Doris's Blowg!

Pope John Paul II 1920-2005

2006-01-26T14:04:00.000Z

Literature student, enforced stone-quarry labourer, poet, priest, bishop, cardinal, playwright, pope

There was ever a bed-room held over at Bunting for Kristmas (as my whole family used to call dear old Karol (or John Paul II, as he was known to the rest of the world), although he came close to occupying it but once. Old Boy (my Romish grandfather), had had his horoscope taken in 1921, and it had foretold of a papal visit to Bunting. Old Boy is reputed to have sobbed like a child with emotion for weeks, and spent most of the rest of his rather sad life on the Catholic side of the estate's rare double-naved church awaiting the visit. The chosen bed-room was re-decorated four times a year, and when his race was nearly run, Old Boy summoned Reason, his solicitor-at-law, and made provision in his will for a small staff in perpetuity to ensure readiness for the visit whenever it should come. Grandmother Banting (who came of one of our country's oldest Anglican families, but who adored Old Boy notwithstanding his Roman leanings) rather resented the giving away with both hands of packets and packets of money to what she saw as a folly of the largest sort. Anyway, many years passed, money dwindled, and both Old Boy and Grandmother Banting were but memories, when during the October of 1982 news came up to the big house that the current incumbent's motor-truck (known as a 'pope-mobile' I understand!) was broken down at one of the gates of the estate and caught up in drifts of snow. I assembled the staff in the still-room (then quite the warmest in the house), and ascertained which amongst them was of persuasion papist. Spatchcock was duly sent out in goloshes and a mackintosh, with a message in a bottle (should he perish en route, I didn't want melting snow to smudge the ink and obscure the message) asking Kristmas up to the house, and telling him that his room was made-up and waiting for him as were his own staff. I didn't add that the room's main feature was now a large water-bucket where the bed used to be, and that his staff consisted of Pelham, the family goat, who could play the first four bars of Onward Christian Soldiers on the piano if positioned at it with a degree of care. I also sent with him a dish of tea and a thermos jug wrapped in Pelham's blanket, in case Kristmas was in need of refreshment, and we all watched as Spatchcock disappeared into the white afternoon. I continued playing Animal Grab with Nanny O, and we counted down the hours by sending our supply of village children out of the room at intervals timed with the card games. When seven children had gone (equivalent to a touch more than three hours of Greenwich time), Spatchcock returned alone, with a message in a different bottle. When Nanny O had smashed the bottle against the fireplace, she brought over a scratch from Kristmas saying that he very much appreciated my kind offer, had enjoyed the tea Spatchcock had so ably delivered, that they had had a long discussion about employment conditions (what Spatchcock could have known about that is beyond me!), that he was sorry not to come to the house but his schedule didn't allow of it, and that he had troubled to remove himself from his motor and had kissed the ground between the gates in honour of Old Boy whose strange tale he knew all about. I read out most of his note to the assembled staff, leaving out the last part as I didn't want Bunting becoming a place of pilgrimage for the country's Catholics, a kind of north country Lourdes. I bought dear Spatchcock's silence by giving him the pope's pail, and a twice-yearly cheese from Pelham, an arrangement with which he seemed more than happy. I wasn't to expend too many cheeses in this manner; Spatchcock had a stroke less than two years later and found himself unable to spill, even had he wanted to. Whoever said the Lord moves in mysterious ways couldn't have been more right! As to dear Kristmas, this was the beginning of a years' long correspondence, despatched between Bunting and the Holy See in bottles, an operation in which the postal service of both countries seemed to take a great deal of pride. My remaining sadness is that I was never to have an audience of the pope, but few are able to claim they have exchanged bottles with one!

Richard Whiteley 1943-2005

2005-10-09T11:59:00.000+01:00

Newspaper delivery boy, 'Varsity' editor, ITN trainee, news presenter, Countdown presenter, Mayor of Wetwang

There are two things that distinguish Nanny O from Nannies A to N (and, as I am given to understand, the rest of her care-worn tribe!). The first is her attraction to the most extraordinary range of activities, and the second her limitless capacity for shaking her curls at someone. Sadly, where Richard was concerned (or Elevenses, as the dear man allowed me to call him, commemorating that glorious afternoon in Chalfont), these two elements of her troubled personality collided in such a way as I felt her forever to be walking on the edge of a knife. Whilst most of Nanny O's pastimes were innocent (including dried sea-weed macramé, rubbers of Animal Grab, the canning of music and the distance-watching of fancy balls through her faithful monoculars), it was when I began to find tie-shaped holes in various stuffs and upholstery around the house (including Grandmother Banting's hand-woven bedclothes!), that I became concerned. When, at much the same time, it became impossible to persuade Nanny O to so much as fetch me a potted-meat sandwich at a quarter-past three on any week-day afternoon, I became suspicious as a bat among birds. I sat Nanny O down, and interrogated her until her her fog-bound spirit was battered to matchwood, and she confessed that she had fallen violently in love with Elevenses, and had been hand-stitching him ties and sending them to the Granada Television Company along with billets-doux scribbled in her palsied hand in the vain hope that Elevenses would honour their love by wearing one of them live on air. She insisted that Elevenses' programme was the finest ever given on television, and I reminded her that she had listened to the wireless for many years without any ill effects, and that perhaps she just wasn't fitted for television. I then pointed out that I knew Elevenses personally, and Nanny O (rather impertinently I feel) asked who on earth Elevenses was. I told her all about Chalfont, and it became apparent to her that I was referring to Mr Whiteley. She twisted like a whiting (whether with jealousy or with excitement I was never to fathom), and I allowed her to go up to the nursery and fetch some oil of cloves to inhale. When she returned she appeared to be feeling clearer, and I dictated a letter to her, which she typed out on the old Smith Premier. I had to choose my words most carefully, as the machine was missing both the 'e' and the 'h', but eventually we had made some sort of sense, although I thought it confusing to be forced continually to refer to the neck-ties Nanny O had been making dear Elevenses as 'cravats'. A response was duly received some time after, which sent Nanny O fizzing all over the house like a bottle of Malvern water. Dear Elevenses did of course remember Chalfont, and promised in its honour to wear Nanny O's neck-tie on a particular date in the October of 1986. At the appointed hour, the whole household (which by then numbered but seven) stood behind me and my grand-son James facing the set, the volume of which had been revved up for benefit of the older staff. By hookey if, in the third word-game round (Nanny O's lucky number), the letters didn't come out in the following order: N A N N Y O R O X. James explained that 'rox' is one of the day's highest terms of endearment (equivalent, I picture, to being possessed of animal vitality), and none of us could help but believe by the glint in Elevenses' eyes, that he had fixed the whole thing!

