Auxiliary Units Intelligence Officer for the Highlands and Outer Hebrides for most of the war, likely starting in September 1940.
He married Sylvia Coleridge, an actress known for Tess, Pride and Prejudice and Dr Who, and their daughter Kate Coleridge was born in 1943 in Inverness, Scotland while her father was Intelligence Officer for the area. She was also an actress. Fiddes-Watt was the son of Edwardian painter George Fiddes-Watt and was a noted sculptor, picture restorer and pre-war Osteopath. He had wanted to train in medicine but went to Grays School of Art in Aberdeen to recuperate after a bout of pleurisy.
At the end of the war he became part of the Bayswater artist colony in the roads around Westbourne Grove and Ledbury Road, living in Fulham.
Interviewed about his restoring work in March 1978 in the Marylebone Mercury he was recorded as a lean, austere man who had been something of an athlete in his youth. His nephew commented "He doesn't say much about himself. But there is a great deal there if you trouble to find out".
Some of his wartime correspondence survives in a Canadian Archive though it is not thought to contain any references to Auxiliary Units.
Unit or location | Role | Posted from | until |
---|---|---|---|
Highlands & Islands | Intelligence Officer | 01 Sep 1941 | 22 Apr 1944 |
Northumberland | Intelligence Officer | 27 Sep 1944 | 03 Dec 1944 |
Painting restorer. Pre war lecturer on literary subjects
He was interviewed by David Lampe for The Last Ditch