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Contributing Writer
Samantha Heywood is the recently appointed Museum Director and Director of Exhibits at Natick’s Museum of World War II, the most comprehensive collection of related artifacts and documents in the world. Heywood hails from England and formerly was Director of Public Programs at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Heywood got into the museum business by accident. Her father was a professor at an arts college, and her mother taught art to colorblind students and owned her own business. An only child, Heywood was encouraged by her parents to “do what makes you happy.” But teaching must have been in her blood, as Samantha herself became a history teacher out of college. She lived in London, but the school she taught at was in the suburbs. She wanted to work in the city, so she interviewed and got a job as an education officer/administrator at the Churchill War Rooms. Her work there inspired her to write, Churchill, a textbook geared to older adolescents.
In Heywood’s version of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” she somewhat proudly offered that there are “two degrees between me and Stalin,” as well as between her and Churchill.
Although she studied ancient and modern history, she prefers the period from World War I onward. When asked what sparked her particular interest in the Second World War, Heywood explained that her family, although not a military one, “experienced WWII in Britain and talked about it ... a lot.” She pointed out that her name, Samantha, means “listener” in Arabic and listen she did. Both of her parents were born during WWII, and her father often referred to himself as a “proper war baby.” Growing up in a small family, Samantha was close to her grandmothers, both of whom were born in Victorian society and died in the age of the Internet, space travel and nuclear weapons. “Both my grandmothers could talk for England,” she said.
Heywood herself grew up in a variety of locations within Britain. When she was six years old, she moved with her parents to the county of Suffolk in the eastern part of England. The flat land provided a perfect venue for airfields, including an American air base where she met one of her best friends. She remembers a strong military presence there in the 1970s and how loud it was living in that environment.
In college, Heywood majored in History and International Relations at the London School of Economics and then went on to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), where she received her master’s degree in Soviet and East European Studies. Timing was crucial to Heywood’s studying at SSEES from 1988-1990. She remembers being “glued to the television,” watching the trial of Nicolae Ceausescu, leader of Communist Romania for 25 years until his execution on Christmas Day in 1989. A lot of her tutors were exiles from Poland, and Heywood recalls the thrill of being in a room with people who experienced modern history firsthand. “It was real and exciting, like a living history book.”
Although Heywood never made it to the Soviet Union when it existed, she has traveled a fair amount, especially during her tenure at the Imperial War Museum. One project she coordinated there ran from 2004-2010 and began on the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII. The purpose of the program was to bring young people and veterans together, not necessarily around what happened, but why the war was important. She brought teenagers, age 14 to 18, to attend major events while still in school. Countries visited included France, Italy, Germany, Poland, the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan. Veterans involved were largely from WWII, but included some from the First World War as well. While discussing this in an interview, Heywood spoke proudly about Britain’s contribution of “Remembrance as a concept.”
Petite and unpretentious, with a twinkle in her eye and an impish grin, Heywood has a variety of hobbies when not at her day job. She reads a lot—history books and historical fiction, as one might expect; but she also has an affinity for “trashy detective stories.” She enjoys going to the movies and art galleries, as well as dancing ballet.
Although not a big television fan, she does miss watching BBC TV. She catches “late night” BBC radio when she can, although finds it a bit disconcerting listening to it in Boston at 7 p.m.
Aside from that, she has not experienced much culture shock since moving across the pond. She has visited the States a number of times in the past and has many American friends, so those factors have made the transition fairly easy for her. When asked about driving on the other side of the road, that surprisingly was a non-issue. “Well, I can’t drive,” she admitted in her charming British accent.
Heywood has also adjusted well to her new position at the WWII Museum and is busy at work on an upcoming exhibit in New York in the spring on Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany before the Second World War.
The museum is located at 8 Mercer Rd. Visitors must schedule visits in advance by emailing museumofworldwarii@yahoo.com. For more information, visit www.museumofworldwarii.org.