Luther Vandross 1951-2005

2005-09-20T17:14:00.000+01:00

Pianist, backing vocalist, marketing-jingle writer, devoted uncle

I came to know dear Lou through that loyal but irksome friend of mine Gertie Heneage who, on a whim, and with trunks enough to break a porter's back, worked her passage to the United States aboard one of Cunard's Queens to fulfil a long-standing engagement in a New York night-club. Except, breaking a confidence, she missed the boat at Southampton because she lost time while drubbing a stevedore, and was forced to work on a merchant vessel instead. With no audience for either her stage performance, or readings from 'Gertie from No.30' (her best-selling memoirs; so titled because she had been born in 30 Eaton Square, and grew up in 30 Grosvenor Square), she was forced to pay for her passage by washing dishes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and men's undergarments on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (a task for which she was supplied with industrial strength rubberised gloves!). She was however allowed a day of rest on Sundays. Poor Gertie spent days being bearded by the seamen, but one must assume these simple men came to love her in the end, as when they docked at New York she was cheered off the ship. Later that week, when Gertie was performing excerpts from her show with the Heneage Menage, she saw a party of the seamen with whom she had travelled, and sitting amidst them, like a plum in a pudding, was dear Lou. Americans never ones to boggle when it comes to making friends, by the end of the entr'acte, Lou insisted that Gertie move out of the Waldorf, and in with him. Directly she arrived, she realised that he was obsessed with reducing. He would be thin as a scarecrow one day, and the next plump as a young thrush. Although she was still staying with him, she wanted to avoid an upper and downer so she sent him a scribble on a post-card which suggested that I could help out. So it was that around tea-time one afternoon I received a telephone call from Lou asking me what he could best do. I said I could help by letting him discuss the matter with Nanny O, from whom all my reducing tips come. I explained that before he went anywhere, Nanny O would need to glean some information from him. This she did by taking the receiver in her hands, and having asked him to stand on one leg for her, she left the room for ten minutes or so. Returning, she once again took the receiver, and asked him if he was still there. On receipt of a reply in the affirmative, Nanny O encouraged him by telling him he was doing very well, and that he should not lose heart, as she had already learnt much about him. Then she asked him to repeat the procedure, and left the poor man dangling for another ten minutes. I was only too pleased that the call was his, as using the transatlantic cable was a fearfully expensive business in those days, and Nanny O's tardiness might have bankrupted a poorer man! After ten minutes more had passed, she re-entered the room, picked up the phone, and told him in no uncertain terms to ring back at seventeen minutes past four Greenwich time the following day, as she would by then have a message for him from the spirit of his stomach. I put her to bed after the call (well, one of the under-housemaids did), even though it wasn't yet past six, and she slept the clock round. The next day, at the appointed hour, the bell of the telephone rang, and she told him that she had received the answer via her planchette: he was to try reducing with her renowned 'black' diet. This consisted of only dark chocolate Bath Oliver biscuits for breakfast and fried black pudding for dinner. At luncheon, he was to sit in front of a Royal Crown Derby plate of a specific pattern (Black Avesbury; ever a particular favourite), with instructions to sing his way through any hunger pangs. I am firmly of the belief that although the diet itself seemed not to work, that these 'plate luncheons' were what forced dear Lou into his quite successful singing career. Although future contact was limited mainly to sorting out mistakes at Fortnum's with the Bath Olivers and the black pudding, and visits to Goode's for the occasional replacement of the Black Avesbury plate (which in time Lou became quite superstitious about, and wouldn't travel without!), we were always much fond of each other, and I am devastated to have lost this dearest of men.

Margot Smyly 1911-2005

2005-06-14T09:50:00.000+01:00

Showgirl, wife, mother, model

Ex- as I called dear Margot (for reasons which are just about to become un-veiled) and I were both vying for the same position, and I am ashamed to admit Ex- snapped the job from under my nose. It was those dread early post-war days, and there were three of us thick as sardines in the basement, ground and first floors of our bomb-damaged house on Upper Mount Street. Those servants the war hadn't seen off were domiciled in an old Army tent in the garden that Boy had swapped for a most treasured bibelot, and restlessness was all around us. Perhaps because Boy felt the bibelot's loss so, he twitted me day and night about setting me to work. I stole a march on him by telephoning to an old friend down on her luck who was editing a magazine called Vogue. She happened to mention that they were in the market for a mannequin who could pass for being in her fifties for some new pages they were adding. I was as shocked as if I'd licked a sparking-plug, but Nanny O's kind nursery wisdom didn't fail me. She said that I was rather pretty in a hang-dog way, and that I should remember that charity grows stale as soon as it is taken for granted. I didn't really understand the last part of her speech, but resolved to pay Vogue a visit. I sat to a photographer, and some kodaks were taken of me in a series of outfits, and that was when I bumped into Margot, who was known to my aunts, the Ladies of Lymington. Margot had been at school on my beloved old Isle of Wight, and had received games instruction from Br'er (it was news to me that Br'er would supplement her income in such a way!, and I resolved to have it out with her the next time I saw her). It turned out that we had more than that in common, as Margot was there for the same job. I thought her pretty as paint, but I thought that I had this one stitched up like a kipper. In the end, it all came down to the names. I was also not prepared to work under the soubriquet 'Mrs Exeter', as it was a town I had passed through on only one occasion, and I had felt more than a touch of knock-a-bout vulgarity to it. It was also a place where 'Comrade' Tidworth (my grandmama on the spear side, a Baroness in her own right, and an ardent communist) had had an accident with a brewer's dray, and 'Ex' was not spoken of in the family. Consequently, I decided that 'Mrs Minehead' would be a better name under which to work (Comrade kept a beach house there), but the powers to be at Vogue seemed to think that Mrs Exeter was best, and I couldn't in all conscience put Comrade through that, so Margot took the post. One that she fulfilled most wonderfully I might add.

Ismail Merchant 1936-2005

2005-06-07T11:50:00.000+01:00

Producer, cook, bon vivant, director

When dear old Smail (my name for Ismael; it came about because Turps, the kitchen-maid's cat, sat across an envelope obscuring the 'I' of the dear man's name!) came into my life, it was to become better acquainted with my aunts Br'er and Thom, about whose life he wished to produce a picture. He had heard (quite in error) that Br'er had been raised by a gipsy wet-nurse, and had been cured of her quinsy by the application of a tame bear cub which walked up and down her back like a guard outside the Palace (although obviously not in regimental uniform! The bear used to wear the gipsy's christening smock, an unusually luxurious creation of smocked tussore, and carried a furled umbrella from Brigg's, which it would employ for the sake of balance). Smail had it quite quite wrong: it was Thom, and not Br'er who had been raised in this style. Br'er had unusually been raised by her mother! Smail wanted to meet the Ladies of Lymington nonetheless; Br'er soon took him aback by whispering "do not let us count our chickens before we have them back in the hen coop", and Thom replied with a piercing shout of "Tohu Bohu", which I took to be an equivalent of "Balderdash", until a dear little puppy appeared from the roof of the house, and was lowered in a fisherman's net by their roof-man Tickle. It transpired that Tohu Bohu was the puppy's name, but it was unclear what Br'er's whisper had meant. It was never to be cleared up, as she didn't speak for the rest of the visit, merely sending scribbles across the table on a collection of men's handkerchiefs bearing the initial 'J' in one corner. When her large pile was exhausted, she would cease communication with us, and, according to Thom, she would not speak again until all the handkerchiefs had been laundered. As if this disablement wasn't enough, each of them suffered with a shortening of the leg, Thom's the right, and Br'er's the left, so that both wore one standard shoe, and one surgical one. Fortunately they were only half a shoe size different, so that they could order one standard pair of shoes, and then have the shoe-maker construct one surgical pair. Thom's feet were half a size larger, and thus she suffered like a goose brought up by hens, while Br'er's shoes fitted like a pickpocket's hand. Smail seemed taken with them as a subject, but wasn't sure they'd be interesting enough to the world at large. Not even the film title I provided seemed to convince him: The Ladies Who Lurch.

Billy Smart Jr 1934-2005

2005-05-31T12:28:00.000+01:00

Circus owner, owner of Jersey Zoo and Windsor Safari Park, elephant trainer, property developer, playboy.

Dearest Bunter (Tantivy's not entirely original nickname for Billy; you have to keep to mind that her governess spoke only Welsh!) has passed to the other side then. Had anyone bruited the idea that Bunter would be a staunch friend of the family, Tantivy (my dear old mother) would have laughed till she fell out of her wheeled-chair. However, when the spring of 1960 turned, Tantivy won as a prize in a charity tombola a cheetah cub (the charity in question was a donkey sanctuary based in Frinton-on-Sea, where she had a home, and Tantivy its president - the charity, not run-down old Frinton!). Now, how a cheetah cub came to rest in Frinton lay with an old Colonel in the Welch Fusiliers whose name has slipped. He had received it in error through the post, and had not wanted to return it to sender as he felt it might die by degrees in the hands of the Royal Mail. But he had reckoned without the effect bringing up a cheetah would have on his golf, as he liked to be at the links daily at first screech of cock, and his housemaid refused to milk-feed the cub (she was later dismissed for trying to take advantage of his caddy, Frinton's lamest simpleton, but that's another story altogether!). Consequently he entered Geoffrey as a prize, and Tantivy duly won him. She soon identified the cub as a female, and renamed her Stanley, after her great friend Lady Stanley of Alderley. But the housemaids at Upper Mount Street were no keener to milk-feed Stanley than the Colonel's had been, and Stanley was given to committing indiscretions all over the house. Poor Tantivy was left with a houseful of servants threatening to down the very tools they were clearing up after Stanley with! Drastic measures were called for, and so she asked me to telephone to some circuses, and I set straight to the task, finding Nanny O, and asking her what I should do. She began talking me through the making of a telephone call, but I soon felt the need of a mood drug, and lay down with my head in an Irish linen pillow-slip, which restored me sufficiently to listen to Nanny O at work. She was simply marvellous, and I could now see that we'd won the second war with the Nanny O's of this world, and beggar the GI's! Two days later, Bunter's large motor-lorry pulled up outside the house, was sent to the mews behind the house by Moat (so as not to bring shame on the house), and we made Stanley over into Bunter's care. He was thoughtful enough to send us kodaks every so often, allowing us to follow Stanley's career without having to appear in public at dear Bunter's circus.

