Firing a Shot for Freedom - The memoirs of Frida Stewart
Who deserves a place on a plinth? I may have an answer. When Cambridge-born Frida Knight died in 1996, her friend Angela Jackson sorted her papers and constructed a vividly thrilling autobiography only just now published. Some of it had already been published during the war but events have overtaken its importance. She was a lifelong campaigner for political causes in particular the plight of civilian victims of war. In the 1930s, this bright Cambridge alumnus turned tireless anti-Fascist, ran medical aid convoys to Spain, toured the country to support Basque refugee children here and rolled up her sleeves to work with the poorest of the poor in Northern England. She surrounded herself with the literati of the Left Book Club and flirted with communism. Add to that a daring escape from the Nazis and you’ve definitely got someone worth remembering.
When war broke out in 1939 Frida found herself in Paris rubbing shoulders with Spanish republicans and later eye witnessing the arrival of Hitler’s conquering army. Arrested by the Gestapo, she was interned with other exiled Brits in a dour fortress in Eastern France. Later Frida engineered a daring escape from under the noses of the pro-Nazi guards and made her way to freedom.
What a story! Frida’s sparkling narrative mostly remained un-gathered in piles of fragile yellowing papers until Jackson started to work on them in the 1990s with the aged author. She continued after her death and now, lucky us, the book has finally been published. This then is the first publication of Frida Stewart’s full life story (though to be honest her later years are scantily drawn). Much of it comes from late interviews. Jackson who supplies a foreword and afterword has done an impressive job. It was clearly a labour of love – a tribute to knowing this very special woman.
The memoir reads as fresh as a Pyrenean breeze. Frida’s memories are sharp and very entertaining. It begins with an account of a privileged childhood starting in a family house opposite the Mill Pond in Newnham and later moving into a large home on Girton Corner. Her parents Hugh and Jessie Stewart, he a Trinity College don, she a ‘university wife’ giving formal dinner parties and getting involved in social issues. Frida was the precocious child often in trouble with her strict nanny but it was a very loving family. Her memoir recalls life in First World War Cambridge, their busy house filling up with relatives on leave from the front or soirees to raise money for Belgian refugees. She heard her mother’s disgust at the student riots against the meek Pacifiist Bookshop in King’s Parade.
There are fascinating glimpses into her education at a Dame School in Newnham and her recollections of bedraggled German PoWs labouring on Coe Fen. Frida continually paints a pin-sharp view of Cambridge of the 20s and 30s – her love of music (she later became a music scholar), admiration for Soviet Russia, and enthusiasm, via her mother Jessie, for feminism and the struggle against the university’s objection to women having full membership. We read about Cambridge and the 1926 General Strike (not wholly in support of the workers) and reactions to the growing threat of German and Italian fascism. Her autobio takes us through her passion to fight Franco. Frida drove ambulances to Spain and was involved with her mother in the care of 29 Basque children at hostels first in Pampisford and then in Station Road, Cambridge. The narrative sweeps us into Nazi-occupied France and that daring-do escape that reads like a thriller.
Hats off to Jackson for working so hard to bring this wonderful book into the open. It is a must for anyone interested in radical Cambridge and a testimony to a lady who stood up for the oppressed and whose image in bronze should surely be hauled up on to a Cambridge plinth.
Firing a Shot for Freedom
The memoirs of Frida Stewart
With a Foreword and Afterword by Angela Jackson
The Clapton Press 2020
