Take a look at the photograph: two kids stare upwards, mesmerised it seems by who knows what, one of them a baby, propped up at the back to stop her falling off the chair and the other, slightly older, maybe two, neatly dressed with socks pulled up, almost to her knees.

Both are dressed in white giving them a cherubic look while they clutch a toy, or maybe a book, although these are forgotten as they gaze with fixed focus into the distance.

I love this photograph. It has been in the family since the day it was taken in Dublin in 1923, hanging in one of the bedrooms in the old Spender home in Somerset until my mother died in 2017 when it was passed on to me.

“This works because this would have been a typical baby photo in those times,” says Tamarind Spender who is not only my niece and Veronica’s oldest grandchild but also a highly respected photographer in Guelph, Canada, specialising in babies and children.

“It’s well composed and well lit. Their outfits coordinate. It’s beautiful,” she adds.

Findlay Kember is no relation but my work colleague at Agence France Presse where he is the Paris bureau’s photo chief. He is also a fine photographer in his own right.

“That’s a lovely photo,” he says with a south of England drawl that hides his Scottish roots.

“It really works because of a lack of self-consciousness. They’re really in their own world and this captures that moment in life and time. The photographer is also clever in giving them something to hold: in portraits folks never know what to do with their hands.”

Veronica was 94 when she left us which meant we were able to view almost the entire span of her life in photos.

WHO WAS MARY COOKSON?

I spent many years thinking that Veronica was the older of the two subjects with her younger sister Angela taking the chair. However, a quick search on the internet shows that Werner & Son closed their office at 39 Grafton Street in Dublin in 1923, just months after the birth of my mother on January 11 of that year.

So that mystery was cleared up quickly although it launched an avalanche of derision from my siblings who were quick to inform me that it was “obviously” Veronica with her elder sister Mary, born in 1921. I should have known better.

These were the two eldest children – and the only ones born in Ireland – of Reginald and Dorothea Cookson who had married in 1919. Reginald had been wounded in the Somme, losing an eye, and was then sent to keep the peace in Dublin. At the end of the First World War, he stayed to study medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons. When this photo was taken he was still a student.

Dorothea was the daughter of a Church of Ireland vicar in Pomeroy, County Tyrone which proved problematic when she and Reginald decided, shortly after their marriage, that they would both become Roman Catholics. They would go on to have six children in total with Angela, Gregory, Philip and Edmund all born in England.

Mary, the eldest, was by all accounts a gifted musician; even as an old lady my mother was in awe of her, perhaps still slightly resentful that she could never match her sister’s brilliance on the piano. Mary played numerous recitals around the Bristol area, their home after 1925, and gained a place at one of the great schools of music.

The Conservatoire de Paris had been founded in 1795 and remains one of the most prestigious schools in the world. When Mary won her place, the teaching staff for the piano included Yves Nat and Marguerite Long, a great friend of Marcel Ravel, Claude Debussy and Gabriel Faure, and the first women professor at the Conservatoire. Lazare Levy was also on the staff although world events would force him out of the school for a few years.

It was those world events that meant Mary never got to Paris: she won her place when she finished school in 1939. Weeks later, the Nazis invaded Poland. Mary stayed in England and joined the WRNS while Levy, a Jew, had to duck and dive for his life once the Nazis arrived in Paris in 1940.

We don’t know much about what Mary actually did during the war. All we have is a record of her service in the Western Approaches. Her first call was Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire where she served with HMS Skirmisher. This was a shore-based centre where the WRNS engaged in what might broadly be termed ‘signals’, working on radar and cypher as the base oversaw movements in the Haven.

From Wales it was up to Scotland, Dundee in fact, where she served with Unicorn II, a 46-gun Leda-class sailing frigate built in 1824, which operated as a depot and reserve training ship.

Sight of one unicorn may be considered a happy fortune but having two of them in the fleet was one too many. Unicorn II, which for many years had been the only Unicorn, was later renamed HMS Cressy to avoid confusion with the younger ship.

In February 1942, Mary moved south to HMS Raven, a shore-based air station in Eastleigh, Hampshire which was a vital ground and air training centre for the Fleet Air Arm. She was only there for a month , however, before being moved to another Fleet Air Arm centre in Yeovilton, Somerset.

This would have suited her well as her parents and siblings were still based in Bristol with a small weekend cottage just outside the city at Blagdon in the Mendips. Veronica, meanwhile, had to finish her schooling at Clifton High School for Girls amid the Blitz before joining her sister in the WRNS.

From June 1943, Mary was further west at HMS Forte in Falmouth, Cornwall where she was indeed joined by Veronica who came across from HMS Vulture at St Merryn some 30 miles away. They were there when the D-Day preparations and operation got underway.

Mary was discharged on “compassionate grounds” in 1945 but somehow still turned up in Haifa, which in those days was in Palestine, around VJ Day on August 15. While she was there she met a young Royal Artillery officer called Robert Harris, or Bob. They married and had one son John who followed the Royal Navy route by becoming a submarine commander: he also happens to be my godfather.

John was just two years old when Mary tragically died of colitis on January 27, 1951 at the age of just 29: he has no memory of his mother, just a handful of snaps.

As for the photograph of the two small girls, it was taken by Alfred Werner, whose parents Louis and Augustine had set up the studio in Leinster Street in 1864, right at the dawn of the magic box. Alfred was born three years earlier in 1861 and took over the business in 1886, moving it to Grafton Street.

Celebrated for his artistic approach, frequently using platinum prints, he became a prominent early portraitist, notably shooting the Chief Secretary of Ireland Arthur Balfour in 1889 and four years later the Irish nationalist Maude Gonne: this was a life-size portrait that won him a Premier Gold Prize at the world prize at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

None of those is so precious, however, to us at least, as the photo of the two sisters from 1923.

Barney Spender @2026