Lady Harrod 1911-2005

2005-05-19T10:19:00.000+01:00

Wardrobe mistress, wife, campaigner, committee chairman, mother, secretary of The Georgian Group, president of Norfolk Churches Trust, author.

So Helm's travelling no farther. I called Lady Harrod 'Helm', not because she seemed so very much to know where she was going (although I have never known anyone who hemmed and hawed less!), but because her name was Willhelmine, and I couldn't very well have addressed her as Will! We first met as fellow house-guests of the Dugdales at Sezincote. Also there that same Saturday-to-Monday was dear little John Betjeman, who would twit around the house mumbling, sotto-voce, snippets of poetry, so that it was impossible to tell whether they were his own, or the work of Spenser or Keats. He had a habit of asking of the hand in marriage to young ladies (once an under-housemaid (although this was at a fancy ball, so he can, I feel, be forgiven), and this particular week-end he was busy 'throwing an old slipper' into the back of not only my motor, but also Helm's. I don't know how Helm felt about it, but when he embraced me in the Peacock bed-room, I felt spellbound like a rabbit bewitched by a stoat. Little did either of us realise that we had joined the club known London-wide as 'Betjie's Specials'. It was only when I met Helm for tea at Gunther's that we both realised we were engaged to the same man. Betjie had said to telegraph Yes or No during the next week, and so together Helm and I wrestled the nearest telegram boy to the ground, and while I telegraphed simply 'No Doris.', Helm telegraphed 'No Billa.'. Busy wondering whether poor dear Betjie would know who 'Billa' referred to, on returning to Grosvenor Place, I asked Nanny O to telephone through a Marconigram saying just three words: 'Billa is at the Helm', which I thought didn't gild any gingerbread! Having broken off my engagement, I slept as though a devil had gone out of me. Helm and I were able to have great larks about this as the years went on, even when there was a competitive edge to our relationship. Helm had set up Friends of Norwich Churches, and I Friends of the Flintshire Pubs. Both were in grave danger of disappearing for ever, but Helm got one over on me by bagging the Prince of Wales (the present one, not his dissolute uncle, with whom I had danced as a girl in Mombasa's Muthaiga Club!) after taking Him on what she called a 'church crawl'; I had invited the dear man on a 'pub crawl', but His people assured me that PoW is tea-addicted. Perhaps I should have invited his grandmother.

Mark Boyle 1934-2005

2005-05-12T16:14:00.000+01:00

Scots Guard officer, poet, waiter, painter

So Marc is in a better place; Marc was my own special name for Mark (I find a terminal 'c' somehow much the gentler), who I first ran across in a gallery of modern art called The Ica in 1969 (despite this rather odd name, I believe it operates still, somewhere close to Buckingham Palace (what a muddle for our poor Queen!). I had taken Gertie Heneage (who was recovering from concussions of the brain following a motor smash and who needed distracting) to throw breadcrumbs at the ducks in St James's Park, but she wandered from me, drifted across the Mall, and before we knew where we were, we were in the gallery. I remember a large wall-map of the world, which the blind-folded were poking pins or some such into, in a bid to aid Marc with his latest wheeze: visiting random places on this earth, and forming some kind of fixed impression of what he found there. I never really grapsed his intention, but Gertie seemed to enjoy donning a blind-fold greatly (in fact it afterwards became something of a fetish for her, and she was often to be found about her everyday tasks behind one!). In a coincidence you wouldn't believe outside the pages of Jane Austen, the point where she placed her marker was none other than Banting, Granny Bunting's place. Months later, Marc arrived en famille, and when they located the exact spot Gertie had marked, were disappointed to discover that it was none other than one of Old Boy's Whistlers. My grand-father was in the habit of 'hanging' his paintings on the floor (he was ever an eccentric!). He felt they kept better, and were less likely to be stolen, as any thieves would be carrying torches, and would look directly at the walls through the windows. Old Boy reasoned all thieves retarded, crippled or lame dogs in some sort, who wouldn't think to scan the floor. In the end, Banting was never burgled (although as regular readers will know, it was demolished to make way for the A5413. Sadly, at this point, the paintings being kept on the floor ceased to be such a good idea; Old Boy having taken French leave, this was overlooked, and when they went under the wrecker's ball instead of the auctioneer's hammer, the nation lost manifold great works). Anyway, Marc and family decided not to make an imprint of Whistler's Mother, as they thought she wouldn't have wanted to be hanged; I think she would have approved of Nanny O's nursery-tea though - the Boyle's seemed to!

Mildred Archer, OBE, 1911-2005

2005-05-04T16:03:00.000+01:00

Indian Civil Service wife, textbook author, school-teacher, scholar of Indian painting

Although lying apart in beliefs by the length of a street, there were certain things that Tom and I did have in common (known to most others as 'Tim', a name I simply couldn't abide: too many dread memories; dear Mildred allowed me to call her Tom instead!): she had travelled in a basket on the back of a tribesman of the Naga Hills; I had performed from inside a basket at Speaker's Corner on the back of a surprisingly robust under-housemaid by the name of Brunt (I required the extra height, and Brunt needed pressure on her spine following an accident in the scullery!). But we became fast friends after Tom was appointed to the India Office to catalogue paintings. I would have Brunt put through a call to Tom, motor over to the Green Park where Nanny O would summon up all her might and main, and set us up a picnic-table (erecting a small open-tent if the weather promised rain). Cook would have made the native food of her country (Devonshire), and Tom and I would play pencil-games. Unfortunately, Tom didn't care much for Cook's food, and would usually bring something of her own to eat (although I have always believed that anything tastes better when eaten from Coalport!); I was put in mind of George Eliot's remark, 'when a man wants a peach, it is no good offering him the largest vegetable marrow!' One particularly fine afternoon, towards the end of a rubber of Telegrams, Tom happened to mention that there was a volume of drawings missing, and that she had spent the lion's share of the morning perilously placed between wheeled-racks, but couldn't have found it if assisted by a bear. That night, I telephoned to Boy (my papa), and asked him if he knew anything about it (his grand-father, Old Boy, had been a director of the East India Company, whose archives Tom was cataloguing), and although he couldn't remember anything about the volume in question, but told me that his butter shares were on the slide. Fortunately, his operator, Guilliemot, was listening in, and remembered that bad Boy had sent the work to auction only the week before. Although as busy as a fashionable dentist, Guillie undertook to get the volume back from Foster's, and delivered it to me in the Green Park on my next date with a delighted Tom. It needed some attention: it didn't look as if it had been dusted for two or three reigns!, but as Tom and I played more Telegrams, Nanny O got to work on it with the Irish linen table-napkin, soaked in Vichy water, and it began to come to life. Tom didn't look best pleased when some of the watercolours began to run, but she did complete a set of volumes with my assistance!

Andrea Dworkin 1946-2005

2005-04-29T17:57:00.000+01:00

Waitress, factory worker, receptionist, prostitute, teacher, polemicist, author, partner, friend.

