Meeting the Chief
Alan Kingshott is the Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London , the Head Beefeater , and I was lucky enough to be introduced to him trough a mutual friend . Having spent nearly 20 years at the Tower I caught up with him as he prepares to hang up the uniform for the last time .
Tell us a little about your childhood ? I was born in Newhaven in Sussex in 1952 and I lived on Western Road . I went to school in what is now a comprehensive school , Tideway School and I lived there up until I was 15 . As a boy I joined the army cadets in Seaford so that is really how I got into the idea of joining the army . When I left school at 15 that is when I moved and joined the army .
So even from a very young age you knew you wanted to join up ? Yes I think I was 11 or something like that . You know it is a funny old thing making your mind up to what you are going to be when you are so young but my parents actually split when I was quite young . My dad got custody of me and my two brothers and he had to go out to work so we were pretty much left to our own devices . There is a very thin line between good and bad , you know , especially at that sort of age , an impressionable sort of age and a friend of mine said how do you fancy joining the army cadets . I said well ‘ let ’ s give it a go ’.
There was a dear old chap there called Mr Berry , Captain Berry , and he lived in Seaford he sort of saw us coming in and said “ so you want to join the army cadets do you ?” I said “ well yes I am going to give it a go if it is alright ”. So he showed us the range , gave us a . 22 rifle and showed us how to fire bullets at this target . Well of course , as a boy of that age I thought this is great fun . That introduction to that one guy changed my life from that point because from then his guidance through the army cadets and that interaction with other kids was really the stone that was set for me to join the army . I have always been grateful to Captain Berry for all of that . My dad said that I should get to grammar school and do that first and then think about joining the army but I did not pass my 11 + anyway ( laughter ) so that went out of the window .
So it was the army from an early age , which regiment did you end up in ? Well I joined up in 1968 . At that point you do not know what regiment you are going to go into . When I went for selection to join the army I went to Brighton , it was in Queen ’ s Road , just down from the station . It was the army recruitment office on the left hand side there and you go through exams and things like that and they assess as to what regiments your best suited and if you have got the intelligence to go into it . So and I had the philosophy that I did not want to walk from A to B . If I could ride from A to B that is better that is the regiment I am joining . But I was fortunate to be able to join the Armoured Corps . So that was in big tanks like Centurions and so on . So that restricts you , in those days , in 1968 there was only 21 armoured regiments but Bovington Camp was the armoured regiment boy training school if you like . My dad drove us down to the Bovington Camp near Lulworth in Dorset and he gave me a five pound note , which was a lot of money in 1968 , and there I stayed for two years . You go through a training process and you go back to school again but you go through a military learning process .
I had to learn my trade training to become a tank gunner , an operator , a driver and so on . So you have to go there to learn all those things and after about a year you are then encouraged to join a regiment , one of those 21 regiments within the Armoured Corps . And it really depended on where you lived as to what regiment you joined because they were sort of countybased . So there was nothing in Sussex that was Armoured Corps regiment . The closest we got to it was the Blues and Royals but I did not like the idea of getting on a horse . So I went west and the nearest regiment closest to Sussex was the Royal Hussars it was called but that did not actually happen until 1969 because they amalgamated from two other regiments . But that became sort of my closest county regiment . So I joined that you wore these lovely red trousers as part of your number one dress uniform and so on . It had a sort of glamour to it that