It’s become a historical trope, not to mention a clever marketing ploy, to use forgotten in book, article, blog and documentary titles, whether actually warranted or not (Google ‘forgotten history’). It’s catchy, pithy, and excites curiosity. In the case of Ralph Hale Mottram (1883-1971), one time Lord Mayor of Norwich, it’s actually deserved.
Even the First World War centenary was not enough to generate a buzz. No biography. No new editions of his wartime books. No conference in his name. Nope, nothing, other than a blog here, a laudatory newspaper piece there,[1] not a peep. Indeed if a quizzical look appears on your face; if your lips silently enunciate Ralph-Hale-Mot-tram under your breath, ‘Yes, I’ve heard that name before – but where?’; you’re surely in good company.
An employee of Gurney’s Bank (Barclays, from 1895), where several generations of Mottrams had made a living, young Ralph dabbled in poetry in the pre-1914 era. A bachelor, privately educated, fluently French (his mother insisted on schooling and vacations on the continent), and a congregant of the progressive Unitarian Octagon Chapel, Mottram was a fairly typical Kitchener volunteer, trading a reasonably comfortable existence for khaki in 1914.
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