HERBERT J KENNARD

摘要

It is with great sadness that HCB reports the death of long-time contributor Herbert Julio Kennard - or HJK' as he was known in these pages - at the age of 100. Herbert died at home, as he had wished, after several years of declining health. Herbert was born to parents of German extraction and lived his entire life in the apartment in St John's Wood, London they were renting at the time of his birth. He took advantage of a change in legislation in the 1970s to acquire the lease on the property, one of many canny financial decisions he made. He knew tragedy early on, losing his mother while he was still a child. A sister died before he was born. After that, he was brought up by his father and governess, Helen, to whom he remained devoted right up until her own death in 1981. Herbert's father gave him the choice of going to university or spending some time in Switzerland learning languages; he already knew the country well and decided that would serve him better in the long run, which turned out to be the case. World War Ⅱ then intervened and he spent much of it at the RAF training school in Hendon, north London. In later life he had plenty of stories to tell about his time there.