British actress reminisces about her days in Cyprus

Call the Midwife star Jenny Agutter was home for the Christmas holidays in Nicosia when intercommunal violence broke out in December 1963

British actress Jenny Agutter was living in a flat in Nicosia during the bloody Christmas of 1963 which saw the start of intercommunal violence in Cyprus, before her family moved to Dhekelia following a night-time shooting.

In a recent interview with the Daily Mail, the now 69-year-old star of the popular British TV series Call the Midwife, reminisced about her life on the island where she stayed from the ages of nine to 16 with her British army officer father, mother and older brother.

“There is still an echo for me of those days in Cyprus,” said Agutter, who now lives with her husband in Cornwall.

“I remember going to Greek and Turkish weddings with heavenly food, picnics up in the mountains and sailing in a boat built by dad and his friends,” she added, as she remembered the days she used to go snorkelling looking for “bits of history” from the ancient, submerged city of Salamis.

Years later the boat ended up on the beach as a refuge for a homeless person, said the star of the 1960s children’s classic The Railway Children.

But it was not all island paradise, Agutter told the Dail Mail looking back to the days after her 11th birthday on December 20, 1963. Then, her family was still living in a flat in Shakespeare avenue near the green line in northern Nicosia. It is the same street where the British High Commissioner’s residence was located and which now acts as its Turkish Cypriot office.

The address remains “fixed so vividly” in her mind, the actress said, speaking of the flat situated on the first floor of a colonial building. Agutter was there during the Christmas holidays as she was attending a boarding school in England since the age of eight.

“That Christmas was amazing, and then something changed,” the actress said.

This was the year the troubles reignited between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots, three years after independence. Between December 21, 1963 and August 10, 1964, dozens of Greek and Turkish Cypriots were killed, while more went missing, presumed killed.

“My brother and I noticed adults were being very peculiar and hush-hush. We had an inkling something was going on, but no one wanted to address the subject.”

This was until one night Agutter was woken by the sound of gunfire.

“I went to get my father, who insisted I was dreaming. But we went to the front door and it turned out I had been right – there was shooting outside. Dad said, ‘Everyone flat on the floor, lights out!’”

The following morning her family loaded up the car with what they could take, including the cat and dogs. The location became a “no-go area”.

“We moved temporarily to my father’s office in the Greek part of town – leaving behind everything in that wonderful home.”

Then, her father was offered a modern house in the British base of Dhekelia, where they stayed until they left the island when the actress was 16.