Putney resident Hugh Thompson leads Battle Of Trafalgar Breakfast

The Battle of Trafalgar was remembered at a breakfast held at the Alma, Wandsworth Town on Monday,October 21,the day in 1805 of the battle.

A party of eight locals sat down and enjoyed a full English washed down by the ale of old England. Numerous toasts were given the most important being to the Immortal Memory which, for this group, lives on and on.

The group led by Putney resident Hugh Thompson have been celebrating this date for many years. It used to be held in Smithfield and Fleet Street pubs but licensing laws and pubs changing hands made the group look closer to home. The Nelson masks were bought at the National Portrait Gallery.

Clapham resident Edward Russell Walling says:“My father was a submarine commander and was brought up in Norfolk. Nelson is in the blood.”

Round the world yachtsman Clive Fisher says:” As a sailor I am full of admiration for our most successful Admiral”

Hugh Thompson says: ”Nelson is as much part of the nation's fabric as Shakespeare,Keats , Brunel and Churchill. We celebrate not only a glorious death, but a life which took a small boy who lost his mother and joined the navy at 12 to a man who at 47 became the Immortal Memory. Friends for breakfast, frankly we don’t have enough such breakfasts.” His neighbour American David Birn says.”I love folk customs,I know not everyone has them but I think they are great for communities.”

As with so much today Brexit is not far away.

Putney resident David Richards says: “I have always been a Nelson fan but this Brexit year has brought it to the fore. Lord Nelson, together with countless unsung heroes both before and after him, sacrificed his life in the defence of this nation's sovereignty,Nelson would certainly not countenance entering into any kind of Treaty with a group of nations whose avowed intent is to abolish the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. And nor do I. Whatever i always enjoy the breakfast".

His neighbour, Ian Harrower says: “I can do no better in these times to remember what Nelson had to say, “There are three things, young gentlemen, which you are constantly to bear in mind. Firstly, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman, as you do the devil.”

October 21, 2019