RAE Holme: I am sitting here in Edinburgh with Mr and Mrs Kenneth Lindsay. They are going to tell us something in a series we are doing of people who found a faith.
First of all I am going to ask Mrs Lindsay, Wisty, how she came to find a faith and, first of all, just a bit of her family background.
Wisty: My father was a doctor in the Indian Army, the Indian Medical Service. One of my grandfathers was a Church of Scotland Minister in Edinburgh, the Westport Church, my other grandfather had herring fisheries in Stornoway.
RH: So you had a background of faith. Did it survive the tussles of going to university?
Wisty: I had lost my faith before that. I was a great deal away from my parents because they were out East. Then my father was an invalid and life was difficult. I was reading Science both at school and then at university and had really lost my faith. Science made me very sceptical. The discussions we had as students made me even more sceptical and cynical.
One day a friend of mine, a young American, asked me to go with him to an evening in the Assembly Rooms in George Street, Edinburgh. I thought it was a dance of some kind because that was where balls were held and he had told me to put on my best dress. It never occurred to me that it wasn’t a dance. When we got there I found that it was an evening where Dr Frank Buchman was introducing some of his friends. It was an evening which fascinated me because they were a very great variety of people speaking. There were quite a few young people, some people from the Oxford University Motorcycle Racing Club who were lively - not the kind I associated with ‘faith’ and religion, mostly pagans. One of them got up and told how he had felt there was meant to be something more in his life than just enjoying himself as he wanted and how he had begun to find it. But in the finding of it these young people had lost nothing of their ‘life’ and enjoyment of life. Rather they had enhanced it and that intrigued me. There were others from other countries, from America, from South Africa. There was a businessman who spoke about what he had done in order to make life better for his workmen. I felt that, in their life as a whole, they had found a purpose and something to live for which I very much wanted to find.
RH: How did this work of Dr Buchman’s manage to turn these young ‘pagans’ into Christians?
Wisty: From what they said to us that night, I realised that one basic thing was that he had taught them how to listen so that the inner voice, the voice of God, could speak to them on any points of their lives. Also that they could base their lives on the four standards, which are the principles found in the Sermon on the Mount, and which they explained to us that evening as absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. They were not standards which I had ever thought of applying to my own life.
I decided I would like to find out a bit more after this meeting so I arranged to meet up with another girl whom I had met that evening, a student from Oxford. We went to a hockey match on the Saturday afternoon. After that, we went down into Princes Street Gardens and sat and talked. We talked about my life as judged against those four standards. Then she suggested that we listened to see whether God had anything to say to me. We did that. Then she started to pray aloud. That was too much for me. I thought I might see anybody I knew, so I ran away. I ran into the middle of the bandstand, where the band was playing and buried myself among the people there. I watched her get up and look for me and go. But in that time of quiet something had happened. There were various things in my life that I had never been honest about - I had books in my bookcase belonging to my school library that had not been returned; I had relationships that I had never told my family about. I knew that, if I was meant ever to find a faith, then I had to deal with these things.
So after several months I did that. From that time life began to be completely different. It began to have a purpose. It began to be exciting in a different way. I was at the end of my 2nd year of pharmaceutical studies and decided that I would go on and finish my degree, that during that time I would also give what time I could to working with the Oxford Group.
This was interesting because it meant that I had to think how to put what I had begun to find to my fellow students. I was realising that one of the purposes for my life could be to bring the faith that I had begun to find to other people. It also involved quite practical things like helping to arrange meetings and helping to arrange weekend conferences. This brought a discipline and business side into my life and a touch with people that had never come before.
After these months, I met Dr Buchman again and discovered that he had a real vision for the kind of training that young people in those days needed. This training could come from a touch with God and a purpose in life. Buchman felt that anything he did should be well done. He, at that point, had been invited to Edinburgh by Mrs Alexander Whyte and was entertained in her family home in Charlotte Square in Edinburgh. Her husband was a very well-known Church of Scotland Minister, Dr Alexander Whyte. Mrs Whyte was one of the great ladies of Edinburgh at that point. She also was very anxious that Dr Buchman should meet both the young people of Edinburgh and also that he should meet the statesmen of the world.