Mercy has been taken from us 'five hours slow of Greenwich', as Tantivy (my mother) used to say of untimely deaths. Mercy was my own pet name for dear old dungaree-wearing Miss Dworkin (how she would squeal when I called her Miss! I would caper round the drawing room in full throat, as Mercy pursued me on all fours; what a particular sense of humour!). She came into my life via my dear old aunts, known universally as The Ladies of Luccombe. They lived a simple life on the Isle of Wight, in a small but charming seventeenth-century round-house called Lyrist's Haunt (the first part to sound like pyre; Auntie Thom would have to leave for a bracing cliff walk if anyone dared sound it any other way! Sometimes she would leave on a Thursday and not have returned by the Tuesday following!). I became firm friends with Mercy, and would time my visits to Br'er and Thom (Br'er an aunt on the spear side; Thom her companion) to coincide with Mercy's various book launches (she had a little-known but most attentive public in the ladies of the Isle). With each new book Mercy and I would celebrate with an evening of pleasure that we agreed to keep as silent as the night at our backs. Moat would motor me down, and in the boot of the Rolls, I would have a trunk packed full to bursting with the clothes of my late Tante Dodo (there seems to be an embarrassment of aunts in this remembrance, but as one of them was dead (not to mention French!), and another not quite an aunt in the strictest sense, I think I shall get away with it!), whose size approximated that of dear Mercy. All of these clothes had been bought of Paris's finest couturiers, and I remember distinctly the night we went out in celebration of 'Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics' (I put the book down wearily before I had finished the title, but I do recall an exceedingly pretty dust-jacket), Mercy picked out a scarlet beaded dress, which could have been made for her! Mercy had something of a reputation for being angry, but slip her into a Worth dress, add the Bunting ruby parures, and you would hardly know her! Indeed, that night the two of us slipped out (with the help of Moat) to our usual haunt, the Glenbrook Hotel at nearby Shanklin. We took to Mercy's favourite wall-sofa where we passed a British sherry (she would sit there and observe, sitting up as proudly as a spaniel who has retrieved his bird!), and then processed into the dining-room, and ate until we were stuffed full as pin-cushions. Once back at Lyrist's Haunt, we would process through Br'er and Thom's bed-room, where they would be passing a string bag of carrots between them (they were rather strict vegetarians, and worked to a strict colour regime. As it was a Friday, it was orange day, always more tricky than green (Tuesdays) where there was a deal more choice!). They would catch up on village news, and the next morning I would leave early, to avoid seeing Mercy returned to her galoshes. Imagine my delight, when in 1990, Mercy published 'Mercy', her second novel. I had Nanny O look for my dedication, but she didn't find it. I haven't read the book, but I believe it has edified some of the staff. Thank you Mercy, and God be with you.

Sir John Mills 1908-2005

2005-04-26T15:14:00.000+01:00

Corn merchants' employee, salesman, song and dance man, soldier, actor, keen swimmer, husband, father.

Oxford Street had made for me (I called dear Johnnie 'Oxford Street' for short, because his first two names were John Lewis!) a copy of his 'Oscar' after I had helped him with his character-part Michael in the picture Ryan's Daughter. What has been a secretly-held compact until now is that Michael was based only in part on the hours of film of brain-damaged patients that Oxford Street observed. The rest of his research took place at Banting, Granny Bunting's house. Oxford Street happened to live south by southeast of Banting, and on the estate was an hermitage, in which resided Childe Roland, our hermit (who would in today's world doubtless labour under the term 'village idiot', and would have been rehoused in an outfit with hot and cold running water; we didn't even have that at Banting in those days, and none of us asked for assistance (other than that of the staff, of course). Anyway, Childe Roland was a perfect dear, although I didn't meet him until I was of age, as he wasn't allowed to cross the ha-ha. Oxford Street would motor over to Banting after lunch, Granny Bunting would equip him with a Jaeger blanket, a pair of gum-boots, her bee-keeper's hat and a large bottle of Condy's Fluid. Quite what she thought Oxford Street would accomplish with the Condy's, none of us was altogether sure, but as she was a great name-hunter, she wanted to be sure of something to tell her friends. He would disappear for hour-after-hour, and then come back and seemed stunned into silence. All we knew about Childe Roland was that he was born on the wrong side of the blanket to the Rolands, and was thus cast out. He had suffered an accident involving a level-crossing and a crate of sardines ejected from a passing mail-train, had refused to be hospitalised, and had been offered the hermitage by my ever-generous grandfather at a peppercorn rent. Oxford Street was as discreet as a Japanese toy, which worked in our favour, as Childe Roland had suffered enough, without being taken out of his comfortable, semi-coma life to be photographed for the picture-papers! Of course nobody actually watched the ceremony in those years, so Oxford Street kindly re-enacted the whole evening at Banting, in a series of tableaux-vivants, which Granny Bunting, so thoughtful, held by the large French-windows in the green salon, so that Childe Roland (enjoying the temporary lifting of the ha-ha rule) could watch through the window. We were all held frozen by Oxford Street's performance; Childe Roland seemingly literally so, as he passed away on that chilly March evening. Even for Childe Roland what an honour to leave us on such a knight!

Harry Huddleston 1910-2005

2005-04-19T13:59:00.000+01:00

Farmer, shepherd, sheepdog handler, sheepdog breeder, poet and radio commentator.

I had been calling dear Harry 'Tupper' for many years before I realised that the tupping they were always talking about on Stauvin's Farm was none other than the business of taking a ewe, and putting her to the ram. I prayed like mustard that I had offended the dear Huddlestons not at all, and so it was. Most others called Tupper 'Black Harry' to distinguish him from a cousin of the same name who also handled sheepdogs in competition and lived in the next dale; Tupper's relative and rival was known as Light Harry, and I was minded of the fierce competition between Nannys M and N (oddly enough also the most distant of cousins!), who overlapped in the nursery due to an oversight on the part of Tantivy (my mother), who wrote with a palsied scribble, and whose instructions in this matter were (I believe wilfully) misunderstood by Nanny M ('Dark Nanny'). She was picking a squabble with Nanny N ('Milk Nanny') over which of them would Brasso the coal-scuttle. Mid-argument, the wretched thing was removed by the nursery-maid, and I got into the most awful trouble for persuading her to hide it from the Nannys. I was sent to Lancashire to the home of my grandmother on the distaff side. She lived quite near to Tupper and dear old Mrs Tupper, and I would wander over a dale or two, and lose hours watching Tupper with Udale This or Udale That (each of his dogs were called Udale Something after a small stream which ended up in the glorious River Lune). I had not only been put in Coventry over the incident of the coal-scuttle, but I was suffering under a lingering form of chilblains after a walk too many in the Green Park. Grandmama imagined that sitting on a dry-stone wall watching Tupper's dogs was good for the coal-scuttle, but awfully bad for the chilblains. However, what no-one knew (and why Tupper and I formed quite the bond that we did), was that on the second time of seeing me, he said that he had been told that one of his Udales (which one eludes; a lovely slate blue collie. Most unusual) had a touch of mild genius, and he would like to see if this was so, and would I have a go? I was shocked to pieces, but gathered myself up, heaved myself off the wall, and before I knew what was happening, Udale Something was wax in my hands, the sheep simply mesmerised, and in the ensuing excitement my chilblains became a distant memory!

Sir Richard Catling 1912-2005

2005-04-12T09:25:00.000+01:00

Textile merchant's employee, colonial police officer, international police-force advisor, security advisor

So Pigeons (as I called dear Dickie (cat(ling) among the ... ) has been taken from us too. Spinach became our connection, but when we first ran each other to ground, it was in the fierce, raw atmosphere of the East End. I was in the docks looking for stevedores to carry Gertie aloft in a tableau vivante I was planning, and Pigeons was looking at boats coming in and out of the Pool, and dreaming about his future in somewhere other than the textile merchants he was then working to. I had some notion in my head to become a clairvoyante at the time, and was working under Madame Fortoffskiya (famous both as a mystic, and for her drop scones, the recipe for which Queen Mary had sat on a whatnot for, and refused to leave without!). She was pioneering a new system involving the creasing of leather in someone's shoes (Mme F, not Queen M). I observed Pigeons' shoes with the utmost care, and foretold that each of the three major creases on the left shoe pointed in a different direction (one worked only on the left, never the right. This led to the method being discredited by Nanny J, who had lost her left leg in an accident when a house-parlourmaid spilt a hot-water-bottle down her in 1928!). One of the creases pointed to the middle east, one to the far east, and one to deepest Africa. I told him so, and blow me if he didn't end up policing in Palestine, Malaya and Tanganyika. It was in the latter that Spinach brought us together again. He wrote to me saying that there was a prisoner called Kenyatta who was questioning his bona fides, and I said that if the whole thing wasn't to turn into green grapes all round, spinach was the answer. The prisoners were hungry, the gound was bare, and Kenyatta was ready and waiting with a spoon and a copy of Mrs Beeton (though how that had made it there, I was never too sure). So I contacted old Mr Sutton, my seedsman, and sent dear Pigeons cases of spinach seed by parcel-post. We were all worried that spinach would be a nine days' wonder, but, thanks to Mrs Beeton, and a raft of delicious receipts, Pigeons was able to keep the peace (and work towards his knighthood), the prisoners had full stomachs, and old Mr Sutton got rid of a hundredweight of seeds he had no use of, and cleared space for his wife's new Morris Oxford!

