Michael's films

Michael made two films about his grandfather in 2020. Both are on YouTube and play here.

The Venerable Vulnerable (June 2020)

During the first lockdown, while he was living with and looking after his grandparents, Michael interviewed Tony and Liz separately about their lives and cut the two together with the family photographs. He filmed it on his phone. It went on YouTube on 11 June 2020, eighteen days before Tony died; friends were writing to Liz about it that month.

Chapters (click a time to start the film there):

• 0:04 Childhoods: Stoke-on-Trent (Tony) and the wartime aunts (Liz)
• 4:54 Rita, the church-club dance (Tony)
• 6:32 Gliders, national service and the RAF (Tony)
• 8:36 Radiography and Montreal (Liz)
• 11:37 His first marriage (Tony)
• 14:47 Cottesmore and the Prentice (Tony)
• 17:45 249 Squadron, Amman (Tony)
• 20:46 Top of the armament camp, Cyprus (Tony)
• 22:25 Joining Eagle (Liz)
• 23:49 Commercial licence, Eagle co-pilot (Tony)
• 26:35 The Berlin Viking (Liz)
• 27:32 What a pilot is for (Tony)
• 29:34 'Come on, Tony, spit it out' (Tony)
• 30:22 Romance and a small wedding (Liz)
• 31:23 Lagos and Frank's violin (Tony)
• 32:25 Suzanne born in Nicosia (Liz)
• 33:49 1970: the medical and the end of flying (Tony)
• 36:12 Answering machines from Hong Kong (Tony)
• 37:00 Three children (Liz and Tony)
• 38:37 The private-school argument (Tony)
• 40:31 Conversation, and the North (Tony and Liz)
• 42:48 The Open University (Liz)
• 43:33 Callmaster moves to Farnham (Tony)
• 44:02 Twenty-five years at Citizens Advice (Liz)
• 45:24 'More proud of being a socialist than a father' (Tony)
• 46:01 Making houses (Liz)

William Graham Hancock, 1933–2020 (the funeral film, July 2020)

Michael’s photograph film of Tony’s life, shown at the funeral on 20 July 2020: about a hundred and ten photographs from childhood to the last summer, set to Leaving on a Jet Plane. It ends with a short phone video of Tony raising a glass: “Cheers!” Michael put it on YouTube in July 2022.

Every photograph in both films is on the Photographs pages, with a draft caption to correct.