From that time, the thing I longed to do was to use my pharmaceutical training, or the training that I was getting at the University, to do the things that Dr Buchman felt needed to be done by the young people in the world. This was that we should be disciplined life-changers, and bring deep answers to the people we met. One of the things that Dr Buchman felt was that young people could be used with the statesmen and with others of the older generation. That we didn’t need only to get to know the students. He felt that we could very simply tell the statesmen how in our own lives we had found a new touch with God, how we had learnt to listen, how we had been able to take a drastic look at the four standards in our lives and that, as you found new people through those things, nations could change.
Listening meant that, if I was prepared to give the first half hour or more of the day to finding out more about God and Jesus and to stay quiet, he could talk to me. He could talk to me on the issues in my life to which I most wanted answers. he could also talk to me about the practical things of the day as well as the needs of people I was going to meet that day.
I was in my early 20s when, at the end of my pharmaceutical training, I was invited to spend a year working with the Oxford Group. This wasn’t an easy decision because my father was an invalid and they were living on pensions so they didn’t have much money. I realised that I would have to learn what it meant to stand on my own feet under God, financially and in every way, and to live on faith and prayer for my needs. It took me first of all to Denmark, with a force of people - I think in 1935 - who were going with Dr Buchman to Scandinavia. We started in Denmark. Then after Denmark later on I went to Switzerland where we were holding a conference in Interlaken. During that conference Dr Buchman was invited by Mrs Alexander Whyte of Edinburgh to a luncheon in Geneva which she had asked Dr Carl Hambro of Norway - then the President of Norway - to give for the then President of Czechoslovakia. He was the current President of the League of Nations.
I found that the part I had to play in that luncheon was to be one of three people who was working on the whole seating of the lunch. It was in a large dining room of one of the main hotels in Geneva and there were delegates from 53 countries there. This was in September 1938, and Dr Hambro was in the chair at that luncheon. The seating was a very big task because there were a great many people there. Three of us were given the formal task of doing the whole of that seating. Dr Buchman told us about certain people he would like to have sit together. We learnt from him the care that had to go into it because he wanted to be sure that people were seated in the best possible way at that luncheon as regards who they were going to meet and where they would be most interested. We worked all night to get that seating done. It had to go to the printers and other people by 7 in the morning and it had to be in the form that the table lists could be printed.
It began to teach me the kind of hard work and sweat that would go into working with Dr Buchman and Moral Re-Armament. Not only that - we were then allowed at 7 to have about 3 hours of sleep, then we had to come back. Then came the task of seeing that all the seating plans were pinned up in the proper places and that people reached their seats. We had to take them to their seats then sit down at the luncheon and have lunch and be wide enough awake to talk to the people sitting next to us. It also taught me that we were expected to be able at that age, in our early 20s or middle 20s, to talk to the statesmen wherever we met them and that they would also be interested by the kind of work and care that we had put into it.
In his introduction to that luncheon Dr Hambro said, ‘Some of us delegates to the League Assembly have asked you to come here today to meet and to hear Dr Buchman and some of his fellow workers in the Oxford Group. We have done so because we have felt, at this hour of grave apprehension and fear, that it is of vital importance to meet hope, faith and strength. We have the impression that these people have succeeded in fundamental things where we have failed. They have created a fellowship of men and women, irrespective of nationality and political doctrine. They have created the constructive peace which we have been seeking for years in vain. So we have asked them to come and give us the right mind for preparing that moral re-armament which they have already prepared among so many nations. Where we fail in changing politics they have succeeded in changing lives and giving men and women a new way of living.’
