A stash of yellowing letters discovered by the wife of former broadcaster and footballer Jimmy Hill in a dusty Sussex attic inspired a new book about the battles fought in the Second World War and has taken her mind off the current plight of her husband who is in a care home suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. Melanie Whitehouse reports.

THE wife of the ailing 86 year-old ‘Mr Football’ Jimmy Hill, inset, has become fascinated by the story that has unfolded when she inherited a dusty suitcase full of old family letters.

Bryony Hill, who moved to Hurstpierpoint with the legendary soccer commentator in the early 1990s, says the letters from both sides of her family have inspired her to write a book about her family in World War Two.

“The first letters I found were from my maternal grandfather Cecil ‘Smithy’ Shaw to my grandmother Esme in New Zealand, written between 1938 and 1943,” said Bryony.

“I started reading them but eventually put them to one side. Grandpa Smithy’s writing was ‘artistic’, to say the least.

“More than a decade later, after my mother Bridget died in 2007, I came across a dusty suitcase in her attic full of letters and photos from my father Trevor Jarvis’s side of the family, starting in 1939.

“Some were from my father to his parents, who were known as Wilbur and Jelly. There were letters to dad from his parents and some from Paul, dad’s younger brother who went into the RAF and was shot down in 1940. His plane and his body have never been found.

“The more I read, the more fascinated I became by the story that was unfolding – one of hardship and deprivation, courage and fortitude, loss and longing and finally of love and hope.

“Then the idea came to write a book as a running diary of two families at war in very different circumstances, culminating in how my parents met and fell in love.”

Forces sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn has endorsed the book, ‘How I Long To Be With You’.

She said: “We must all remember what the troops did for us during the war and the turmoil and separation that it brought. Books like this need to be published so that the world will not forget.”

Broadcaster Andrew Marr said: “These letters are more vivid, more emotionally gripping than conventional histories of the time… their authors never knew what was coming next.”

Bryony, 63, began writing the book in 2012, soon after Jimmy had to go into a nursing home.

He was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in late 2007 but still played tennis and golf and drove himself to fundraising events.

“Jimmy being diagnosed wasn’t the end,”

remembers Bryony.

“He wasn’t ever aware that he had Alzheimers, even though we discussed it with the doctor – but it worried the life out of me. He’d do things like put the electric kettle on the hob and then watch it melt, knowing something was wrong but not knowing what it was. He’d be up for much of the night and I stopped sleeping, too, because I had to keep an eye on him.

“As the years went by, he developed rituals and obsessions – repetitive counting of the fish in the pond, or worrying about the apples that lay on the ground. The worst part was when I had to take away his car keys and his last vestige of independence was gone. He couldn’t understand it.

“Then in 2012, when I was heading for a meltdown due to fear and exhaustion, he got a urinary tract infection and went into hospital.

“The infection accelerated the effects of Alzheimer’s and that meant full-time nursing care.

“It was very, very hard to let him go but I comfort myself with the fact that we had had a wonderful life together. Although he doesn’t recognise me now, he always responds to a hug and a kiss and he’s still my Jimmy.

“He was an intelligent, witty, lovely man but Alzheimers has destroyed so much of that, although he is still a charming gentleman.

“I know he’s well cared for and above all, safe, but it has been so sad to see the man I’ve known and loved for nearly 40 years disappear from me.”

To take her mind off the pain Bryony got stuck into collating and editing the letters, but it was a nightmare task.

Because of paper rationing, the words had been written so tightly on now-brittle paper that they were almost impossible to decipher.

Where the letters had been typed, the script was almost invisible because typewriter ribbons were so scarce they were used to within an inch of their life.

The story begins with Smithy in India in 1938, with the threat of war in Europe.

Bryony’s Uncle Paul was about to start flying lessons in Scotland and Trevor would later join the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves (RNVR) as a Pay Lieutenant. The more Bryony read about her family’s history, the more spellbound she became.

“Our generation didn’t know anything about what our parents did in the war because it was never talked about,” she said.

“All we knew about dad was that he’d taught the other sailors to keep fit. But the physical evidence was there. Dad kept all his campaign kit including his paraffin heater, which he called Beatrice and which I now have in my shepherd’s hut in the garden.

“There was also his collapsible canvas bath, which on hot summer days I and my brothers, Paul and Neil, would use as a paddling pool.

“That generation had seen and had to do things that were horrific. Mum, for instance, was a nurse in New Zealand on a men’s surgical ward looking after wounded American sailors. She only talked of the fun she had with them, not the terrible injuries.”

Interesting facts came to light during Bryony’s research: her grandmother Esme, for instance, spent time in Iraq with Smithy in 1940 working as a decoder. “Smithy worshipped Esme,” said Bryony.

“I was astounded by the passionate nature of some of his letters because my grandmother never talked about her husband, and my mother never talked about her father.

“The letters from Smithy stopped suddenly in 1943 and everyone thought he was dead. Then in 1945, after the war ended, he turned up in New Zealand. He drank excessively and returned to England – without Esme – and stayed with his brother near Hastings until he died. He’d warned Esme in his letters that he was worried how he’d fit in after the war and his fears sadly came true.

“It was strange but moving to read about people I knew leading lives I had no idea existed. There was always an undercurrent of fear, of the unknown, of when was it going to end. It was hard: dad was desperate to come home to support Wilbur when Jelly died in 1942 but he wasn’t allowed to as there was a war on.”

Finally, hope dawned again. “In 1946, mum got a passage to England hoping to marry a man she’d met before the war (not dad). She went to live with her godfather in Haywards Heath, who lived next door to Wilbur and his second wife Norah. Dad was staying with them while the house he’d bought nearby was renovated.

“Mum and dad literally met over the garden fence, fell in love and married, then had my brother Paul, me and Neil. You couldn’t have invented their story. It would make a wonderful film.”

- How I Long To Be With You, by Bryony Hill, is published by Book Guild Publishing, price £17.99, on 27 November.

- Bryony Hill will be at the Book Lovers’ Supper Club at The Barn, Ditchling on Wednesday, November 19. Tickets £20, including supper and wine, from The Dome: 01273 709709.