Jimmie James - the RAF pilot who landed in Cumbria

It was in 1943, the middle of World War Two, when as a young pilot he took part in a formation fly-past over Shropshire.

Jimmie remembers many other details of his long life very well.

He celebrated his 97th birthday two months after the RAF celebrated its 100th. Yet he seems much younger. Facts, times, experiences and impressions are all still there.

Over the course of his 97 years he has been an RAF pilot, deputy headmaster of Nelson Thomlinson School in Wigton and long-serving district and town councillor - and seems to have forgotten little of it.

He also maintains strong opinions about war, European unity and education.

The Cumberland News and a few national papers sit on a table in the living room. A high-tech computer printer and scanner sit in another room. As we talk it's easy to forget that he's only three years short of 100.

Is there any secret to living so long and keeping all your faculties intact?

"Just keep your finger crossed!" he advises.

"I hope I've lived a reasonably disciplined life. But maybe it's just sheer luck."

When Jimmie first came to Cumbria to take up a post at Nelson Thomlinson, he expected to stay for four or five years, as he'd reassured his wife.

That was 65 years ago. His family lived in Wigton before moving to Bolton Low Houses, where he still lives.

However his own origins were some 6,000 miles further south - in Durban in South Africa.

He was born there in June 1921, the eldest of six children to parents who were teachers, and was named Sidney Ronald James.

He acquired the nickname "Jimmie" in the RAF and has retained it ever since. "My wife called me Jimmie," he says. "Everyone does."

When he was an infant the family moved to Madagascar where his father worked as a missionary.

He was then sent to Britain as a boarder at Eltham College in south London, a school specifically for the sons of missionaries. His mother and other siblings also came back to England in 1939 - but when World War Two began, his father was trapped in Madagascar.

The island was a French colony controlled by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.

"My mother didn't hear from him for three years," Jimmie says. "When he came back in 1946 I hadn't seen him for 12 years.

"My family had a very difficult time during the war."

Jimmie's father became vicar of a church near Southampton but his health had suffered during the war, and he died in 1955.

Jimmie found he was good at history at school and says: "You tend to lean towards a a subject you're reasonably successful at."

But he puts most of his early enthusiasm down to an inspirational teacher.
"He was a Quaker, and conscientious objector during the first war.

"This was the 1930s. The rise of Hitler and Mussolini and the Spanish Civil War were the current affairs of the time.

"He was able to explain them in terms of their historical background."

And Jimmie remains passionate about the importance of history - especially to our political leaders.

"if it's studied properly, history teaches you a lot about what's going on now and what's going to happen," he argues.

"You can see the inevitability of events. You can't foretell the future, but you can foretell the trends."

And it's his overview that persuades him we should be sticking with the European Union.

"The whole European idea was to make sure that the devastation that occurred before doesn't happen again. Now two generations on people have forgotten that.

"I'm a remainer. The way we should have gone was to reform the EU from inside. You can't do that from outside."

Jimmie went to Oxford University to study history, but had already volunteered to join the RAF, so signed up with the university's air squadron. He left Oxford after his first year, completing his degree afterwards.

After a short spell as an instructor he worked in reconnaissance, identifying targets such as the launching sites for the German V2 rockets.

When the war in Europe ended Jimmie was due to go to the Far East. But when the atomic bombs ensured Japan's surrender his squadron was told to stay in Germany.

What he saw there had a profound effect on him. "The destruction in Germany was far worse than it was in Britain. There was no comparison. It was rubble everywhere.

"The East End of London was hammered, Liverpool and Coventry were hammered. But many places were untouched.

"In Germany you saw place after place destroyed. There had been the air bombing and then the war on the ground."

He adds: "There isn't really anything glorious about war. It's murderous and miserable.

"Storytellers and filmmakers make it into an adventure with a happy ending.

"I would never denigrate anybody's heroism. But behind the glory there's a pretty grim reality.

"It's innocent people who suffer, people who weren't able to do anything about it."

It was through the RAF that Jimmie met Joan, an officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, or WAAF. They married in February 1946 and he returned to Oxford as a married man, finished his degree, and then stayed an extra year to train as a teacher.

His first job was teaching history at a large grammar school in Brighton. Then the opportunity for promotion came up - head of history at Nelson Thomlinson School.

Joan, who died eight years ago, was a southerner and Jimmie recalls: "She didn't like it here at first.

"I said: 'Don't worry, in four or five years we'll move on again.'

"Eventually she loved it."

And so he's been here since 1953. The couple had a daughter, Toni, and son, Ian, who also attended Nelson Thomlinson, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

The school had just gone co-ed when Jimmie started there, and in 1969 - by which time he was deputy head - it went comprehensive.

Some of his former pupils included newsreader Anna Ford and writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg - one of several who followed in his footsteps to study history at Oxford.

Jimmie remembers him. "He was bright. I thought he would probably go into the arts and write."

But he points out: "He wasn't the only one. There were quite a lot of bright, able pupils in that period who went on to be quite distinguished in their professions.

"We were as good a grammar school in the north of England as there ever was."

So does he regret that it went comprehensive?

"I'm not holding out for grammar schools," he insists. "I think reform had to take place.

"But it was done too fast. Politicians want results quickly, but things take time.

"I think comprehensive schools, properly introduced, properly funded and properly organised, are the right way."

After five years here Jimmie felt he should get more involved with the community. So he became secretary of Wigton Congregationalist Church - now the United Reformed Church - and a member of Wigton town council. He stayed on the council for 43 years.

"I think as a schoolmaster you should be involved in the community," he explains. "You need to know what's going on in the area from which your pupils come, and get to know the parents and grandparents.

"I don't say you have to live above the shop. But I think being involved is important."

He adds: "When I was coming up to retirement I thought I'd have more time, so I stood for Allerdale District Council." He served for 20 years as an independent, from 1979 to 1999.

But teaching history was the day job. An era that particularly interested him at university was the French Revolution, though it didn't feature much in his teaching career.

"In the syllabus I liked 17th century British history - the civil war, Cromwell, the Restoration. There's a lot of interesting stuff then."

In a TV programme about his life three years ago, Lord Bragg spoke of the enormous influence Jimmie had on him.

Does he see himself as the sort of inspirational teacher that he'd had at school 80 years ago?

"I couldn't say that about myself. But a teacher's job is not so much to teach people as to inspire them to learn.

"I don't think you teach people very much.

"But if you can inspire them, they'll quickly learn more than you."