Dr J H Ross of Overbury Road, Hereford, tells of New Radnor village doctor’s film star wife (From Hereford Times)

Dr J H Ross of Overbury Road, Hereford, tells of New Radnor village doctor’s film star wife

7:00am Wednesday 8th February 2012 in Letters

THE film Resistance, about the occupation of Britain by the Germans in the 1940s, has created considerable local interest as it was filmed in the Olchon Valley near Longtown, starring Michael Sheen.

I wonder how many local people remember the film It Happened Here which was partly staged in New Radnor.

Kevin Brownlow, aged 18, and Andrew Mollo, 16, spent eight years making it. It started as an amateur effort but became professional and was released in 1966. Similar to Resistance, it was about German occupation of Britain and the resistance movement in New Radnor.

Pauline Jobson (née Murray), wife of Richard Jobson the doctor in New Radnor, was the heroine in the film.

She was a nurse who had never acted before but was remarkably good as a nurse who became a member of a resistance group. Her performance was much praised but she never acted again except in village plays.

Andre Brownlow had met Dr Jobson in 1957 when the latter had come to London to receive an award for an amateur film.

Brownlow described Jobson as ‘a sort of Renaissance man, brilliant in a dozen fields’.

He certainly was extraordinary; a family doctor much loved by the people of New Radnor.

He was not very knowledgeable medically but endlessly kind to his patients, always available, sitting up with them at nights and driving them into Hereford hospital if necessary.

His only feature which upset patients was that he was always carrying in his arms a small dog, even into their bedrooms.

He was avery good artist and amateur cinematographer, played the clarinet well and had made a model steam engine which ran round a track in his garden.

Once when I, a hospital doctor, went out to see a patient with him, I had to join him in his four wheel drive car as we had to go up a track deep in snow.

At the house I found that my stethoscope was not in my bag and had been left in my car.

I asked if I could borrow his.

He apologised, as he had lent it to amateur dramatics in the village three weeks before.

DR J H ROSS, Overbury Road, Hereford.