John DeLorean 1925-2005

2005-03-23T09:19:00.000Z

soldier, engineer, manager, entrepreneur, business consultant, born-again Christian, litigant, husband, lover, father.

Jo-Lo (as I called Zachary (years before the American entertainer (so-called) Miss Jennifer Lopez took to shortening her name in a manner similar) first contacted me when he heard that I had worked with prisoners, because he was setting up something he called Operation Opportunity for the motor-car firm in whose employ he then found himself. They (an outfit called General Motors, I believe), were on the very edge of offering work-placements to ex-prisoners, and I had some experience in this field as I had ministered to some here in Britain, and had found them jobs (of sorts!), in various manufactories, departmental stores and the like (I had also, for a matter of days during the second war been interned myself due to a fearful mix-up over a cocktail waiter in the Embassy, until Nanny H placed a telephone call to dear Neville, and sorted out the whole thing). So, I had ridden on both sides of the wall, and could advise Jo-Lo accordingly. He flew me out there, and asked me to assemble a party of advisors (after much consideration, I took Gertie, and Nannies N and O with me (we had just finished with N, and were running O in at the time) along with an ex-prisoner of my acquaintance, Lady Troobly (pronounced 'truly', and therefore nicknamed Yours) in his company's little aeroplane. What excitement! It was the first time Nanny N had left the earth's atmosphere, and she would never again, as she discovered an allergy to packaged nuts on that flight which was to plague her for the rest of her life (sadly, she lived on for only another five years, dying mere days after being driven past a peanut manufactory in Ashby-de-la-Zouch in a car with the top down; dear Jo-Lo was so generous as to return Nanny N to England first-class on the Normandie (Jo-Lo thought this amusing, as her N stood for Norman, but she wasn't so happy, as she hadn't a word of French). Anyway, our trip passed off beautifully, and although Jo-Lo seemed slightly aghast at the party I had assembled, he soon brisked up (at least in the company of Lady Troobly, whose remaining leg was the stuff of legend, even at 62!). I'm not sure how successful we were in the implementation of his plan, but I completed a particularly fiddlesome piece of crewel work, Nannies N and O wound wool beautifully back and forth, and Yours managed to get out a large number of hands of poker-patience. However, the efforts to which Jo-Lo went to make us feel comfortable (and they were legion!), we still all felt as homeless as chips on a wave, and so as soon as we had made our representations to the board (with Yours simply winning hearts time and again with her tear-jerking tales of imprisonment as an enemy alien in the second war (she had had the misfortune to be born in Turin!), it was feet to the ground all the way to the airport, and our job of work done, we settled back to enjoy the feeling that comes of having improved the lives of numberless (and faceless!) others.

Jeanette Schmid 1924-2005

2005-03-22T10:05:00.000Z

soldier, drag queen (female impersonator), gender realignee, professional whistler.

In this debased world of ours, how many people can claim with veracity to have been talent-spotted by the Shah of Iran? Portrait could rightly claim to have been. Portrait was my own name for Jeanette (né Rudolf): because she was a whistler, and put me in mind of the dear old artist, and his most celebrated work (sadly now languishing in an ex-railway station in Paris if you please!), Portrait of the Artist's Mother. Anyway, I first came across Portrait long after the Shah had taken an interest in her (indeed long after he had a palace to recruit dancers for!), when a good old friend of mine the Baroness von Lipstrell asked me to look into the whistling sensation who was appearing in the cities of Europe as Baroness Lips von Lipstrill. The real Baroness was by way of being shattered by a cabaret artist passing himself off as her, and so sent me to Cairo to find out what was going on. I was at this point in my life tea-addicted, so passed many a painful night listening to the faux-Baroness whistling her way through the canon of European classical pieces. I wasn't in pain on the wall-sofa because of the whistling, but because they had no idea how to make a proper cup of tea. Indeed, they looked askance at me for asking them to fill Dennis, the grey tea-pot I took with me everywhere at that point. It gave any tea therein brewed a particular quality, and I would not allow its confiscation. The commotion thus caused brought Potrait to my table, and he sat down (he was pre-surgery at this point), and we talked of many things. My first question was, had he not thought to consult the Almanach de Gotha before hitting on his 'nom de guerre'? He told me a joyless little story that tore my heartstrings off their pegs, and I could no more feel aggrieved than throw kippers for sport! I told him that I would deal with the real Baroness and her green grapes, and a real friendship was struck up, which was strengthened in later years when one of my direct relatives, my son George, came to me in a hideous panic, wanting to realign his own gender with a left-handed pastry fork. I convinced him that this wasn't the best of ideas, and Moat took us off to Vienna for a few days, where Portrait was then living having gone through such a change herself by this point. She took a great deal of her own time to explain the whole thing using a series of napkins and large skeins of pretty-coloured embroidery thread. It may have been quicker with words, but I remain convinced that nothing could have made it more clear. To Vienna I went with a desparately unhappy George; to England I returned with a carefree Georgina (having got Moat to stop off in Paris for a change of wardrobe). Thanks Portrait, Georgina and I are forever in your debt.

Lady Strange 1928-2005

2005-03-18T15:17:00.000Z

Keeper of the castle, Peeress of the Realm, author, wife, mother, collector.

I first sparred with Night (my name for dear Cherry), in the metaphorical or should I say dramatic fashion, via a scale model of the House of Lords which my grandson had made while away at school. When he returned home at the end of Hilary Term to find his mother had run away with the circus (literally; she had completely lost her head over a performing seal, and spent many happy hours balancing balls on Derek's nose), he descended on me and Nanny O, like the Karivondo over the Aberdares, with his scale model in tow. There was precious little space for it (or him!), but by judicious removing (she would have made a perfect Shore Porter!) Nanny O uncovered a corner for it (not him!) in the old nursery. There Gaga (my grandson), played at 'Lords' (he had also made a 'Commons' game for the staff, but had left that behind in the luggage van), in the vain hope of inheriting his third cousin's title (in the end, it went to a collateral branch of someone else's family, but as we said in 1937, 'disappointment lies in trying to hunt with the hare and run with the hounds'). Anyway, together with Gertie Heneage, we re-enacted the debate for the lowering of the age of consent, a matter in which Gaga had the firmest of interests. I had realised that he had been riding under other rules for some long time, and it surprised me not at all to discover that he preferred tinkering with members of his own sex. While Gaga played the sovereign, Gertie played Lady Strange (who in her innocence opposed the lowering), and I took issue with her, and played Lord Alli (as I am convinced that as an invert himself, he would have argued against Night). Nanny O disappeared slowly in the direction of the pantry to lay hands on an old tin of dark-tan Cherry Blossom Shoe Polish to black me up, but I told her these were modern times, and that I had studied under Stanislavsky in the thirties (I hadn't of course, but such was my adherence to 'The Method', that Nanny O was convinced (or perhaps she just didn't hear me, who knows!), and I feel that not only did I thoroughly convince with my portrayal, but we too won the debate, and with us, there was no recourse to the lower House. Which, I suppose, was fortunate, as it was probably speeding through Clapham Junction at that moment! I did actually go on to meet up with Night at Megginch Castle, where she expressed an interest in having The Borgias stuffed (I'd taken him to get some Scottish air, as he was rather off-colour), and adding him to her collection, but as Lady Ott's parrot remained in rude health, it seemed rather selfish of me to trade his constant carping for the peace and tranquility I would doubtless have enjoyed with him full of kapok (or whatever they use). Besides, I have, since 1941, firmly believed that we can't just not listen to someone because we don't like what they say.

Dave Allen 1936-2005

2005-03-16T16:43:00.000Z

Journalist, Butlin's red-coat, salesman, comedian, amateur artist, friend.

