During my time in the Missouri-London Reporting Program, Autumn 1981, I didn’t know for sure I was writing important history, but I knew the topics were very interesting, and the people possibly very famous.

One story I had published then was about the impromptu meeting between the Catholic Cardinal of England, Basil Hume, and 50 IRA protesters. They met in his rectory at Westminster Catholic Cathedral in London, in September of that year, I believe, though I don’t have the exact date in my story, and no longer have those notes. The protesters included brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, of IRA hunger strikers in the Maze Prison of Northern Ireland. They’d protested the day before at 10 Downing Street, which I covered, as well. My story for the Columbia Missourian a couple of weeks later, dealt only with their meeting with the Cardinal, and the five famous demands the hunger strikers were making.

Also that September, Sally Soames, a Sunday Times photographer, gave me the address of a black-and-white printing firm of note, Grove Hardy Ltd. The reporting program’s moderator, John H. Whale, also worked for the Sunday Times, and Ms. Soames had heard I was looking for a top printer.

I didn’t think anymore then about the slip of paper with that address on it, 2 Burrows Mews off Ufford Street, because I’d already lined up photo-processing with a couple of different shops – my black-and-whites were being done by Prem Olson, and my colors were being done by a shop near the Angel, I believe.

After I’d covered other stories that semester – including interviewing the top director for the only professional Palestinian theatre troupe anywhere then, Francois Abu Salem of El-Hakawati; reporting on the Camden Jazz Festival featuring the Archie Shepp Quintet with Charlie McGhee on trumpet; interviewing the painter Erica Daborn; reporting on the famed Almeida Theatre in its infancy; interviewing Rudi Christopher, a Paralympic Champion in two events, despite spina bifida; reporting on a pain relief conference; and researching Asian-Indian immigration; I was looking for one last report to hang my hat on for the semester.
In late November, I was talking with Prem about that situation, and he said he knew of a photographer who had very good stories to tell about his pictures. I asked if he was an excellent photographer, and Prem said, ‘Well, he’s at least a very good photographer.’ I asked the name of this man, and he said, ‘Hardy, Bert Hardy.’