100 years ago.

Mr R Hardy, Sydenham Place, Newtown, writes us that he has received a letter from his son, of the 4th Dragoon Guards, who was wounded at the battle of Mons, and is now a prisoner in Belgium. The bullet had been extracted from his foot and he writes that he is now going on well, and that the Germans are treating him fairly. Mr Hardy has another son in the Grenadier Guards, from whom he had not heard since he left Wellington Barracks; a son-in-law from whom he has not heard since the war started, a son who has joined Kitchener's Army, and another son, who, having put in eight years' service with the 4th Dragoon Guards, is now a National Reservist. M K Foster, the Worcestershire cricketer, has been appointed second-lieutenant in the public school special corps camp at Epsom, which is intended for those who are waiting commission in the Army.

Malvern Gazette, October 2, 1914.

50 years ago Dr A P Rowe, former head of the Telecommunications Research Establishment - now RRE - said on Monday that Sir Winston Churchill's war memoirs gave credit for the invention of Oboe, one of the most important radar devices of the Second World War - to the wrong man. Dr Rowe, who was speaking to members of Malvern Rotary Club, said that Sir Winston's book, The Second World War, wrongly ascribed the credit for Oboe to Lord Cherwell. Lord Cherwell, he said, opposed the scheme. The real inventor was Mr A H Reeves, a research scientist now with Standard Telecommunications Laboratories Ltd, who worked at Malvern during the war as Principal Scientific Officer at TRE. "He was finally awarded the OBE," said DR Rowe, "but it is a sad thing that to members of the public this man, the inventor of one of the major radar devices of the last war, should be virtually unknown and unacknowledged."

Malvern Gazette, October 2, 1964.

25 years ago.

After a swimming pool-less summer, Malvern looks like being without its new 'Splash' for school half-term. The £2.8 million indoor pool, built on the site of the town's open-air pool , was expected top open at the end of August. Now both council and contractors are denying that they are to blame for the hold-up. Mr Michael Prenderghast for Clifford Barnett, said :We would like to get it open as quickly a s possible and from an operational point of view it is ready and s could be open in a matter of house of the council's acceptance. The council's secretary and solicitor, Mr Paul Graham, said that there are still quite a long list of outstanding features. "The majority are minor but some are more major, required by the Health and Safety Executive. He said he could give no undertaking that the pool would be open in time for the town school children on half-term holiday this month.

Malvern Gazette, October 6, 1989.