There is one small bit of the speech that Dr Buchman gave at that luncheon which I would like read to you. ‘Individuals and nations need to have a sense of repentance. Awaken the individual and you will awaken the nation. Then we shall have a new moral climate and an answer to the present crisis and recurrent crises. This colossal task requires the combined wisdom of God and man. Statesmen everywhere are becoming convinced that this is the only lasting programme. We still need to develop men who will put it into action in their different countries. It is like the early days of the Bell Telephone - installation is still defective and reception is still limited.’
Just after the time of that luncheon was the time when there was a war threatened in Abyssinia. Dr Buchman had this very much in his heart and mind. One of the things that struck me as a young woman was his care for all of us, especially the people who were working all the time with him. Things had almost reached crisis point when he asked for us. We came in late one evening and he asked if each one of us would go and see him before we went to bed that night. When I went into his sitting room to see him, he said to me, ‘Where are you going to stay this winter?’ This was September. I said I had been invited to work in Switzerland. He paused and said, ‘I don’t think you should do that. War may come and it will be very hard for your parents. I think you should go to Norway.’ The next morning, with others, I left for Norway. The thing that meant most to me was the thought and care he gave to each one of us that evening after heavy days at the conference and with other things. He had thought where each one of us should go and what we should be doing to affect the world most at that point.
RH: Then came the war in 1939. What were your experiences during that time and where did your training in MRA help you?
Wisty: At the beginning of the war I was in Edinburgh. Then I was in Cheshire for a bit then I was sent for to go to London. I found that six of us women, fulltime workers with MRA, had been reserved by the government to look after the running of our various Oxford Group set ups in London. The particular job to which I was assigned was to handle all the catering. This meant handling all the ration books and general regulations that were part and parcel of wartime. It was quite a big job because we had certain people staying in the house which we had in Charles Street, in London. We also had many men and women in the forces who came in to help us carry on the work of MRA. This was to keep a force in training for what should happen during the war and when it was possible to do much more after the war.
12A Charles Street, just off Berkeley Square in the West End of London, was a house which had at one time been an embassy. It had then been owned by one of the political hostesses in London and the lease was bought for Dr Buchman shortly before the war. At that point it was not furnished at all. It was equipped by people who gave both furniture and money to equip it. We were able to use it to entertain people, to house people and to feed very often as many as 80 people at a time.
We found that, as time went on, accommodation in London was extremely difficult because of the Blitz conditions. We very much needed more accommodation, especially for the servicemen and women who came and helped us. We were also able to start a small Theatre in 45 Berkeley Square in the Green Room there, where we were able to perform the first plays that were written for MRA. But then two more properties were added, in 1942 and 1943, and they were both in Charles Street. One of the houses that was bought was bought by my future husband - 44 Charles Street.
I think a lot of people did wonder why we were based in Mayfair. There were many reasons that made it very economical living. We had very often as many as 20 people living in the houses. It meant that food could be bought in bulk. Transport costs were an absolute minimum. In point of fact it was more economical living than it would have been otherwise, and God’s economy is good in that way.
Ken: I had just sold my family business in Edinburgh at the end of 1942 and so I was in London for a while in 1943. One day I was in Hays Mews, just off Berkeley Square, trying to fix a car when a lady called Mrs Nell Glover went past and said ‘Would you like to come and see a house?’ I imagined one away in Hampstead or somewhere, but we walked up together to the top of the Mews, and there standing beside 44 Charles Street was a representative of John D Wood, the estate agents. He opened the door and we went in. I could see at once that it was a very well-equipped house. The plumbing and electrical things were all in excellent condition. It was very grimy because it hadn’t been used since the first day of the war, but it was obviously well worthwhile. John D Wood wanted £15,000 for the lease which was to last till 2001 and it seemed a very reasonable price. However, we thought about this and tried to get God’s will on the matter. As a result I went to the office and saw Mr Wood and offered him £5,000. He jumped in astonishment but got in touch with the owners of the lease and we came to an arrangement, just a little over the £5,000. It was very cheap because the bombs were falling at that point so the house might have vanished at any moment, so there it was.
