ALTHOUGH he left the village in 1953, Alec MacGuire finds "the long tentacles of Raglan and the Usk Valley" have been catching up with him ever since.

In a letter to the Beacon, Alec writes: "Within two months of leaving the village I stopped on a pavement just south of Euston Station and picked up a modern pink ginger jar showing Raglan Castle in 1792, price 5/-. I have it still!

"Twenty years later in my home town of Wallington in an antique shop I espied a fine line engraving of Raglan Castle, made in 1926 by the Croydon artist Cyril Saunders Spackman. "

Three weeks ago, Alec was looking through postage stamps at an Epsom dealer and found a first day cover addressed to "The Hawthorns, Raglan."

"This week in the same shop," writes Alex, " I spotted a small folded envelope addressed in appallingly difficult handwriting on February 15th, 1849, to an address I decipher as Messrs W Grundy and Davis, Solicitors, Usk, from C Prothero, posted 15.2.1849 in Newport. "

It seems that reminders of Raglan just keep popping up!

Alec's inspirational story is one of triumph over adversity. He was born with a dislocated hip into a family so poor that supper on a Friday was bread and sugar.

Fortunately, he passed to go to Monmouth School in the same year that text books were issued to pupils free of charge.

"A year earlier and I wouldn't have been able to go," he says."

Alec remembers his childhood as full of play and pleasure despite the ominous background of the war.  

"We had all the fields and lanes around Raglan as a vast playground.   The castle was fully open to us boys after singing in the choir on Sunday mornings and we clambered up the towers and walls and hid in the dungeons and passage ways.

"We were got into work early - helping on the farms at harvest time, waiting for the rabbits to escape from the final circle of stalks in a corn field,  weeding in the school garden, potato picking and gathering hips and haws and other fruit."   

At 14 Alec took it upon himself to restart the Raglan Scouts. "They just let me get on with it!" he says.

"We gained the use of the disused Billiards Hall at the end of Wilcae Terrace, a great deal  of public support and ample funds from collecting tons of wastepaper.  

"Brian Lewis joined me in running the troop until 1953 when an adult Scoutmaster was found but for five years we ran a Scout troop of some renown in Monmouthshire, and were complimented on our sense of adventure, our smartness and the achievements of individuals.    

"A fourteen and a fifteen year old would not be allowed such responsibility today."

By the age of 11 Alec, like many of his friends, had small jobs: 

"I earned 5/- a day (25p today) delivering  bread and groceries from Silverthorne' s van over a huge swathe of  Monmouthshire countryside.

"I can remember walking across two fields to local farms, carrying baskets with 14 or so loaves of bread - but it was great fun!"

One of the first boys from Raglan to go on to university, Alec gained a degree in sociology from the London School of Economics. From there he took a post as an Associate Secretary of World University Service, the charity serving students in need.

Afterwards he became a lecturer in a college of education and later taught in a challenging Secondary Modern  in West London and at a Technical School where the pupils complained about being second class 11+ failures.    

"My special achievement was to get them "O" level French for University entry in my 4 term course, which surprisingly worked 100% with about 16 boys."

Writing an article on Mods and Rockers in "New Society" made a name for Alec, earning him an invitation to lecture to the International Congress of Child Psychiatry.

Alec later became the Senior Lecturer in Youth Work at Whitelands College and finally an Examiner in Education, Youth Work and Social Studies in London,  Leeds and Oxford University, when sadly at the age of 41, poor health brought his memorable career to an end.

Alec remains in touch with some of his old friends from Raglan and keeps up to date with local news through copies of The Beacon, which he describes as in "a splendid state."

"Raglan and Monmouth School gave me the preparation to pass into a variety  of milieux  and enjoy the worlds of people, nature, learning, the arts, endeavour and contemplation," he says.     

"I would not ask for a better or a different upbringing and I have so many people to be grateful to in the Monmouth area."  Meanwhile Alec's home in Wallington will go on becoming Little Raglan in Surrey, near to Worcester Park - named after the occupant of Raglan Castle in 1640.