Montague Glover and Ralph Hall: a gentleman and a cheerful Cockney

But the couple, in general, no fame - because they were the most ordinary people. Elder, Montague Glover, was the architect of freelance and amateur photographers, Jr., Ralph Hall, had not anyone special to go before met with Glover and after the meeting officially began working for him as a personal servant (in those days as we remember, and we are talking about the first half of the twentieth century, every British gentleman is quite a need to have "his personal gentleman").

Montague, or, as everyone called him, Monty was born in 1898 in a family that belonged to the middle class of Great Britain. He studied in a decent school, at age 18 got to the front of the First World War, was awarded the Military Cross for bravery.

On War by Monty, incidentally, were partly lyrical memories:

"In the trenches of World War I British men are entering to love each other for real, without shame or pretense, under the threat of sudden death, began to find in the faces of other young people consolation sent down from another world, a faint hope, which could cpasti even in the mud , shit, rotting pieces of human flesh. While Europe among its senseless loss mean dying, men liked.

His experience in this composed in direct contradiction with the memories of another member of the First World by Richard Aldington (from "Death of a Hero"):

Soldiers friendship during the war - is very special, a real, beautiful friendship, which you never find another like him, at least in Western Europe. I want to immediately disabuse inveterate sodomites among my readers: resolutely declare once and for all, that in this Friendship was not a hint of homosexual love. many months, even years, I lived and slept among the soldiers and some had been friendly. But I have never heard a single more or less ambiguous sentences; never saw any signs of sodomy and never did not see anything that would allow the suspect, if such relations exist.

It is interesting to compare - as if they lived in some parallel universes. It is assumed (because it is unlikely that someone lied to them), that those who liked it cleverly concealed, and Aldington did not want to see - and really did not see.

After the war, Monty was living in London, studied architecture and amateur photography. That kept the negatives of his shots enabled him to get into history and became the basis for a book written by James Gardiner A Class Apart: The Private Pictures of Montague Glover. Photos, which we can judge from this book, an impressive collection of images of the lower classes: workers, soldiers, sailors, etc. Some Glover photographed on the street, others, judging by the white wall behind, invited into their makeshift studio.