Sasha Lyons

Sasha with his god-daughter Caroline

The friend with whom I shared most and from whom I enjoyed the greatest support and encouragement.

I first met Sasha Lyons at the Regent Street Polytechnic Secondary School (or Quintin School as it later came to be known). At the time he was Alexander (Sasha) Litzinsky. I was Joseph Zweben. We both changed our names. He prior to his first marriage - to Jeannie. I subsequent to my first marriage - to Naomi. Later, after his divorce, I took over the Belsize Park flat of his ex-wife and became friendly with her and her second husband Frank Barrow. After my divorce, Sasha employed my ex-wife in the company for which he worked, BIA (British and International Addressing).

This sort of vaguely incestuous inter-connection had no effect whatsoever on our personal relationship. If anything, it strengthened it.

But, at first, we hardly knew each other socially. He was one year ahead of me, Upper Sixth to my Lower Sixth, and at that age, the one-year difference is pretty significant. We did occasionally play table tennis against each other in the form room at lunchtime. But he must barely have known I existed. For my part, however, I was very aware of him with his suave, debonair manner, always immaculately dressed, and his impressive knowledge of Herbert Read and anarchism stuck in my mind.

Some ten years later I was invited to play bridge at the Hampstead home of someone I had previously played bridge with in the common room of the London School of Economics. This was George Marlow. We had become quite friendly at LSE when he found out that I had been a friend of Jeanette Thomas in Llanelli, having both been members during the War of the Socialist Youth Club in that town. George had had a romantic encounter with the lady when she came to London in the post-war years to attend university. But that was the limit of our relationship, so I was a bit surprised to get his invitation to play bridge.

The only person I recognised, other than George himself, was Sasha Lyons (I actually thought he was still Litzinsky!). Sasha clearly didn't know who I was, except to say that I looked faintly familiar. George didn't know that Sasha and I had been at school together. Once we had got that sorted out we hit it off famously. We each played bridge in much the same way with flair rather than system. We favoured what was then called "psychic bidding", that is bidding based on "gut-feel" rather than analysis. In other words, we played for pleasure rather than gain. In fact we frequently did gain, because we developed a sort of sixth-sense between us. It was not, however, a system that we could adopt in other bridge circles where it was distinctly frowned upon.

But from that initial empathy we swiftly developed a deep and warm friendship that ultimately developed into love. We were both totally heterosexual but, as such, came as close to a homosexual relationship as it was possible to get. Long before hugging was normalised, we would hug and kiss on meeting or parting. Possibly Sasha's Russo-German heritage also had something to do with that. The fact that we were both pretty promiscuous may also have had some influence on our relationship.

I've started thinking about the ways our lives merged, diverged, and interacted over the years, and can't believe how complicated they became. I also tried listing them, and after 21 headings, I've given up. Here though are some of them:

The first Mrs Lyons, Jean, together with her second husband Frank, and I became really close friends. In fact they joined the North Kent Sun Club that I had been visiting at weekends with my friend Margaret Martin ("Tiddles") who, tragically, died of breast cancer when only in her mid-twenties. While Jean and Sasha were still together they used to visit the Rickmansworth Aquadrome with Tiddles and me at weekends. We (Margaret and I) eventually decided it was less hassle and more relaxing to visit the Sun Club. In fact I bought a Lambretta motor scooter to make the journey even more pleasant. Here are some suitably modest shots of us at the Club. Preceded by one in Rickmansworth. Taken in the late 1950s.


Jean, Sasha and Tiddles	Jean and Frank	Joe and Tiddles

The second Mrs Lyons was the consequence of my inviting Sasha to a party at the home of a friend of mine in Fitzjohns Avenue, Hampstead. This was Freddie Goldsmith (q.v.), whose stepmother Vera Caspary was a well-known mystery writer and a highly successful and well-paid scriptwriter in Hollywood. Possibly her best-known book and movie was Laura. She had married Freddie's father Isadore Goldsmith in 1948. Freddie was married to Barbara, but he was already revealing "itchy feet" at the time of the party. It didn't take too long after Freddie's itch for travel took him to America, for a full-blown affair to spring up between Sasha and Barbara, leading in due course to their marriage. Prior to their marriage - and following his divorce from Jean, Sasha had been living with me in my Hornsey home.