Pack (as I was given to calling dear Tynan) and I first met while I was staying with my good-friends, the de Tynkers, at Tynker's Cuffe, their delicious little house on a bluff outside Drogheda. My daughter was listed to perform at the gymkhana they held there every three years in their demesne (the de Tynkers were firm believers in the crop-rotation system), and Pack (as in pack-horse, although you might have thought I had recourse to a planchette in the light of Tynan's future career as the joker in the pack!) was there to make a report for the journal in whose employ he then was. The Dundalk & Drogheda Argus was a most comforting newspaper - we often used its sport pages to stop up a draughty hole in the housekeeper's room in The Cuffe (by this time there was, sadly, no housekeeper, but as long as the hole was plugged, it remained the most comfortable room in the house). Anyway, the child was mentioned in dispatches by Pack, which I thought was awfully good of him as she had taken no part in the gymkhana (horses tended to bring her to task, and she had instead been carving a complete set of Easter Island figures out of bars of Wright's Coal Tar soap; her goal was one for each bedroom, and she had some way to go). There was a pretty photograph of her (which was never easy, for the child would not sit still for a moment!), under the pithy headline 'Mystery of Easter Figured Out In Soap By Tynker's Girl'. I meant to send a little trug of blackberries to him, but Nanny O forgot who she'd picked them for, and fed them to a sorry-looking stable-lad, and it wasn't until many years later that we ran into each other again. I was sitting with Nanny O in the saloon-bar of the Red Lion in some Northern town (memory, not discretion prevents me from telling you which!) waiting for Moat to find Gertie who had quite disappeared as if into the ether, when I spotted that unmistakeable gait from so many years earlier. I could see he was disguised, but it wasn't at first entirely clear why. His overcoat was more degraded than one of his should be and his buttoned boots unusually scuffed, but it was the unmistakeable way he ascended the bar stool that gave it away. I had seen just that same move in the housekeeper's room at the de Tynkers' not twenty or thirty years since. On first hearing me bark 'Pack' across the bar, he looked as if he'd just clambered out of his coffin, but when he had got his breath back, and his next pint poured, he and I enjoyed a jolly good doubles game of bar billiards with the landlord and his generations-younger mascara-wearing male friend, as Nanny O fended off the advances of a diminutive Belgian with her ear-trumpet. In between shots, Pack explained that he came to such places looking for characters; I'm afraid that was all too lean a night for him!

Alice Thomas Ellis 1932-2005

2005-03-14T10:42:00.000Z

art school student, postulant nun, novelist, columnist, wife, mother, arts centre founder and manager, dog owner.

When I read in Dysh's column last year that she too had forgotten when it was that her husband had fallen like a ninepin (dear dear Colin Haycraft, how I still miss you!), it reminded me of what each had once loved about the other. When she continued, "we had been married forty years but I didn't miss him at all," it could have been me dictating remembrances of my blessed Arthur to Nanny O (which I would have done were she not post-deaf). Then it saddened me that Dysh and I were on non-speakers. I had first come across Dysh at St Dominic's Priory in Kentish Town while taking Gertie to brush up on her Latin (a tongue in which she was getting a little rusty; she wanted practice in case she bumped into the pope again (how, I was never quite sure, as she is allergic to cinctures), while I sat at the back of the place French-knitting socks to keep warm. I had lately relied on a cook called Chambers-West, or Westy as we used to call her (I felt too knee-deep in surnames as it was to double-up a member of staff!). Anyway, Westy rolled off the end of the pier at Shanklin in her invalid chair in 1967 (I had warned her against taking holidays and feel she had only herself to blame). I was in a serious dwindle in those days, and could no longer afford a cook, so I had to get Moat (late Keep) to motor me down to the Dorch for lunch most days. For supper, I relied on a large truckle of Stilton (which had been supporting the three-legged nursery table since before the second war). As George got smaller and smaller (the Stilton), I had to get Nanny O to burn the table, and rely instead on the kindness of members of my extended family, from whom I could usually cadge a meal, ticking my way through an old family tree, until none remained. This moment happened to coincide with running into Dysh, who bore a striking resemblance to a stevedore by the name of Scrutcheon, of my father 'Boy's knowledge (although Scrutcheon wasn't given to wearing Kohl!). We proposed ourselves for luncheon at her filthy old house in Gloucester Crescent and in return she gave me a copy of her book of receipts Darling You Shouldn't Have Gone To Such Trouble (from the first four words of which I drew her name: DYSH), and from which she served baked beans with alcohol. After the communion wine, the alcohol in the beans was too much, and feeling shaken like a medicine bottle after only a couple of bites, I told dear Dysh how much she reminded me of Scrutcheon. With that comment out, I was unable to warm Dysh through again, and I fear we left under rather a cloud. The beans became a favourite of ours - economical and warming as they were. My favourite extra ingredient was a nice old single malt, and Gertie liked sizeable dashes of Green's Ginger Wine. We always found it a trifle difficult to keep the spirits apart when using only one pan, although we did this way hit on our much-copied and never bettered 'Beans Whiskey Mac'; I'd like Dysh to know that this was how she crept onto the breakfast menu of the Royal Yacht!

Major-General 'Bala' Bredin 1916-2005

2005-03-10T15:07:00.000Z

Soldier, teller of jokes, writer of letters, Appeals Secretary for Cancer Research Campaign in Essex, writer of letters, husband, father, husband, father

So old Leghorn's no more then. Well, we did have some precious times together, didn't we. I never could get my head around calling Leghorn 'Bala', like everyone else did, as for me the name was too closely linked with dear Prince Aly Khan's horse who ran like a revolutionist! So, it was time to come up with something else, and although I tried in-Bred for size, it didn't seem to go down too well with his people (who, like mine, claimed forebears on both sides at Agincourt; for me, the Earl of Westmoreland and Comte Henri d'Vent!). At the time when I first met him (1940; more of that to come!), I had been living in Great-Granny Bunting's home Banting (later changed to Bunting; then reverting to Banting, and shortly afterwards pulled to the ground), rearing hens to supply us with feathers for our hats (and a delicious side-line of which was a fresh egg every few weeks (better by far than those dried sort that most of the populace survived on!). Anyway, I used to keep a breed called Leghorns, characterised by a fine head with a single comb. Mine were sprightly and alert, and not prone to broodiness. All were characteristics of in-Bred, and as his initials were HEN, it all seemed so right. Anyway, there wasn't too much time for any of these thoughts on our first meeting, as it was the night of the forces' retreat at Dunkirk, and I happened to have been left behind on a Manx ferry (having got into a nervous stew while in the lavatory). Therefore I found myself in the unique position of being present on the boat on that stiff night! I changed into a steward's outfit, and thought what would Clemmie do in a situation like this to pep herself up? So I went off to find an under-steward to reprimand, and found myself on deck, being questioned by Leghorn, who asked for a drink. Determined not to blow my cover, I lowered my register a notch or two, and copying something I had so often heard, told him that I could not serve him until we were three miles out. Well, shortly, dear Leghorn had us all splitting our sides, and it soon became apparent that I was no more a steward than a stevedore. Still, the dear man was all charm, and I believe took my secret to the grave with him. How I would hoot years later to hear of him relating that "we can't lose the war with people like that about". How many people realised that people like that were cross-dressing, hen-rearing young ladies given to sitting around in frozen country piles with feathers in their caps?

