25/6/2026
Dr. Eva Griffith
It seems a while, and so much has happened, since remembering my father in Israel. But now a lot of water has flowed under London Bridge, and, indeed, round the straits of Hormuz. Let’s hope all that horror stops, and we can get Life back on an evening keel.
My father, Kenneth Griffith, is 20 years gone today. I tried to write something about him for Father’s Day but, in truth, he was hardly a Father’s Day sort of man. And I would be telling lies if I gave an impression of roses round the door, or a chocolate boxy life with a man at odds with most things around him.
Christopher Fry roses.
Moreover, I couldn’t post what I’d written then because the internet fairies decided there was no way my passwords would work that evening. Even now, my edited photo of a skull’s head is causing a whirring round and round… Will it make it? Probably not. Such is the power of the will-of-the-web.
My father once played Oberon, King of the Fairies, for an Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the 1950s. This was when my mother, playing Mustard Seed and the First Fairy, caught his eye.
I guess it seems strange celebrating a person’s death. But a) I am a Catholic and we like that sort of thing, and b) my father liked Shakespeare who liked that sort of thing too.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
(Shakespeare. The Tempest)
Kenneth Griffith is buried in South Wales, near the beautiful beaches of Tenby in Pembrokeshire. We buried him on the Fourth of July – American Independence Day – and that way lies a curious tale of things my father liked and things I liked about my very independent father.
Benjamin Franklin’s House, near Charing Cross Station, London.
What makes you cross?
Currently what makes me cross is being silly, wasting my time and the internet. Kenneth Griffith was known for his ire, his anger, in relation to so many issues: to do with the disaster of imperialism, censorship, Englishness and shallowness. He was resolved “never to be objective about anything”. Thus he was an adventurous mix of good but passionate acting, incisively aggressive but lively documentaries, making people laugh with his over-the-topness, growling confrontation, dark-eyed bite and a kind of oily quality, employed to play, in his youth, a spiv, a gangster, a gay military man, a steam-compressed boat engineer and a number of reverends.
He loved the sea. But he couldn’t swim. He talked of Tenby as if it were a place for dipping into rock pools, but never to venture further than Goscar Rock. His one and only respected theatre director was Tyrone Guthrie – the first director, it is said, who deserved his name above the title of a production. And it was Guthrie who believed that my father had pre-natal memories, these too involving water. An old man, totally naked, with a long beard, sitting in a stone cave with a pool of water before him in which my father, a baby, lay.
I’ve always been drawn to this picture of an idea. It always seemed appropriate to the man. Something ancient and prophetic.
Ernest and Emily Griffiths
The week my father died, he took against a photograph of his beloved grandparents. I remember him shuddering when he looked at it, recoiling from the image placed on the Welsh dresser in the dining room. My half brother and sister, after a lot of difficulties to do with my father’s old age, had resolved to put him downstairs in the basement, where they adapted the utility room into a shower and toilet area, and his bed right where the dining table had been. Next to the dresser. I can only imagine that if his grandparents had come back to him in a way he didn’t like, it was because in the teeth of a life which made people think, on a personal virtue level – he was flawed. Emily and Ernest, Godly and good people, had been faithful to one another all their lives, and would never have dreamt of hurting anyone, let alone a member of the family. My father was not so blessed with perceptions of automatic virtue in this fashion. Of the same two children who attentively made efforts to give him comfort in his last days, hoicking him firmly out of a ward for the mentally ill where he did not belong, my youngest brother had always found himself on the receiving end of fairly virulent bullying from that same father. That same son, who looks like my father in many ways, gave the most jaw-droppingly amazing eulogy at my father’s funeral. And he it is who has placed our father’s documentary films on YouTube.
Who can guess at the capacity of love or laying a ghost to rest before it has a chance, once dead, to give you pain?
The lucky ones.
If one had asked Kenneth Griffith why he had left so many women, one of them with a pair of toddler twins in tow, or why he had his favourites, he would have shrugged his shoulders and said: “it had to be that way”. It was what it was. There is always a price for an intelligent and brave life, especially one in the public eye. Those who want it, take note as I take note.
Kenneth Griffith, the Good Father
Before going much further, I should remember the positive effect on my life with my father. For my mother brought me up to love him and go with him, and it wasn’t hard.
Before the trip to Israel when I was sixteen, I remember walks to feed the ducks along the New River path in Islington, ice creams at The Fountain Bar at Fortnum’s and Mason’s, meanders between the antique shops at Camden Passage and the Portobello Road (looking for Boer War memorabilia mostly), and various endeavours at support which paid off – because of the man he was.
Touching on The Fountain Bar, a particular memory comes showering back to me of the only thing my mother could think to do when a particular disaster beset me (bad reviews). I remember her face as she came up the stairs of our flat towards me, having had a quick look at a newsagent. Whatever capacities she had, this one was beyond her. So she phoned my father who insisted I come over straight away.
Here was something my father could certainly do something about, and Kenneth Griffith rose to the occasion. “That Milton Shulman…” (This is the only blighter’s name I remember. Daddy went through them all.) “I know him! Take no notice of him!” And he probably went through all the reasons I should tell my truth about my character and never mind the rest. No criticisms of me, no advice about how to play the part, just wholehearted and complete support of the person I was and still am. And then we went out down town. I remember Regent’s Street and a pen shop and this beautiful fountain pen that he bought for me. Blue it was with sparkly bits, later stolen at the Bush Theatre, I think. He’d never bought me anything like that before. And then Fortnum’s and a Banana Split at the Fountain Bar. Just as it had been before when I was small.
Unlike other men I was to know, this one, for all his faults, never drank too much, never wasted his energy with drugs, and was committed to passing on values of Truth and Bravery. With a valuable kind of crossness.
My father used the term ‘Valuable’ in relation to a hero who has everything to do with integrity, independence and an awe-inspiring capacity to block out anything that wasn’t for the best in the world. I refer to my favourite Kenneth Griffith documentary film, ‘Thomas Paine: the Most Valuable Englishman Ever’ which you can view, after my brother’s endeavours, on YouTube here:
My father died as he had lived. Wrestling with himself and some demons. Early on the morning of the 25th of June 2006, on a bright day, just like today, I unaccountably got up from my bed, sat on the sofa in my living room, and stared out the window. And then, right on cue, the phone rang. I knew it would be Damian, my father’s Irish lodger and a great helper and friend.
“Oh Damian, he’s gone, hasn’t he?”
Kenneth Griffith died falling out of bed, crying out against some unseen thing. Being piled back into bed again, having refused to eat for many days. If a man is anything when he dies, it’s a special thing who leaves you in one sense relieved he’s gone, with your shoulders at long last coming down from round your ears, while at the same time, feeling lost in the sensation that a mighty bonfire has blown itself out, the like of which you’ll never know again.
I think it’s time to bring him back. Just a little bit. Because the world has gone grey and silly and unable to laugh at the clearly ridiculous. It’s gone wan – one thing my father never was. In his honour I have arranged an audio-file of something he admired – the work of Thomas Paine. Namely, a 15-minute rendering of Tom Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ which we are calling ‘Common Sense: the Fun Version’. Look out for it in the coming days.
Eva.