Sasha was godfather to my first child, Caroline. I am godfather to his son Julian.

This mention of a shared home is a good place to reflect on the great number of homes we have either shared or both enjoyed. Hornsey was the only home in which we actually lived together for a prolonged period of time. Possibly the best part of two years. We had some good times there but, surprisingly, nothing really stands out as do other times we have enjoyed together elsewhere, except for his insistence on my clearing up my empty wine and beer bottles regularly, and his establishment of a bedtime routine of a mug of Milo.

For example, Bandol in the south of France. This now quite famous holiday resort located between Toulon and Marseille was, in the 1950s, a small fishing port with a minimum of holiday resources. A quite pleasant beach with some cafés and restaurants, deckchairs and pedalos, and the town nestling in vast olive groves. A friend, Frank Parry, popularly known as Bondi, owned a small property amid those olive groves, known as Hill Cottage. Bondi was a great character. Of Austrian origin, he worked as a courier for a travel agency. In London he spent most of his days drinking coffee with his cronies at the Cosmo restaurant at Swiss Cottage. His cronies included Freddie Goldsmith and the Welsh poet Danny Abse.

When June and I got married in September 1958, Sasha and Barbara, having already married, were our Witnesses at the Hampstead register office. We planned a motoring honeymoon that would take us through Switzerland, that I loved, to Rome where my cousin Walter Dorin was living and painting, and then round the Ligurian coast of Italy and the south of France to Bandol, where we would join up with the Lyons' family. It was a wonderful trip and we eventually arrived at Hill Cottage in glorious weather. With Sasha were Barbie, and her son Paul.

The cottage was actually going to be bequeathed to Bondi's niece on his death and he was concerned that she might lack friendly neighbours so, on return to London, we bounced the idea around with him that Sasha and I might purchase a parcel of land. At this time the company I was working for was selling mobile water filtration tanks, suitable for converting sea-water to drinking water for supply to West Africa. The company supplying these tank-trailers was also reconditioning and selling ex Government pre-fabricated housing. Buying both these items at cost, as I was able to do, would have meant a fully-equipped home in Bandol with its own water supply, at a bargain price.

That December Bondi, Sasha and I took Sasha's car across the Channel and drove down to Bandol. Bondi had made enquiries and we knew that we had to visit the Municipal offices in Toulon and get the forms needed for permission to build on the land. We arrived at the "propriété" and Bondi took us walkabout to find the best spot on which to build. I will never forget one amusing incident. One of us, Sasha or myself, had been smoking a cigarette and threw the smouldering butt away. Bondi was outraged. "There is a great danger of fire here," he warned us. "Better put that out." We had all recently seen the French movie "Le Salaire de la Peur" (The Wages of Fear) where, following a successful delivery of nitro glycerine, one of the drivers says: "Let's celebrate". Whereupon they do so, by turning their backs on the audience and urinating. "Let's celebrate," said Sasha "and see who has the best aim". Unbelievably Bondi, in his seventies, instantly had the burning butt extinguished about 3 metres away.

The frustrating sequel to this adventure was that the authorities rejected our plans for the house on the grounds, believe it or not, that the property lay in the "Zone Forestière" and one could only build in brick or local stone. Considering that the prefabs were constructed of asbestos in order precisely to be fireproof, the regulation was nonsense. Of course, with modern knowledge of the hazards of asbestos, it is probably as well that we were not able to go ahead with our project.

And so we set off back to London, stopping overnight in Paris, where a visit to my friend David Grimberg elicited the information that the best place for us to enjoy an evening of drink and dance was near the Place de l'Opéra. And a great time we had there. I made the acquaintance of a wonderful woman named Catherine Zim, who was at the night club with three of her friends. She owned a valet service (teinturerie) in the rue Germain Pilon in the Pigalle district that catered mainly to the needs of the local "poules", who required skirts regularly shortening or lengthening. Her establishment served as a salon for artistes of all kinds. In her back room, around a refectory-type table, drinking coffee, would gather writers, painters, dancers, actors. On succeeding visits to Paris I always made a point of spending some time with Catherine and, on one occasion, met Francoise Sagan who, just a few years earlier, had enjoyed vast success with Bonjour Tristesse. My favourite character, however, was a suave ballet dancer named Jean René W. de la Rotaz. Not only was he a delightful and amusing companion, but I just loved the way his name rolled off my tongue.

