Catherine Black (1878-1949) MBE, was born in Ramelton. She trained as a nurse in England and worked in the slums of Whitechapel, at the Somme in World war 1, and as King George V’s private nurse in the last 7 years of his life. Her memoir ‘King’s nurse Beggar’s nurse’ was published in 1939 and there’s a copy in the library at Buckingham Palace. This one-woman play is based on that memoir.
She is coming to the end of her remarkable life. She has been exposed to the best and worst of humanity, and has always focused valiantly on forgetting the latter. At last she realises that the past doesn’t go away, and that the only way to forget is to remember.
