The Mark Coleman Embroidery
A T Casdagli had a knack for friendship, and, as Prouder Than Ever relates, friendship was critical to his surviving four years as a Prisoner of War in Germany. My father’s friends were old and young, from every part of his life, in many parts of the world. Even I was one of them, for he would often sign his letters to me ‘Y.O.P.’ which stood for ‘Your Old Pal’.
Although he died almost twenty years ago, it seems Casdagli hasn’t lost this gift, for people who’ve never met him like him and want, in their turn, to do something for him. Of these, one is Mark Coleman of SDS Heritage.
At the terrific A T Casdagli POW exhibition in Harrow School’s Old Speech Room Gallery, it was suggested by Peter Hunter, who, amongst other important duties, is the Chair of the Treasures Committee there, that my father’s schoolboy diaries and albums, characteristically meticulous and fascinating, should be digitalised. He gave me the details of SDS Heritage (http://www.sds-heritage.co.uk/ ) and I subsequently gave the works to Mark and his colleagues. When I received the works digitally, I was astounded. I could read details and information that previously been impossible to make out. Two years later, and Mark and SDS Heritage have now digitalised all the Casdagli archives I possess, thus preserving them for posterity.
Something Dad did for his family and friends – as you can see from the About Casdagli page of this website – was to make embroideries especially for them. So I’ve given Mark this embroidery, sewn in cross-stitch by Casdagli at the age of 80, to thank him as I believe the immaculate digitalisation of Casdagli’s works on paper, from his 1920 Schoolboy Diary to his War Log of 1940-1945, is just, were he living now, what my father would delightedly commission himself.