I took the following picture about the year 2000, having not seen Catherine for many years. She was still living in her shop, but was now retired from work. She was as delightful as ever, Well into her eighties, I would guess, but as sharp as a needle. Alas she died very shortly after my visit. Go well, dear lady, wherever you are.

One other item of significance occurred at the end of that trip. As a consequence of my own celebration of my return, my daughter Caroline was born nine months later. She became Sasha's god-daughter, and you can see both of them together in the picture at the head of this page.

Thinking of the number of different countries and places around the world where Sasha and I met over the years is almost mind-blowing. In no particular order: Switzerland, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, the U.S.A., Hong Kong, Singapore. So, when you take into account the fact that our main area of social intercourse was in the United Kingdom, the fact that we - at one time or another - met up with and spent time together in all these places seems unbelievable.

Switzerland was an obvious place for an encounter. June and I, with Caroline, lived there for three years. Sasha visited us twice, once with Barbie and the entire family. On that occasion, I met him outside Switzerland, in the Black Forest of Germany. I was involved in a stand at the Commercial Motor Show in Frankfurt and the only way I could meet the Lyons family, who were on their way to join June in Schaffhausen (where she now lived and worked, while I was working in Rotterdam) was to meet up with them en route. As I did. I believe god-son Julian recently started using one of the pictures I took as his Facebook picture.

France has already been adequately covered earlier. We met several times in Bandol in the early years. Later - and particularly post-Barbara - Sasha invested in a home in Antibes and, his generous nature still to the fore, I was able to use it several times for holidays, only one of which coincided with Sasha himself staying there. On another occasion, however, Julian turned up with a friend (or friends) not realising we were there. It is always great to see him. But - and my memory may be at fault here - he was possibly not enamoured over my presence. But possibly I'm doing him an injustice.

Before this, however, I had met Sasha in Andalucia, where he had a part share (one-eighth I think) in a house in Chiclana de la Frontera near Cadiz. I actually subsequently spent a lot of time in Spain on business with the Spanish container shipping line for which I was marketing manager, but never had occasion to visit Chiclana again, although much of my business was with the sherry producers in the area. I think he may have disposed of his share of the house by then.

Portugal was a country in which both he and I were involved in business in the 1970s and there, also, we met up once. He introduced me to his agent Jaime Maas with whom I spent some enjoyable hours then and later.

In Belgium and Holland we met several times, briefly, usually just a drink or two, or a meal, when business had us both coinciding on visits.

In the USA we only ever met once, in Los Angeles, the first time I visited his condo in Beverley Hills and he showed me where everything was located. But I visited and stayed at this apartment several times when en-route to or from Hong Kong where I was living and working in the 1970s and early 1980s. And thereby hangs another amazing piece of synchronicity involving the American actress Shirley Jones, that is described at length HERE.

Twice he came to Hong Kong when I was living there, and once his office manager Ron Williams came over and stayed with us.

The meeting in Singapore was serendipitous, quite amazing, and incredibly enjoyable. I was en route from Hong Kong to Colombo, with a brief stopover in Singapore. Sasha had a change of planes from somewhere en route to Bangkok. I cannot recall how we made contact, or even knew of this, but somehow we met up in the Cathay Pacific Marco Polo lounge in Changi Airport.

There is so much more that I owe Sasha than I would ever have been able to repay, nor am I able to do justice to it here. I would like to think that, if the situation were reversed and he was describing our relationship from his perspective, he might also feel indebted to me for one reason or another. But I cannot think of a reason. He was a great emotional support when I returned from working in the Netherlands, having been the last in a long series of managers of their Barendrecht factory to be dismissed by the extremely volatile Canadian owner of York Trailers. Fred Davies would not accept the simple truth that overheads were too great to produce a product to compete with local manufacturers. He seemed to think, quite illogically, that the losses made on producing a single semi-trailer could be recovered by selling more of them!