We put in beds for 20 people. This was where my future wife was working with the same Mrs Glover on getting it suitably furnished. The servicemen were coming in increasing numbers with these plays starting on the stage in 45 Berkeley Square. I remember one play was called ‘Battle Together for Britain’. I recall two of the songs. One was called ‘Four Standard Oil’ and the other written by a great friend of mine, ‘House with a Home inside it’. It gives you an idea of what it was about.
After the war I became very much involved in the plays of MRA in the Theatre which we were going to acquire later.
RH: Can we just go back to your background in business which enabled you to negotiate such purchases, or gave you a flair for it? What was your business background in your family and yourself?
Ken: My great-grandfather started a cooperage, a workshop and a shop in Edinburgh. My grandfather, his son, very much expanded this and had two cooperage factories making chiefly oak beer barrels. Then my father, his son, carried on. Incidentally he was Chairman of the National Joint Industrial Council of the Cooperage Industry for Great Britain for 20 years. I learnt a great deal from him because I heard about the negotiations with unions at that time. Also, to him, every man was a human being with a family, a personality and character. He never thought of anybody as a number. Some of the other people that I met in business did think that. Later on this experience with him and with business in Edinburgh was of enormous help to me in the theatre world which I was to go into after the war.
During the war my war job was to work with Ferrantis, making gyro gunsights. I was dealing with accounts but we were all involved together in making these gunsights which I understand helped the RAF enormously in the effective use of fighters.
I understand that Churchill gave personal instructions that nothing was to be put in the way of the supply of beer for the troops and for the nation. I could have stayed on in the cooperage industry as a reserved occupation. However, I decided in spite of that to sell the cooperage which with hindsight turned out to be a very good time to sell.
After the war I wasn’t sure what to do, so in 1945 I went to London to discuss with my friends in MRA what I was to do. A new plastic industry or something like that? I found 20 businessmen and their wives had got together to consider the purchase of a theatre. At that time theatres were in great demand. You couldn’t rent a theatre. Stuart Sanderson, a great friend of mine, had interviewed the Westminster Theatre owner. Leaving him the owner said ‘Of course if you thought of buying it we might consider that’. So they got together and decided that if it were possible they would try and buy this West End theatre so that the new plays of MRA which were beginning to be written at that time could be performed there. There was one by Alan Thornhill, an industrial play called ‘The Forgotten Factor’, which had been produced and performed in America and which was due to come over to Britain about Easter that year.
Four of us went to a small office in Charles II Street, near Haymarket in London and negotiated the purchase of the Westminster Theatre:- there was this businessman Stuart Sanderson, a man called Gordon Hassell who was very well known in the City, Leo Exton who was an hotel owner and myself. We thought the negotiations might take two or three weeks because he would have to refer to his superiors and so on. Instead of that we negotiated in about an hour and a half. The figure I remember vividly was £132,500, which at that time we thought was a lot of money. Looking back of course it was very good value for money because it was freehold property in the centre of the West End and near Buckingham Palace.
When the estate agent said ‘Well, your cheque for a deposit of 10% please’, Leo Exton pulled out his cheque book and wrote out the cheque for that amount in great trust that we would raise the money. Which all did happen in a remarkably short time. In something like six or eight months we had raised the whole sum for the purchase of the Theatre. It is a whole other story but many servicemen gave their gratuities and all sorts of people contributed. We actually prayed that this money would come and one evening, we were wondering really where the next sums would come from because there had been a kind of a lull and the phone rang. It was a lady from Yorkshire, saying that she had decided to give £10,000 towards the purchase of the Theatre. Soon after that we really had raised the whole sum.
So on April 1st, 1946, I found myself the licensee of the Westminster Theatre. The licenses at that time were issued by the Lord Chamberlain, so at the top of every bill was ‘licensed by the Lord Chamberlain to J Kenneth Lindsay’. This, of course, meant that one had to study and know a whole book of rules and regulations and carry out the work of General Manager of the Theatre. It is an interesting point - I wish more people could learn to be theatre managers because you really have to manage - you have to make all the decisions, along with others, but you also have to be ready to do any menial job at the same time. It is extremely good training. I remember that year I went to Switzerland with a station-wagon full of spotlights for the first theatre in the MRA conference centre over in Switzerland.
