The rather thoughtful, perhaps wistful, young man in the photograph is my paternal grandfather, Edwin. He gazes benignly at the camera, his slightly wavy hair neatly trimmed and parted, clean shaven, a slight smile reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. He wears a jacket, and we can make out a waistcoat plus what appears to be a knitted vee-neck jumper. There’s a handkerchief in the jacket breast pocket, and a neck tie with fancy geometric pattern is neatly knotted over a collar stud.

Edwin was born in 1901. I don’t know when the portrait was taken, but it’s likely some time in the 1920s or early 1930s.

Edwin, or Ted as he was known to family and friends, is a distant figure for me. I was only 10 or 11 years old when he died, which was in the mid-1970s. In his latter years Ted worked as a gardener, and it was doing this job, out in fresh air and among growing things, that he suffered a heart attack and died.