I could have gone back to Switzerland, where my wife was still working, but with the loss of the job in Barendrecht, Fred Davies had also decided he wanted me to come and work for him in Corby, Northants, their head office. Clearly some of what I told him in Holland must have struck a positive chord. In the event, when I rejected his UK job offer - and he couldn't or wouldn't handle rejection or disagreement - he decided that I could no longer have his agency for Switzerland. This had been handled in my absence by a friend, Hedley St. George Bond, an ex-battle of Britain fighter pilot. It was the most profitable agency I had (the reason, I suppose, why Davies had wanted me to re-organise his Dutch operation) and the rest of my business was not enough to support my life there.

By coincidence, my last major function for York Trailer Company was to help in the manning of their stand at the Frankfurt Commercial Motor Show - where I was going when I met Sasha and his family in the photographs above - and while there I was approached by a rival British trailer manufacturer, Harry Genis of Northern Trailer Company of Glasgow, who offered me a job. At the time I hadn't the least intention of even considering the offer. But suddenly finding myself, so to speak, on the streets, I contacted Mr Genis and he came to London to meet me. It was to lead to the most incredible six months of my life, an unforgettable experience, and to culminate in a case in the High Courts of Justice in London.

Reducing this story to its essentials, Harry Genis offered me the position of London Sales Manager, based out of a flat he was acquiring in the prestigious Great Cumberland Place at Marble Arch. The flat was currently the centre of operations for the Larry Parnes theatrical agency and was furnished in a style befitting an impressario. Harry insisted on replacing the two staff members I had temporarily employed with two of his own choice: one being his brother Ruby Genis - a man with no business experience whatsoever, let alone a knowledge of the semi-trailer industry - presumably because Harry could trust no-one outside his family. The other a woman named Maria. A nice woman, considering she was the procuress of the paid "ladies" who were to entertain the lorry drivers that occasionally delivered trailers to the London area, and she had provided the two mature, but attractive, females that were available to service Harry and his Company Accountant when they visited London.

I did not discover this immediately, of course. It transpired over a period of time, during which I had already separated from June - who was embarking on a relationship with a colleague from her London office, a good man that she subsequently married, proved a wonderful stepfather to my daughter Caroline, and helped June to produce another two children, a boy and a girl. On my side I was now living with Ines from Holland, who would become wife number three. The first hint of a problem was when Mr Genis informed me that Mrs Genis was giving him a hard time because she thought it was wrong for me to be living with a woman who was not my wife. Didn't this beat all, as the Americans would say? Harry Genis who regularly entertained prostitutes in the flat objected to me sharing the flat with my fiancée.

We were awakened from our sleep one Sunday night by the front door being broken down, two large drunken Scottish truck drivers bursting in and telling us they were evicting us forthwith. We had no choice but to gather up our clothes and walk down the street to the Cumberland Hotel, where we stayed overnight. I can't remember where we stayed thereafter, until June found a flat for herself, John and Caroline in Golders Green and relinquished the ubiquitous Hornsey house to us. We immediately made representations through my lawyer for unlawful eviction, constructive unlawful dismissal from my employment, and compensation for damages and loss of earnings. Genis's lawyer was instructed to defend strenuously.

Sasha naturally rallied round immediately. He had been a witness to some of the weird behaviour in the flat and would help me with my case. In the event, as we will see, it was not necessary. He also had some suggestions about jobs, but once again my secretarial skills were sufficient to ensure that I enjoyed immediate employment. In fact I really landed on my feet with a temporary - summer vacation - post at Bedford College, in Regents Park. This was a branch of London University devoted to Sociology. The college secretary was seeking a shorthand-typist to aid Professor O.R. McGregor with the production of a Government report on the Attachment of Earnings in respect of Unmarried Mothers. When he learned that my supplementary subject for my BSc degree was sociology, I was set for the entire Summer. In fact, when he had completed the report, I was asked if I would now give Professor Ilersic in the Statistics Department a helping hand with his new book. This too I did, and I still have, on my bookshelves, a copy of the book with a little note of appreciation from Ilersic inside.

