I am Patrick Markham, 4th grandchild of Basil Carl Riegels.  My grandfather felt that he had a sufficiently interesting life that he should publish his story.

He began his project by recording his memories onto cassette tapes in order that when finished, this could be transcribed into print; his autobiography. There are twelve tapes of an hour each.  My grandfather never completed the project.

Basil Riegels died in May 1980.  We have the tapes.  I guess I listened to some of them back when I was twelve or thirteen years old. Maybe I wasn’t really that interested. And that’s it.

In the autumn of 2014, I set myself the challenge of transcribing my grandfather’s tapes.  I will publish them here at basilriegels.co.uk as I make progress through them.

Who knows what we will discover on this journey.  Let’s see…

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Update: After transcribing about half of the tapes, life got in the way and I moved on to other things.  Now, in the Spring of 2018 I have once again returned to the project.  The first tape is published and I am currently working on supporting research.

Update: After another long break, more work takes place on the tapes from the beginning of 2020.  Four more tapes are published.
A visit to Hampstwaite takes place in the February and photos are taken.  The final transcript is completed in May.
Work continues with tidying up and surrounding research and publication.

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In the longer term, when this stage of the project is complete, I hope I might be able to gain the interest of an author who will rework these transcripts and publish a Biography.  Who knows?  It may even inspire a movie!  For now though, the work will remain here on the internet… something that my grandfather could never have imagined.