When the school moved to Wallington, Surrey, he designed its new gates.Frank and Kathleen began married life in one room in the King’s Road, Chelsea, “with a gas ring to cook on, mice in the sugar bags and no money”. “I didn’t like the mushrooms, so I lumped them all on Frank’s plate He thought that was dreadful. To add insult to injury, I left an old three- penny bit under the plate as a tip That was all we’d got between us. So we had to walk all the way back to King’s Cross to get the coach, and didn’t speak to each other the whole way home.”Ward attended the Royal College of Art from 1933 to 1936, for his diploma under the charismatic Sir William Rothenstein, with Percy Horton and Gilbert Spencer among his teachers.
They would sneak day trips to London on the Grey-Green coach to see exhibitions and continental films, once dining at the Monseigneur, “a swanky restaurant in Piccadilly where Lew Stone and his band were playing”.The only meal Frank and the gymslipped Kathleen could afford was a mushroom omelette. Bellis and Leonard Squirrell, he proved an outstanding student.Archibald Ward was concerned that Kathleen’s crush on Frank Ward – she had “seduced him with cream doughnuts”, having got to know him by borrowing his rubber – would undermine Ward’s studies. Hutchison, who became Director of the Glasgow School of Art and President of the Royal Scottish Academy, encouraged Frank to continue as an artist, and he attended Ipswich Art School from 1931 to 1933, having won an East Suffolk Scholarship Under the tuition of Archibald Ward, A.W. Frank was the fourth of nine children and had a happy childhood. Both parents were sympathetic when he wanted to be an artist.Frank’s father took him to see W.O Hutchison, who had a house at Letheringham, nearby.
Wells, Margot Asquith and the leading critics.Frank Ward was as much a stranger as Kathleen to this world. He was born in 1914 in Stradbroke, a remote Suffolk village, where his father, George Rowell Ward, an elder of the local Baptist chapel, “provided top-notch grocery to all the elegant people of the neighbourhood”. Lord protect us from the ignorance of the young.I tried the neighbours. “Is it Katharine Hammett?” asked Sally from No.84.”Thank God she’s given up banging on about Pershing missiles”.”All I can conclude about this chap Lao-Tze”, said George, the smartarse barrister from No.108, “is that he’s a lou-see thinker”.Such philistinism I escaped to the pub. “I preferred the black one you got from the Kerrang! awards” said Sophie (11, going on 20), “That was coo-ul”.This is about literature, I told them, it’s freeing the text from the… “The rest of the world calls a butterfly”, read Max (seven, not quite in the Zen marketplace just yet),” What does the rest of the world call a butterfly? Except a butterfly, obviously?”. But caterpillars don’t go around speculatin’ on mortality, do they?” Hopeless.Back home, I showed it to the children “Why’s it got writing on it?” asked Clementine, aged three.
