The Day Britain Lost Its King | My Mother’s Diaries – Winter 1952 Trailer”

Welcome back to My Mother’s Diaries.In this episode, we return to Hiltonbury Farm as a new year begins — January and February 1952.Winter has settled over the farm. There is rain, frost, snow and mud, children coming and going from school, endless sewing and mending, visitors arriving for tea, and all the usual work of a busy farming family.Heather starts school, Mother struggles with making herself a green taffeta evening dress, and there is worrying news when five of the dairy cows fail their tuberculosis test.But then, on the 6th of February, Mother records a day the family would never forget.It was Jennifer’s birthday…and it was also the day King George the Sixth died.Suddenly, the events of Hiltonbury Farm sit alongside a great moment in British history. The country goes into mourning, dances are cancelled, Winston Churchill speaks on the wireless, and Mother later watches newsreel pictures of the King’s funeral.Yet ordinary life continues.Lassie has four puppies, Andrew comes home for half-term, the men thresh the oat rick, and the children pick and tie an astonishing one hundred bunches of snowdrops to sell in the village for a little pocket money.There is sadness too when the family cat, Smudge, is killed on the Hursley Road.And through it all, the cows still need milking, meals still have to be cooked, clothes mended and children taken to school.It is one of those episodes that shows exactly why I wanted to preserve Mother’s diaries.Great events in history are happening…but at Hiltonbury Farm, life simply carries on.Join me, Andy Vining, for January and February 1952 — A King Dies, Life Goes On, in the next episode of My Mother’s Diaries.