We had ‘The Forgotten Factor’ on that autumn in the Westminster Theatre. The following winter, which was about the worst winter for weather in living memory, the audiences that came were largely trade unionists, miners in particular from Yorkshire and other areas. It was estimated - in fact they said themselves - that the production of coal, which was absolutely vital for the economy of Britain at that time, was affected.
RH: How was it that you came from a cooperage business to find yourself the licensee of a West End theatre?
Ken: I had had some experience in the early days at Edinburgh University where I did a commerce degree. I also played a saxophone and we ran the university dance band and did other things too. I was founder member of the Edinburgh Flying Club in the early 30s and had an amateur pilot’s licence. Unfortunately I was too old to fly when the war came along.
Of course management in any family business has enormous similarity where you learn to do everything and understand everything that is happening. You don’t have a great legal department or accounting department, you have to be that yourself in a family business. Whether you are making barrels or anything else, or whether you are in the theatre where of course you do have technical people who understand the stage and all that, you have to see that everything is tied up and financially sound. It is another family business.
Quite early on in the days of running the Westminster Theatre - in 1949 I think - we had the play ‘Black Chiffon’. The impresario who put that on, Paul Clift, proposed me to the society of West End Theatre managers. So I joined that and, after some years, was asked to join one of their committees for negotiating wages and conditions with the National Association of Theatre Television and Cine Employees. I decided to join this committee, thinking that really I didn’t know much about it and sat listening, still feeling this. But as I listened, I realised that some of those round the table, quite a number in fact, seemed to know even less than me. Having the experience of listening to my father in the early days in his negotiations, and the experience of meeting many trade union through MRA, I began to understand that what was said at the table was one thing, but what people were really aspiring to was often slightly different.
So I began to scribble notes that would do for the new negotiations and found that increasingly these were accepted, though not always. However, at the end of this run of negotiations they broke down, owing to the branches at some of the London Theatres and they had to start again. We had a working party of which I found myself Chairman. Sitting opposite was Sir Tom O’Brien, General Secretary of NATTCE at that time, and also an MP. I realised, when I thought about meeting him, that somehow I had to gain his trust. I really felt I had to pray about this and find God’s way of doing it. Miraculously it seemed to happen. We met very little outside the negotiations but we soon struck up an accord and he and I found we really thought along very similar lines. We soon dealt with the smaller theatres within the group we were dealing with. Then came to some of the larger ones where the real difficulties arose. He brought along a man, Ron Harris, who I was told was the worst agitator in the London theatre business. Looking back on this, it took about a meeting and a half to convince Ron Harris that we really wanted something better and something different. After that, he was really the best man in the room and it was through having him actually there with us that we cleared the negotiations for those larger theatres.
I went on to be Chairman of this negotiating committee for 9 years. At that time we had conciliation boards to cover difficulties that arose and where objections were raised on either or both sides, but we never had a strike in that period. I am sorry to say there have been one or two since. They have not been very serious but it is quite something that in the theatre world we do try to find the way to work it out.
When we started these negotiations about half the stage staff in the London theatres were part-time people who were milkmen or Covent Garden porters or what have you during the day. Then they came in to do what really was a ‘casual’ job on the stage. That has largely altered partly through the negotiations we had at that time. Now the staff are much more permanent staff and we were able to do away with demarcation between the different groups on the stage in particular. We were also able to introduce new ways of doing things and new machinery so part of the work is in maintaining machinery then, during the actual performance, the number of staff required is less. There are an increasing number of new theatrical ventures which are growing up on the fringe of the theatre. We have been especially interested and involved in the play about St Columba who lived in the 6th Century before Christianity was divided into Catholics and Protestants. This play has been very well received by all sorts of people and is arranged on a shoestring budget, quite differently from the West End. There is going to be a tour this autumn which includes the Highlands of Scotland.
