The Story Behind the MBE

Some of you have been curious to know what I did to deserve an MBE (good question, it still feels absolutely bonkers!) and so I thought I’d take a moment to share the story behind the gong.

In 2019 an 11 year chapter in my life culminated with a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and a swan song trip to Normandy in the company of 50 fantastic nonogenerians, all to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day Landings in June 1944. A global pandemic later I was standing outside Windsor Castle nervously faffing with an exceedingly large hat, ahead of being presented with an MBE by HRH Princess Anne!

So let’s go back to the beginning… at 23 years old, I was at somewhat of a loose end career-wise. All my life I’d wanted to be an architect, but having got the degree and worked in practice in Liverpool for a year I realised the reality of a career in architecture wasn’t what I thought it would be. Around the time I decided not to go back to University and study for my diploma, my marvellous Dad pitched the idea of setting up a charity. He was moved to help WWII veterans return to the battlefields upon which they fought during the Second World War, giving them the opportunity to pay tribute to those they left behind and also providing a platform for them to share their story. I was invited to help and the rest is, quite literally, history!

The D-Day Revisited charity was formed and whilst we offered support to WW2 veterans of various campaigsn, we concentrated our practical efforts on assisting D-Day veterans make the journey back to France. Standing in Normandy in 2019, we were both staggered to look back at how much had been achieved in the charity’s 11 years. We had enabled hundreds of veterans to make that important journey to the towns and villages they had liberated as young men and women and in doing so we had quite unexpectedly created a community. The D-Day Revisited family was made up of veterans and their families, but also of people who supported us at home and in France; those who were just as moved by the stories of our D-Day heroes and just as keen to pay tribute to the sacrifices and achievements made by their generation.

It was a couple of months after our first trip to Normandy in 2009 that I photographed my first ever wedding and launched my first business. In many ways my photography journey and my D-Day Revisited journey were intertwined. Each year I would document our Normandy pilgrimage in great detail and share all my photographs with the veterans who came with us so they could show their families what they’d been up to! Looking back it’s crazy to see how my photography skills developed in those first few years and how I honed my craft over time. Those first pictures were certainly not my best work, but each year I got better and I now have this vast collection of images to remind me of all those incredible times.

To fund the D-Day 75 Garden project our team launched a campaign entitled “75 Reasons to Thank Our D-Day Veterans” and it featured 75 portraits I had taken of Normandy veterans on medium format film. Each photograph is a portrait within a portrait, as the subject holds a picture of themselves taken in uniform during the war. I am still so proud of that body of work, most importantly because collectively it represents the wonderful friendships we made during those years.

Having the opportunity to spend my formative adulthood in such excellent company was a huge privilege and I learned a great deal from the wisdom, good humour and humility of our veteran friends.

I said as much to HRH Princess Anne, although with far less clarity and composure… rather talking at the speed of light on a rollercoaster of adrenalin! As I stood in the grand reception room at Windsor Castle (I think it’s actually called that!) being presented with an MBE for services to veterans of the Second World War, I told her that as much as the charity may have helped the veterans, I felt it had given us far more than we had given it.

Those D-Day Revisited years were truly life enriching and I will always be grateful to all our Normandy veteran friends for the values they instilled in me. Having survived such an intense and challenging experience in their youth, they had gone on to make their own way in the world and amassed another lifetime of experiences. We caught them in the final chapter of their lives and it was an honour to take them on a trip down memory lane. In return they shared their stories with us and those memories are priceless to me.

I never expected or sought any recognition for what we did, so receiving an honour was a huge surprise. Our family had travelled down to Buckingham Palace some years earlier when my Dad received his MBE from HRH Prince Charles as he was then and that seemed absolutely right and proper. We were so proud. It had been all his idea after all and my father is a grown up, so it made complete sense.

The imposter syndrome was real when I received the very smart letter through the post informing me that my name was to be included in the forthcoming honours list, which funnily enough was published on my birthday! I had not yet fully come to terms with the fact that I too was a grown up and so I was half waiting for a follow up letter full of apology and explanation that there had been some clerical error.

No such letter came. It was real and the following year my family travelled down to Windsor Castle to cheer me on as I grappled with my imposter syndrome in my big hat, 15 weeks pregnant, with my first baby girl clambering to claim Mummy’s shiny new toy as her own!

I understand that the very concept of Royal investitures might not be for everyone, but I know that among those who nominated both my father & I were our veteran friends and their families. I look at the MBE as a gift from them and so I treasure it completely. One day I’ll pass it down to my girls and tell them all about their Mum’s adventures with the D-Day legends! And so the story lives on.