Chapter 1: Prologue

                                            Advertisement on the side of a building in Borough, London

In September 1971 Kenneth William Benson (“Ken”) is driven away from Heathrow Airport by his brother Charles (and his girlfriend). As they took the exit onto the motorway a large sign proclaimed,  “Take Courage”. Ken who had just flown in from Calcutta where the temperature was a high 20C in comparison to London at the lower end of the scale, thought Britain must be a truly terrible place, if such a sign was necessary to stir the hearts of those arriving. Charles later informed Ken that the sign was in fact an advert for Courage Bitter, something for which Ken never developed a taste.

 And so my Dad arrived in Britain to begin his new life. The Benson brothers had returned to “the old country” from where my great grandfathers had left for work and adventure many years before. As the less academic of the two and the elder brother, Charles been sent ahead of Ken with the intention that he would obtain a City and Guilds in plumbing, and return to India to work with his father. While studying, Charles had stopped with his uncle, James Ramage Blake (“Jim”) and his wife in Stone, Staffordshire; here he had met Joyce Kent. In the end neither brother returned to the land of their birth; instead both met girls, got married and had families.

 In writing this book I have drawn on a wealth of information: home movies, photographs, old documents, as well as stories and notes which my relatives, especially my grandmother and aunts, gave to me when I was studying for my Masters in Asian History at the SOAS. I have always intended to write this book, but unfortunately there is no one around today who I can question further as I now discover how the memories recorded in stories and notes, do not match up with the reality in the documents available.

 I had especially hoped that Dad would be around to contribute, and to accompany me, my brother, Mum and my sister in law to India in January 2017, to show us where he had been born and studied, and where his family had lived and worked. I also regret not being to share with him answers to some of the mysteries which existed in the families and to correct some inaccuracies.

 So, I have finally got on with it, though I began writing not long after our return, it has sat in Google Drive and now OneDrive waiting for the Covid pandemic to be over and for me to finally declare it finished. I’d visited the country, read letters, journals and other documents and I felt I finally had an understanding of my ancestors, my family, and their story of love, adventure, and courage.

 After some investigation and chats with friends, and because it is a quick cut and paste exercise, I decided to published my work as is on this blog with the hopes of doing something else with it in the future.