The Society of West End Theatre Managers have a separate committee for dealing with negotiations with Equity, the Actors’ union. These negotiations are often very tough. The Westminster Theatre have had very good relations with Equity and have often dealt with them direct on difficult matters. Whenever we have a mixture of professional actors and amateurs in the company this has to be specially negotiated with Equity.
When we first took over the Westminster Theatre in 1946 the dressing rooms very mixed. There were about 3 good dressing rooms but the rest were all in the basement. In 1966 we had a rebuilding programme when a restaurant was built with offices above and completely new dressing rooms at the back. The main dressing rooms each have a shower and a toilet and the ones above which have room for 4 people in each, if necessary 6, each have their own shower and this is a big improvement. I think many of the London theatres, where possible, are also trying to up their standards.
RH: In this arduous business when you undertook to be General Manager of a Theatre you would need a partner
Ken: It was in the early days of running the Westminster Theatre that I began to think very much of Wisty who became my wife. We had known each other in Edinburgh before the war and I had learnt to go to God and ask for guidance on things. I think it was in November 1946 that one morning I thought that I should propose to her in” X” many days’ time. I quickly looked up the calendar and that turned out to be Christmas 1946. I even went and spoke to Dr Buchman about this. He said ‘Oh yes, oh yes, we’ll give it to you as a Christmas present!’
Wisty: At this time I was quite busy because I was helping on the furnishing of these big London houses. I had known Ken well, we had done many things together and enjoyed them, but I had never really thought of marrying him. So, it was unexpected because I usually thought of several people to marry but they didn’t necessarily last very long in my mind! I had also learnt that God could tell me what to do and he made it quite plain to me whom he wanted me to marry. He also made it plain to me that it would be a much deeper love than I had humanly and that he would have to help me. So that when Ken asked me I was quite clear to say yes.
Ken: From that point onwards we were a partnership which was an enormous help in the years ahead. We were engaged during the first months when ‘The Forgotten Factor’ was being performed and then we got married. We had a reception in the Westminster Theatre and then we were married in Edinburgh. We came back to set up house in 44 Charles Street, the lease of which I had purchased during the war. After we were married, we came to live there and at that point there were 20 people there.
Wisty: I found this very unexpected because I had always assumed that Ken would immediately hand over the lease of the house to MRA, which is what he had bought it for. But we found that for the time being we had to run it as our home. This coincided with the time when Ken had very little money - having earlier had quite a lot but having used it for many other things.
We came back to a household of 20 people. The thought of having to run this as a home both shook and appalled me because I wasn’t used to a house of that size. It was a completely and unexpectedly new thing for us to do together. It was not a thing we could have done in our own strength at all and we could never have done it without the full backing of the people who were in the home with us. They were mostly people who had given their lives to carry the work of MRA and various jobs that had to be done in connection with that. There were also some children in the house too so it was a very mixed household.
Our expenses, as you can imagine, were great. Many times we had to get on our knees to see how that was going to be carried. That began the whole basis of our married life for us as a newly married couple, which was that our finances and our needs would be met as we did the things God wanted us to do with our lives. That is the way we have lived for the last 25 years and God has been generous and very unexpected in the ways that he has given to us and also to the people who have been with us. That home in Charles Street was meant to be used for all kinds of people and we had people who flocked in. At that time we had many of the trade union leaders who wanted to meet management but for whom it was difficult to meet them in their ordinary everyday lives. They came and met them privately in that Charles Street home. We also had people from overseas who were visiting and who came to stay with us.
RH: What was the effect of the large numbers of people in this house on your children’s upbringing?