former Queen Narriman of Egypt (Narriman Sadek) 1934-2005

2005-03-08T11:40:00.000Z

King's wife, King-in-waiting's mother, Doctor's wife, mother, Doctor's wife

Dear old Fortnum's has gone then. I called Narriman this, as I first met her when invited in error to her wedding to King Farouk in 1951. They had an odd number of women - which was apparently awfully bad luck in Egyptian culture (I'd say it was bad form in most situations!). It goes like this: I happened to be staying at Sir Ralph Stevenson's insistence at Beit-el-Lord, the Ambassadorial residence on my way through the country, travelling overland with Tantivy and Nanny N (who preceeded Nanny O, 'Boy' (my father) took care of these matters and was quite obsessed about things being alphabetical. Her 'N' stood, I think, for Nuffield). As I recall, Gertie didn't come with us on that occasion as The Heneage Menage had been booked to perform their crowd-stopping revue 'What We Don't Ask For, We Don't Get!' for a three-week season in Godalming. Anyway, we were sitting in the ball-room admiring the staff, having arrived in Cairo the day preceeding the wedding. I had slept the clock round and now felt as if I had bobbed up on to the top of the wave again. We were just waiting for Moat (the chauffeur; his surname was actually Keep, but it was so muddling that it seemed simpler to stick to the name of the chauffeur who preceeded him!) to finish cleaning the carburretors (or some such), and enjoying a reviving pot of tea, when the dear Ambassador rushed in saying that he had received a telephone call from a Bey at Abdin Palace asking if he could lay his hands on someone presentable to sit with a guest whose wife had passed away that morning. Sir Ralph asked me if I thought I could manage it, and it took me just a moment to brisk up, get Nanny N to find Moat, get Moat to find my formal trunk and place it on the ball-room floor (which fortunately enough was one of the only sprung ones in the whole of Africa!), and choose a dress (a simple summery two-piece by dear 'Kiss Me' Hardy). The only other problem remaining was what to give the couple? I rooted around in Tantivy's jewellery box, and found one of her Grandmother Bunting's gold eggs (she took them with her everywhere as they reminded her of the Blitz, which she missed very much). The wedding was sheer delight, and as Moat drove me through the streets of Cairo in Saxon (the Rolls-Royce), we saw festooned above us in pink neon (yes, I know how vulgar it sounds, but remember those were post-war days, and we were all looking for some joy) intertwined letters F&N (Farouk and Narriman). I mistook it for F&M (Fortnum & Mason), and thought that they had provided the catering. How I was looking forward to a nice Bradenham ham, and I was just talking through the tube to Moat about this, when he corrected me. Oh, how very silly I felt. However, when I related this later to the new Queen, she was so thrilled and amused. I am less thrilled and amused to have recently discovered that all the gold wedding presents they received were melted down and made into ingots. What on earth would Great-Granny Bunting have made of the news that one of her dear old eggs was probably squandered on Monte's baccarat tables?

Peter Benenson 1921-2005

2005-03-02T19:49:00.000Z

Press Officer, Barrister, Labour candidate, founder of Amnesty International, decliner of Knighthoods various, Roman Catholic convert

So dear old Screw has sheared off at last. Screw was my special name for Peter, whom I first met at Eton. I need hardly point out that I wasn't schooled there myself: I had a girlish 'pash' on someone who was in Pop with one of my brothers, and met Screw watching a game of fives one glorious summer afternoon. It was the beginning of a lifelong acquaintance of the greatest import. Shortly afterwards, having learned that his middle names were Henry James, I alighted on the leaden nickname Turn of the Screw, which shortened itself to either Turn or Screw, but it was to the latter of the pair of names we became most attached. How funny it is that we both became involved in righting wrongs (even if mine were done on a scale slightly more localised than he did with his delicious Amnesty organisation). Indeed, it is to me that Screw perhaps owed the much-vaunted phrase 'prisoners of conscience', for it was the title of my now-largely-forgotten (and forever, I fear, lost) memoirs of childhood, written about Nurse Conscience, a grim old beldame who kept me and my darling brothers and sisters locked in a small cupboard in whichever house we were in (no matter which of my parent's houses we were in at the time, Nurse C's roomy nursery cupboard could always be relied upon to turn up, although not always before we did. Indeed on one occasion, we came with(in) it, sent on as freight, which was cheaper even than buying us third class tickets! Tantivy and 'Boy' (my dissolute father) were wonderful parents (of their type), but goodness, they ran a tight yard!). Then in the post-war years, we ran into each other again in the East End of all places. Screw had his entire family removed from South Kensington to Bethnal Green (in a fit of socialism that unusually was never cured!), whereas I was doing the work of Lady Ott's charity (she had passed on in 1938), and visiting dockworkers with spare parts for their false limbs. It was a brief meeting, but how Turn's face lit up when he heard me shout 'Screw' across the Mile End Road at full pelt. However, we were destined to meet once again many years later in 1977, when we were both in the running for a Nobel prize. At least Amnesty was receiving one. I went to Oslo (or was it Stockholm that year?), after having received a telegram, which I later found out originated in the bar of the Langham Hotel. Knock me down if Gertie Heneage hadn't had an Amontillado chaser too many between her halves of milk stout, and cornered a telegram boy, to whom she spilled something cryptic, which transmogrified into instructions which appeared to point me in the direction of Oslo (or was it Stockholm that year?). Anyway, it was only when the pilot had brought the aeroplane to earth (and I realised I had arrived somewhere colder far than the top drawer of a frig!), that I realised a mistake had been made. Gallant as a warrior, dear old Screw came to my rescue; how I wish it wasn't too late to return the parcel. I have the receipt somewhere.

Sixten Ehrling 1918-2005

2005-02-24T16:53:00.000Z

Conductor, champion of Sibelius, Knight Commander of the Order of the White Rose (Finland)

The news of TFSE's death has knocked me for six(ten!). TFSE was my special name for one of the world's finest conductors. The night after TFSE had beamed me welcome in my own dear Festival Hall (TFSE in the pit, me in one of our boxes, and in the pits too, if I recall correctly (I so rarely do, but let's try now). Gertie Heneage was to my left, Nanny O to my right, and Tantivy's ashes in an urn on a seat to her right (Tantivy did so love to come and hear something played, even after her death). I was feeling like I'd been passed through a sieve, having crossed words with my feckless brother about Bunting (a glorious place he'd inherited, and through the main hall of which the government of the day were trying to reroute the A5413, much against the family's wishes (although doubtless not of the general public, who would have got to see the old pile without having to fork out the farthings!), but the three piano concerto evening soon lifted even the blackest of moods. TFSE (who I hadn't yet met) and Anda, the pianist, seemed to work as one; we (me, Gertie, Nanny O, and Tantivy) might not have been there at all! However, message was sent to us that the meister would like us backstage afterwards, and I am not sure what divil entered me, but on seeing the great man, I sang in the clearest coloratura, and to the tune of Bellini's noted 'Casta Diva' aria "Twoten, Fourten, Sixten, Eighten". Gertie (who had walked the boards of The London Pavilion in the days of vaudeville in her family's revue, The Heneage Menage (with her surname pronounced 'Hennidge', and menage to rhyme with it), before her brother was carried off by a freak neap tide while fishing off Lambeth Bridge (why he had to be so madly rash I don't know; couldn't he have just bought them of Scott's, the fish people, like everyone else?) replied (continuing the air) "who do we appreciaten?" And there was a moment when Sixten's upper lip trembled, and the dressing room emptied (we were only later to learn quite what a ferocity there was to his temper), before Sixten broke into the warmest peal of laughter you could wish to hear outside Bedlam. It was only a matter of time before I shortened it to TFSE for ease. From then on, I was bumping into the delightful man whenever I went to see music played, and no-one of my acquaintance will forget evenings spent watching TFSE's complete and utter mastery of Herr Wagner's Ring.

Lord Milne 1909-2005

2005-02-22T12:32:00.000Z

Accountant, Soldier of distinction, amateur Painter

Well, I am returned from my sickbed, but death has not waited for me, and another few have passed, of whom the fondest memories remain of George, or 'ss' as I called him (pronounced like a short 'sssss' sound, rather than as two separate 's' sounds. He had memories enough of the SS, from his time in Schloss Spangenberg (yet another SS!), but I refused to entertain calling him 'Tubby' as did others of our acquaintance (after all he couldn't have resembled a tub less!). We actually met in the Schloss, which was at the time a prisoner of war camp, of slightly less renown than Colditz, but a camp where men were known to be frightened into fits. We were both there having been shot down, he rightly so (in the camp, not shot down) and me not rightly so (both shot down and in the camp!). I had been conscripted into the RAF, under the misapprehension that I was of the male gender born. This was a result of my christening at St George's Hanover Square having become completely fog-bound. Great Aunt Boy was thus mortally confused (she passed over a mere couple of weeks later after tripping over a tradesman), and I was christened Daniel in error. It was in Spangenberg (or 'the Schloss' as we inmates lovingly termed her) that ss first painted me, his mother having sent in the necessary materials by Red Cross parcel. Some of this work ended up in that year's Royal Academy of Arts annual Summer Show, and I believe that one of them was of me, so that I think I can justly claim to have been the only woman serving in the RAF, imprisoned by the Nazis and displayed by the RA, all at the same time. Those were days of much rough and tumble!
If I remember correctly, ss had to render me in a surrealist manner, because had the Nazis realised they had a young woman in their midst, there would have been trouble all round! (I was soon to break free anyway, but that's a story for another place and time. I presently left the RAF in a fit of dudgeon). I clearly remember ss saying to me (as I sat to him) "Doris (for my secret was out!), you look as vulnerable as a peeled egg", and so he painted me as one. Should anyone have seen a painting that fits this description, signed 'Milne', I should dearly love to see it.

