Episode Synopsis
Sir Patrick Stewart was born in 1940 in Mirfield, Yorkshire. He lives in London and Oxfordshire. The episode focussed on the story of his father, Alfred Stewart who died in 1980.
Patrick's mother was Gladys Barrowclough and he had two older brothers, Geoffrey and Trevor. Patrick had heard that his father joined the army before Geoffrey's birth, and that his parents didn't get married until Geoffrey was about 8 years old.
Patrick visited the Imperial War Museum in London where a researcher showed him Alfred's military records. It turned out that Alfred joined the army in February 1925, soon after Geoffrey's birth (28th Jan 1925) and that he married Gladys in 1933. He was a Lance Corporal in the Regimental Police. After a 7 year term in the army he returned to civilian life but when WW2 started, he joined a territorial battalion of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI).
The KOYLI were sent to France in 1940 to join the British Expeditionary Force and build a transport network. Patrick visited the town library in Abbeville, Picardy, to find out more about this. The KOYLI arrived at Abbeville just as it was being bombed by the Germans and they had to retreat. They didn't leave France from Dunkirk, but from Cherbourg, being among the last Allied troops to leave France.
Patrick was given a newspaper cutting from the local Mirfield newspaper about Sergeant Alfred Stewart's return from France, which stated that he had been promoted to Sergeant at the front and that he was suffering from shell shock.
Alfred had been promoted to Sergeant Major by 1942, and in 1943 he volunteered to join the Parachute Regiment at the age of 38. In August 1944 he took part in Operation Dragoon in the South of France. Patrick met a 92-year-old man called Dick Hargreaves who served with Alfred and heard that they had protected the Allied HQ in a village, which Patrick then visited.
In 1945 Alfred was appointed Acting Regimental Sergeant Major of the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment. The Regiment had lost a lot of troops at Arnhem and Alfred helped to rebuild the Regiment.
Patrick's eldest brother Geoffrey always suspected that Alfred wasn't his real father. Patrick visited the Registry of Deeds and looked at records of the Dewsbury Petty Sessions from the 15th of May 1925 which showed that Gladys Barrowclough brought a bastardy application against Alfred Steward. There was a document which showed that Alfred appeard in court and acknowledged the child, and was ordered to pay 10s per week until the child was 16 years old. So it seems that Alfred was indeed Geoffrey's father.
Patrick then met the Vice Chair of the charity Combat Stress to find out about shell shock and its connection to domestic violence, and then went to see his brother Trevor in Mirfield to share his findings with him.
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