Freda Bedi
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  • The Lives of Freda
  • Excerpt
  • Blog
  • Photo Gallery
  • Video Gallery
  • Get In Touch
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​THE LIVES OF FREDA: THE BLOG

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'She Bought a New Dress to Meet Nehru'

2/20/2019

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Freda Bedi never came back to make her home in Derby after she headed to Oxford University. But Derby kept a watchful interest in her - and on occasions she wrote for the city's daily papers.

News took a while to travel back then. By the time the Derby Evening Telegraph put on its front page news of Freda's imprisonment in Lahore in 1941, her sentence was almost over.
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A few years later, it was Freda's mum who was making the news. She had received a surprise invitation to meet independent India's new prime minister - and Freda's friend - Jawaharlal Nehru.

'Mrs Swan's proudest moment came when [Nehru] stopped at her table and shook hands with her.' This is from the city's morning paper, the Derby Daily Telegraph, on 25th October 1948:
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The Lives of Freda: 
​the political, spiritual and personal
​journeys of Freda Bedi


by Andrew Whitehead
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Speaking Tiger, Feb 2019, ISBN 978-93-88070-75-1
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Look a Singh!

1/22/2019

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​Kalwinder Singh Dhindsa from Derby has written this poem about Kabir Bedi and his Derby-born mother, who married a Punjabi Sikh.  When Freda was born in Derby, in 1911, it had no Punjabi population at all - quite by chance, it now has a large and prominent Sikh community.
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A Blue Plaque for Freda Bedi?

1/13/2019

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All three of Freda Bedi's childhood homes in Derby survive - which is remarkable for a city which has been knocked around more than a bit. But she's not well known in her home city - after all, she never returned to live there after her years as a student at Oxford - and there's no blue plaque or tribute to her. I do hope The Lives of Freda may help to redress that.
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She was born on Monk Street, above the watch and jewellery shop run by her father. When last I was in Derby, the building was a tanning studio. Although the family moved from here when Freda was still a baby, this is the best option for a plaque. Let's hope it happens.

The family moved to Wade Street in Littleover, a move up the social ladder. Freda had keen memories of the trees in the back garden and - unlikely as it seems now - rural walks with her brother over to Mickleover. Her home was called Wade House. 
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Freda's father, Frank Houlston - who died in the First World War - is named on the war memorial nearby in the grounds of Littleover parish church
Freda's mother at some stage inherited money - or perhaps it came from her second husband's family - and the family designed and built a much grander house on Keats Avenue in Mickleover. This was close to the golf course, where Nellie was one of the most accomplished women members.
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And what would the blue plaque say? Well, perhaps something like this -
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    The Lives of Freda

    - a blog about my biography of Freda Bedi

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    Andrew Whitehead

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