Today is the 23rd April 2020, and it would have been Fred Jeffs’s 101st Birthday.

Episode 4 of Fred Jeffs: The Sweetshop Murder is now released to coincide with this anniversary.

I started working with the team on this Episode in the summer of 2019, and I am sad to report that in the time since the recordings were originally made, we have lost two family members whose recollections of Fred and the shop inspired so much of my fascination for this story, and fuelled my desire to render it for posterity.

Therefore, it seems fitting to dedicate this Episode to my Aunty Mary Patricia Lord – (née Rose, 1931-2018) and her younger brother, my dad, Michael John Rose, (1937-2020)

The above picture of the two of them with my Nan, Alice, accompanied my grandad, Douglas Rose (Fred’s brother) throughout his war years as a POW. Fred had been captured at Dunkirk, in 1940, and Doug captured in Crete, in 1941. After several years in their respective camps in Poland (Poznan & Bleckammer), the brothers found themselves together in confinement in Stalag VII, (Moosburg) following notorious Death marches endured as the Germans retreated from the advancing Red Army.