In December 2016 I drove to Nettlebed in Oxfordshire to pay homage to Celia Johnson and Peter Fleming. The post was Operation Sea Lion – Part One.
On Sunday evening I went to the intimate Jermyn Street Theatre (seventy seats and a tiny stage) for a performance on for one night only: Posting Letters to the Moon. During most of WW II Celia Johnson was separated from her husband, Peter Fleming, but they wrote to each other. They had just built a large house at Nettlebed where Celia lived and had relations and their children to stay throughout the war. Peter at first was training the population in SE England to prepare to resist a German invasion but then was posted to India and Burma as an intelligence officer. I expected his letters to be more interesting than hers but of course censorship and security makes them often very funny but opaque about his activities. Conversely hers are both funny and describe her domestic life: her attempts at cooking, farming, serving as a police volunteer in Henley, trouble finding cooks (they keep leaving, probably because it was a demanding job with such a big household).
Before the war she was an established stage actress In the war she had her first screen roles: A Letter from Home (1941), In Which We Serve (1942), Dear Octopus (1943), This Happy Breed (1944), Brief Encounter (1945). Her descriptions of making these films are wonderful. Peter is very proud when he watches In Which We Serve in Delhi with Field Marshal Wavell.
It was a special evening as the letters were read by Celia’s daughter, Lucy Fleming, and her husband, Simon Williams. Did you know they are married? I didn’t. It was both touching and charming listening to them – sometimes affectionately correcting each other.
