Picture in the SNJ brings wartime memories flooding back for Pamela, 82 (From Stroud News and Journal)

Picture in the SNJ brings wartime memories flooding back for Pamela, 82

3:30pm Wednesday 15th February 2012 in News By Matty Airey

AS LOTTIE Lyster, landlady of the Prince Albert, Rodborough, perused her New Year edition of the SNJ, she was amazed to see a photograph of her mother aged 12 taken during the Second World War.

The image showed her mother and uncle Peter using a mangle and had been incorporated into a montage by Cashes Green-based artist Mark Masters as part of his This Is England series.

Pamela Lyster, Lottie’s mother, was delighted to hear the news and promptly emailed Mark, saying: “You may be surprised to know that I’m the girl in the photograph and I’m now an 82-year-old living locally.”

Mark, who found the image on the internet, was delighted too and immediately offered to make Pamela a specially framed print of the picture.

“This photograph was taken in 1941 for Picture Post,” said Pamela, who lives in Cranham.

“My father was in the air force and my mother was left at home with six children and they wanted to do an article on how an airman’s wife was managing on very little money while her husband was away."

Picture Post, which was published from 1938 to 1957, is considered a pioneering example of photojournalism and has been called the Life magazine of the UK.

“We were living in Wilmington just outside Dartford in Kent. They came and took the photographs over a period of a few days of us having picnics, my mother writing to my father and all of us sitting round the table, eating," added Pamela.

“After the article came out, we had lovely letters from Canada and Scotland. We also had clothes parcels sent from Canada and were invited to go and stay at a big house in Suffolk.”

Mark, who has an exhibition at the Chelsea Arts Club this summer, presented Pamela with her print at the Prince Albert.

He is currently working on a new set of images continuing the This Is England theme.

Underpinned by the Shane Meadows film of the same name, Mark's This Is England series examines the loss of a country's childhood which he describes as an 'idyllic, beautiful land found only in the cinema and films which project an essence of what it is to be British, an indigenous spirit we want to believe in and hold true, but know deep down can’t ever really exist'.