To get back to the court case against Genis. Twice he managed to avoid being found guilty by lies told in court. Twice we appealed and now we were off to the High Courts in the Strand. We had learned our lesson, my solicitor and I, and I enlisted the help of two women friends of mine who had been present at dinner parties at the flat, when Genis and some of his drivers had indulged in some of their shennanigans. One of these two witnesses was Claire Dover, who was at the time the Science Editor at the Daily Telegraph. The other was Dr. Christine Pickard, a medical practitioner, and also a writer for the Daily Telegraph. I was really looking forward to seeing how this challenge would be met by Genis. My witnesses produced lengthy statements referring to several incidents involving Harry Genis, his Chief Accountant, and the two prostitutes.

We sat around for some time outside the courtroom before finally being called. Once inside, the Judge apologised. Not to us, but to a row of young ladies seated in the front pews. The defendant had withdrawn from the case and was prepared to pay all the damages demanded by the plaintiff! To the young ladies in the front row on an exercise for their school's civics course, the Judge said: "I'm very sorry ladies, because this would have been the only interesting case for you this morning."

Clearly Harry Genis was more concerned about disclosure to his wife than about the money it was going to cost him. I have just checked Mr Genis out on Google and found the following. ⁽¹⁾

By this time the vacation period employment had ceased and I was thinking seriously about a full-time job. Once again it was Sasha to the rescue! He had been asked by a contact in the travel industry if he knew of anyone who might be available for a job in a new industry that was being promoted by an American shipping man. Sasha immediately thought of me. I went to meet his contact, a man named Ken Holmes who worked for a conglomerate called Shipping and Industrial Holdings (SIH), numbering amongst their companies the large travel agency Thomson's Tours and a forwarding agency called Alltransport. The SIH group were being asked to finance and support the introduction of a newly developed freight product called the ISO container. Did I know anything about the product.

Of course I did! I was an expert! In those days anyone who knew how to open a can of beans could safely describe himself as a container expert. And I had a further credential. One of the companies I had represented in Switzerland was Cravens Homalloy, a manufacturer of vehicle bodywork. They had recently started building these mysterious ISO freight containers in he UK. ("Say no more, squire. . . nudge, nudge".) Ken Holmes was convinced.

A meeting was being held the following week at which would be present the American, whose name was James Sherwood, the chairman of Alltransport Ltd., and someone representing a Finnish stevedoring company Nordström Oy. The project on the table would involve the containers of Mr Sherwood's company- the name of which was Sea Containers Ltd, the shipping experience of the Nordström company, who had been running roll-on/roll-off container services between Finland and Sweden, and the marketing strength of Alltransport Ltd. The container shipping line thus formed would be the first short-sea container service in Europe. It would be named Containerships. My job would be that of London-based sales liaison with a Finn named Veli Nordström. It sounded very exciting. And I had no hesitation in agreeing, even before I had negotiated salary and other considerations - which, as it transpired - were more than reasonable.

Thus began my longest period of single employment, albeit with different paymasters. I was first on the payroll of Alltransport, then that of Sea Containers, finally that of Containerships. The story behind these changes make a fascinating history of the growth and development of the Container Revolution. But they are more correctly dealt with elsewhere. This section is devoted to Sasha Lyons. Suffice it to say that, at this time, in retirement from full-time occupation, I am a pensioner of both Sea Containers and Containerships. And I owe it all to Sasha!

One of the pursuits that Sasha and I had very much in common was an interest in horse-racing and wagering on the races. We studied form daily and bet regularly. I was very much a "systems" man and my systems, based on commonsense, usually resulted in moderate wins over a period. Sasha was always interested in my betting plans and on one occasion insisted on funding me to my Saturday bets on condition that we shared any profits. It was not something I ever chose to repeat. I learned that the responsibility of using someone else's money was enough to divert me from maintaining my system in the face of a potential loss. The result was that I did, in fact, lose, even though the system won. I was too embarrassed to admit this to Sasha and paid him the money he would have made, had I stuck to the system. It came out of my wallet. As I say, I never repeated the experiment, but remained content to stick to my small wagers and be satisfied with small gains.