Wisty: I think on the whole the effect was a very good one on the children. It gave them a very great deal. Two things I would think of in particular. They met all kinds of people, which was a great privilege for them. I can think of the wife of a senior Nigerian statesman, Mrs Azikiwe, who used to come up to the nursery and play with the children. They were very fond of her. One day she brought them a tin tea set with Mickey Mouse’s picture on it. She was missing her own children very much and being with our children gave her a great deal. We were lucky in that we were able to keep the children in the house with a nursery in which they could play, because in a large household the children have to be thought of a bit more than in just a small one. They can become too much the centre of attraction, which is bad for them and they can be a nuisance to the guests who come in, which is bad for the guests. If these two things can be considered and worked out, they give a very great deal to each other.
Another senior man who stayed with us in the house was a French General who had his little grandson with him. The General could speak no English at all. The grandson could speak fluent English because his father was South African. Our children made the link between the two. It was at a time when the little boy’s mother was very ill in a London hospital, and we were able to do a great deal for the family as a whole. I look back on these times in that home with great gratitude for all that it gave our children, also on very simple points. They learnt to understand other countries, to eat the food of other countries and not make a fuss about whatever they were given which has stood them in very good stead.
We have two daughters, one of whom is a scientist and is now married. Her husband is also a scientist. They are both geneticists working in Oxford. Our younger daughter is a nurse and trained in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. After qualifying she was invited to go to India for six months to look after the small son of a Scottish family who were working at the MRA centre in the hills in Panchgani. While she was with that family she found a very real faith in God which has stayed with her and grown and helped her to tackle the job which she is now doing. She is as a Nursing Sister in one of the new hospices in Scotland. These hospices are founded expressly for terminal care of all kind of patients.
With our children we have found that, while they were young, we could give them as much as we knew of our beliefs and our faith but that there came a point where they must decide for themselves and where they must find from God what they were meant to do with their own lives.
RH: What has been the outreach of the Westminster Theatre in Britain and abroad?
Ken: One of the most interesting personalities connected with the Westminster Theatre in the years after the war was Peter Howard. He was one of the leaders of the work of MRA and he wrote plays very prolifically. One of the best-known is probably ‘Give a Dog a Bone’, the pantomime which was shown for 11 consecutive years at the theatre. Other plays are ‘The Hurricane’ ‘Music at Midnight’ (the title of the film that was made from the play) most of these were made into films. Another was ‘Happy Deathday’ and ‘Mr Brown Comes Down the Hill’. Those were also filmed, so they reached out to the world through those films as well as through the audiences that came to the Westminster Theatre over the years.
Ken: I am now living in Edinburgh and only go to the Westminster Theatre occasionally but we find ourselves involved in plays and in somehow reaching out to the country. St Columba is an example. This is what we are involved in today. I think theatre can bring truths and new ways of thinking to people of all ages and generations which no other medium can.
Very few people connected with theatre are really rich men! The riches have not been an aim in life since I sold the cooperage. In fact in a funny way they weren’t even the aim then. But we have been provided for. I have never taken any salary in connection with the work of the Westminster Theatre. People have recognised that and helped us in many ways through the years. It is quite a long time now - 1946-1979. No regrets. Not a bit.
The thing I feel most deeply about these days is the importance of anything that will involve the younger generation in helping with their faith and initiative and doing something for the country. This play about St Columba has already involved a number of young people - written and directed by younger people. The director is just 25. It is going to the Highlands with a new cast of mostly very young people and will involve young people wherever it goes. Anything that can be done now for that generation I feel is absolutely worthwhile.
Wisty: One great thing is that there is no retirement. We sold up a larger house in Edinburgh and have moved to a smaller flat because life was meant to get a bit quieter, but we haven’t found it that way. We do different things and we hear about less, but the basic commitment of our lives carries on, that is to bring people nearer to an experience of Christ and as a result, nations too. Our home is used for people as much as it has ever been used. Recently we had a French mime artist staying with us and it was a tremendous joy to help him bring a completely new play, about St Francis of Assisi, to the Scottish people. I believe that, for the average person, retirement can be a great fulfilment of their lives and it is as exciting as any other part of it.
With special thanks to Ginny Wigan for her transcription, and Lyria Normington for her editing and correction.
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