a very close and intimate friend for well over sixty years, getting to know and love my own children. She was the daughter of a successful builder in Harlow, had been to the Norland Institute to be trained as a children’s nurse, and under no circumstances was she to be referred to as a nanny! Apart from one month a year when she was on holiday, she was really in charge of our lives. As I have said Mother was busy as a theology student and campaigner for women’s rights in the Church, and had no domestic skills beyond making tea and toast. When she had to cope on her own, her meals for us would comprise orange juice, cereal, tea and toast, which no doubt explains why that remains my favourite meal.
    When my brother David became ill with what was thought to be TB of the intestines in 1935, Nurse Olive devoted herself completely to his care and recovery, moving with him to Bexhill and Bournemouth, and only leaving him during the war when she went to serve in a children’s orphanage in London – where she was immensely popular.
    We called her ‘Nursey’ and loved her dearly; my children used to stay with her in her retirement in Harlow, renaming her ‘Buddy’ – as it is the privilege of the young to do to the old. The Buddy stories she told them became part of family mythology. The one they most enjoyed was the story of the Three Pears: she had ‘misheard’ the Three Bears and created this ludicrous and unbelievable story about a big pear, a middle pear and a baby pear.
    I continued this tradition, squeezing as much pathos as I could from stories to my children: the most shameless was the Daddy Shop story, about some children whose daddy was so busy that he couldn’t play football with them or go on holiday, so one day they decided that they wanted a perfect daddy and took him back to the shop and asked for a new one. Their old daddy shuffled to the back of the shop and a brilliant new daddy appeared, with endless time to take them swimming, to the theatre and on holiday. But they began to miss their real daddy, so they went back to the Daddy Shop and asked for him back. The shopkeeper said, ‘I don’t know whether he is still there, I’ll look.’ He came back and there was real Daddy looking bent and sad, and a bit scruffy, and the children were so excited that they gave him a big hug and took him home. This used to produce floods of tears from my children – and even brought a few to my eyes. Caroline forbade me from telling it!
    Another story of mine was about Tubby, a little man who lived in a house below the plughole in the bath. When the children were about to get into the bath, he would come out of his house, sit on a bar of soap and row up and down the water with two toothbrushes for oars. He became very friendly with my children and had a little pill that he gave them, which made them so small that they could go down with him to visit his house. When Caroline