Sasha started owning racehorses. He was having them trained by Charlie Booth of Malton, north Yorkshire. Mostly quite moderate, but every now an then a really good one came along. Sometime in the 1980s I was negotiating the purchase of a half-share in a farmhouse called Littlethwaite near Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria. The house was eminently suitable for division, having two separate wings, each with its own entrance, each with its own kitchen and bathroom, and each with two bedrooms. My proposed partner, a school teacher named Maureen (Mo) Bowman had merely to sign the mortgage documents drawn up by her solicitor and I would pay her the balance of my money, having already paid a £5000 deposit. For some reason, never explained, she failed to do so. Losing patience, I finally pulled out of the deal, mentally kissing my deposit goodbye, and investing instead in a cottage in Leadhills, Scotland.

Six months later, out of the blue, I received a cheque for £4,500 from the solicitor in Kirkby Stephen. Apparently Mo had sold the farmhouse and having deducted what she considered was a fair amount for my consumption of services while I had stayed there, refunded the balance of my deposit. As far as I was concerned, it was lucky money. I suggested to Sasha that I would be happy to invest it in a half-share of a racehorse with him, rather than put it into a raceowners' consortium. I know now it was the wrong thing to do. It was as wrong as sharing a betting system with him. In reverse! He arranged for Charlie Booth to find a suitable horse for, say, £10,000 the next time he went buying in Ireland. Eventually Sasha told me that Booth had a couple of horses he would like to show me, if I could make the trip to Malton. I agreed.

Of the two horses, one looked a better prospect, but the other had a lovely face and expression, and I - and the lady who had accompanied me - fell in love with it. It was only priced at £8,000, so was well within the budget we had set ourselves.

A couple of weeks later Sasha informed me that I was the proud owner of half a horse, and that I owed him £8,000. I asked him if that meant he had pulled out of the deal, and that I now owned the entire horse. Or did it mean I now had a half share in two horses? He said, no, what it meant is that his wife Michelle had not liked the horse I had chosen and, after discussion with Charlie Booth, decided to go with another horse entirely. A yearling that I had not seen. One that was more expensive, but that had better bloodlines.

My options were simple. I either respected our deal, or I pulled out. Sasha would have understood. But I was so vastly in his debt, it seemed to me, that I decided to go along with it. She was by Enchantment out of Lovely Kate. We had to find a name for her. I floated the idea of Fawny Kate, based on her colour. But there was no way the Jockey Club would have accepted that. So we went with Enchanting Kate. In three years it cost me £20,000, and then it was sold for £450. Not only did it never win a race, it never got placed. It could not run as a two-year old, because it damaged a fetlock. As a three year old it had several races and, I think, in one of them it failed to come last. There was no way it was ever going to be worth keeping in training, so it was sold - presumably for dog food.

Possibly it was guilt that Sasha felt. Perhaps he suspected that I had never really liked his third wife Michelle. Certainly she would have been aware of it. And there was always the recognition that I had never lost my regard for Barbie, the mother of my godson. Whatever. The fact is that we saw very little of each other for the remaining years of his life, much of which he spent abroad, having bought a home in Cape Town, South Africa, and enjoying the horse-racing scene of southern Africa.

I begrudge those years without him. I regret even more the fact that I was never given a reason for the change in our relationship.

I have never ceased to love him. Occasionally I may make myself a bedtime drink and the memory of our Milo nights returns with startling brilliance.

⁽¹⁾ From the Company Check site on the internet www.companycheck.co.uk. Harry Genis holds 0 current appointment, has resigned from 4 companies and held appointments at 1 dissolved companies. Harry is not registered as holding any current appointments.
The combined cash at bank value for all businesses where Harry holds a current appointment equals £0, with a combined assets value of £0 and liabilities of £0. Roles associated with Harry Genis within the recorded businesses include: Director, Company Secretary

And another reference on Google to Genis states: My old mate Alan Bunting reminds me that a certain Harry Genis of Northern Trailer fame (infamy?) sold Mercs in the seventies in competition with the official importer, Normand.


Michelle & Booth	Booth and Kate	Myself with Kate