Over sixty people attended the latest History Association presentation in which Lucy Milner and Antar Howarth talked about their respective grandparents, the poet Edward Thomas and Coco the Clown.

And what a treat the evening turned out to be! Lucy and Antar engaged in a fascinating dialogue in which they discussed the lives of Edward and Coco and, movingly, about what their famous ancestors meant to them personally.

To illustrate the points that they were making, they skilfully interwove their talk with photographs and short movies, and with poems read by Debs Scotland and Shirley Curtis.

On display too were various articles collected by Lucy and Antar including, for example, a walking stick which Edward had made and which accompanied him on countryside walks that were the source of much of his inspiration.

These were stories of not only great achievement, but of both tragedy and of enormous fun and hilarity too, which will live long in the memory.

Additionally, as if to remind us all about what we will all be losing if the warehouse developments go ahead, Nigel Howe took the opportunity to mount a display of various artefacts – including dozens of Roman brooches – that he has retrieved using his metal detector in the nearby fields.