Matt Holland, Festival of Literature organiser, talks about his dad:

LESLIE HOLLAND, born London 9 April 1907, died Swindon 8 March 2005

Dad was born in Ealing, a place he fondly referred to as queen of the suburbs. From an early age he showed precocious talent with a pencil. He had a real and natural gift for drawing, for close observation, and for recognising the power of line.

He also liked dressing up and playing the part of romantic heroes in homespun performances with his brother and sisters!

But art remained his passion and, encouraged by his mother, who also had an eye for a good line and all things beautiful, he was soon winning scholarships. He was offered entry to a number of prestigious art colleges, including the Slade and the Royal College of Art. He chose the latter, where he enjoyed many new and inspiring friendships; benefited by hearing brilliant lecturers, including Henry Moore; and developed slice and spin that made him a ping pong player to be reckoned with. But, ever uneasy about the constraints on art when institutionalised, he left before the end of his course.

1930s

Next, during the 1930s, as an accomplished illustrator and skilled draughtsman, he embarked on a career as commercial artist, entering the world of illustration and design. He produced posters for London Transport, greetings telegrams for the Royal Mail, and a number of designs for book jackets, including the highly-praised cover for the first edition of Aldous Huxleys Brave New World. But he never read the book.  

Despite these successes, practising his art for commercial gain was not to Dad's liking. He preferred to be out and about, meeting people, making connections, loving art and life, and when he could, heading for Europe to seek out its art hotspots. He told of meetings with remarkable artists in Frankfurt, and how, despite his real and strongly-felt pacifism, he once found himself working for a painter who was officially sanctioned by Hitler.

Arrested by Mussonlini's men

His quest for new experiences, combined with a certain naïve idealism, also resulted in meetings with dangerous men. He was once arrested by Mussolinis men, who were suspicious of this wayward young man with his flowing beard and sketchpad always at the ready.

However, from these foreign adventures, Dad would always return home to his mother in Ealing, from where, in 1939, he was finally dislodged by a beautiful young Austrian nurse, Gerty, who became his friend, wife, and lifelong companion. Together, for their honeymoon, they walked across England, heading west, doing casual farm and garden work on the way. In years to come, this chapter of Leslies life provided a rich source of stories, about life in a gipsy caravan that was washed away by floods; picking sprouts in freezing weather; making home in a cricket pavilion that burned down while he and  Mum were out shopping; and their discovery of the Bruderhof, comprising a group of people of many nationalities on a farm in Shropshire living and working together and having all things in common in the spirit if the early Christians. This was a way of life, with its mixture of daily challenges, companionship, and joy, where men and women called each other brother and sister and sang songs at mealtimes, where work and life was communal, and where luxuries were scarce but all basic needs were met, that suited Dad well. In fact, it called to him, to join; and even, many years after he left, it remained a lifelong source of strength and joy.

From Paraguay...

It also took him, his wife, and their six young children, across the sea to South America, to a new home in deepest, wildest but beautiful rural Paraguay. The simple but colourful and always challenging life there provided new impetus and excitement for Dads drawings and paintings, even though his daily work was mostly in the community's extensive vegetable gardens, hoe in hand under the hot tropical sun. His drawings from this time, that so realistically and lovingly illustrated everyday community life and all good things around him, became a joy to everyone who saw them, and were later used to illustrate a book on the Bruderhof in Paraguay.

By the early sixties, Dad found himself back in England, looking for work to help support his big family. He found it, not through formal qualifications that he did not possess but thanks to his love for art and people, his natural and given gifts.

... to Purton!

• Teaching school children in Cricklade;
• making friends in Purton, which was to become his home for the next forty years
• illustrating the village magazine
• designing and drawing a 100-foot mural by an old railway track in Old Town Swindon
• being the artist in residence for the Swindon Festival of Literature
• regularly making the five-mile trip from Purton to Lower Shaw farm on his Honda 50 to meet new people, to talk about art and life with anyone willing to lend an ear and idea;
• painting a picture of The Last Supper for his village church St Marys when their original was stolen;
• telling the best stories often about the smallest things
• filled daily with the joy of living;
• being a loving husband, fascinating father, groovy grandfather and great grandfather,
• and drawing, drawing, drawing, everywhere he went.

All this drew Leslie to 97 years of life, for which we are thankful.