Doris apologises

2005-02-14T12:15:00.000Z

Doris has asked me (her grandson (no relation), and amanuensis) to pass on her sincerest apologies. She is currently in bed with a severe head cold, and is hoping that not too many of her friends pass to the other side while she's out of her dictation chair, as there will be "such a job of catching up to do!".

Barbara Craig 1915-2005

2005-02-08T13:44:00.000Z

Civil Servant, British Council spouse, Archaeologist, Academic, Oxford College Principal

Goodbye beloved 'Before Time Began', as I used to call B.C. for brevity. We met at Somerville in the late 70s, when I was visiting my one of my manifold nieces in Cambridge. Or it may have been Oxford; with Nanny O in tow, you'd think I would remember which was which (but I don't!)! I happened to be resting in my large bathchair (I was recovering from a lengthy dose of blackwater - from which few but the most hale recover - and was feeling rather peevish). Before Time Began, rounded the corner at her customary quick-step, and it was only Nanny O's quick thinking (coupled with her deft lasso-crafting from a lengthy hearing aid cable! (This was a trick she had perfected in the dissolute youth she had spent as an orphan in New Orleans; ask no more details of me than that I took her in) that ensured total disaster was averted. Before Time Began clung to the cable like beads on the skirt of a dervish. After hasty introductions, and a small pow wow about the educational progress of my dear relative (whom modesty, and a small court order, prevents me naming here), Nanny O and I were invited by Before Time Began to her rooms. From then on, over a shared love of Derwentwater, and the fact that both she and I had had librarians for fathers (well, mine had a rather large collection of books), and been born under the Raj (although in my case, it was more that dear Tantivy (my mother), had been taken queer outside India House at Aldwych, and been rushed indoors forthwith, and I had been born there less than four hours later; since this time, I have always held with a certain pride dual citizenship, and a most delicious Indian passport). As the years passed, Before Time Began and I continued to get on well as we shared an addiction to public transport, and I would often shake my umbrella handle at her bus-to-bus across a crowded Piccadilly, as one of us went west and the other east into the afternoon. My favourite was the number '11', but I have forgotten which route was Before Time Began's favourite. That must pass into the great beyond like those buses down Piccadilly. Unless anyone knows of course?

Horace Hagedorn 1915-2005

2005-02-07T14:33:00.000Z

Salesman, Businessman, Philanthropist

Dear, kind, gentle, giving Double H (as I was given to calling Horace; I've never been particularly fond of it as a Christian name. It always makes me think of rhubarb, which is a fruit to which I have never been partial). A large swathe of the population would express some surprise (and rightly), that an old widow from NW1 should have more than a passing acquaintance with such a man as Double H, but allow me to make things clearer. Although he met his second wife through the classified advertisements of an American newspaper (I expect that was quite a sensible type of newspaper through which to have made such a match, even though I should have preferred the placing of a few gentle lines in the Telegraph (or at a push the Times!). I met Double H when his company wrote to me at my small central London flatlet (oh, with what degree of politeness for an American!), to check they were not infringing my rights in the matter of ownership of 'Miracle-Grow', a hair product I had quite forgotten I had even registered with an old friend who had been thrown out of a Ladies' Hostel behind Victoria Station for 'fast' behaviour, when the only thing she was actually cooking up was the 'Miracle Grow' hair potion that was sold in Swan & Edgar, Bourne & Hollingsworth, Gamages of Holborn and Peter Robinson; that none of these venerable departmental stores exist any longer, cannot be put at the feet of Miracle Grow, but I think at the foot of the change of eating habits of the workers on London Underground in my vaunted opinion. Anyway, I digress; back to Double H. He had manufactured an American version of Miracle Grow, although his was called Miracle Gro, and had made a touch more money, and was intended for the propogation of plants, not follicles. Now he has stopped growing. I wish his widow well, and delight that the lion's share of his fortune has been passed to charities various (while bearing an ounce of dismay that none has come to The Lady Ottoline Morrell Society for Limbless Ex-Servicemen and Dependents; never mind, as our much-beloved late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother often said to me: 'we hobble on!').

Thady Ryan 1923-2005

2005-02-04T16:47:00.000Z

Hunt Owner and Master, Farmer, Committee Chairman, Emigre

The death of poor dear Thady (or 'DiV' as I called him: after that delicious little novella of Mann's, Death in Venice. Not that Thady had ever laboured under the horrors of consumption, but after the story's catamite, Tadzio - surely Polish for Thaddeus? (DiV's baptismal name.) Well, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, DiV it became, and somehow the name became him too! We first met while out hunting with the Black & Tans (not the relentlessly cruel British paramilitary force sent over to the Irish Free State to sort out some trouble or other), but the Scarteen, one of Ireland's premier hunting packs. Of course, as I have always objected to hunting, I sat it all out in the Ryan's darling (but chilly!) house Knocklong, with only Nanny O and a large ball of darning wool for company. As we wound and unwound the wool, and as darkness seemed to both rise and fall, Nanny O and I would exchange tales of the rest of the guests, talking of who we knew (well, I talked of who I knew, and Nanny O dutifully listened, as ever! Fortunately, it was no hardship for her as she was deaf as flattery to a hitching post.) Anyway, to Thady. He also sat on one of the Royal Dublin Society's committees. His was something to do with beagles. Or equestrianism. It quite escapes me! Whereas I sat on chairs in whichever rooms were warmest - something of a necessity whenever I made the trip out to Ballsbridge in Wintertime - and that way was party to all sorts of the most extraordinary information; rather like listening to a broken wireless. It was on one of those occasions that I last saw DiV. I had mistakenly entered his committee room, and far from barking at me, as a lesser man would have done, DiV turned to me, sat down next to me, excused himself from his committee work, and we whiled half an hour away, rolling my ball of wool back and forth. DiV, as ever, the hero.

Lord Aberdare 1919-2005

2005-02-02T16:42:00.000Z

Politician, Player of Real Tennis, Soldier, Businessman, Author

I was first witness to the power of the man who was Lord Aberdare (or 'Minor', as I called him; his first name was Morys!), when I saw him on the Real Tennis courts at Hampton Court Palace when my poor dear late husband and I motored over there sometime after the war. We had an almighty struggle putting enough coupons together for the petrol, but not many people now will appreciate what effort was involved; by the time we arrived, we were shattered to atoms! However, one sight of Minor (a name which Lord A found doubly amusing, as the estate he inherited on the unfortunate demise of his father in the Balkans - on his honeymoon can you believe! (not his first you must understand) - included a number of disused coal tips) bounding round the court as perfectly as someone on two legs can. He talked to me when a stray ball caught my elbow, causing me to dance with exasperation (the effect of the ball, not the speech!). We enjoyed much conversation thereafter, and I was encouraged to try and establish a kind of forum for the game, which I was initially going to call Four Courts (which I thought a pretty play on words, as well as being reminiscent of my darling late-departed Dublin), but which through the endeavours of the redoubtable Minor, was a figure constantly being bested, until, at the point where I tired of the project (or it of me!) there were 19 Courts in the country. God bless you Lord A: a Morys never so Minor.

Patsy Rowlands 1934-2005

2005-01-31T17:56:00.000Z

Actress

If ever there was someone who should have received a Damehood, it was 'Boat', as Patsy allowed me to call her (my humming "row, row, row your boat" to her when we first met in 1958, was what I thought might put us on non-speakers, but which on the contrary, merely served to bring us closer together). It was Hammersmith I believe, and the production of dear Beachy Wilson's musical Valmouth (which I thought vastly amusing as my late husband and I had taken a house in Falmouth the summer before, and as Boat used to joke, 'there's more than half an alphabet between an F and a V!' Goodness, Boat's sense of humour was precious close to perfect!). I knew Beachy through some theatrical contact of Dicky's, and was asked to audition for the character of Lady Parvula. At that point in my life, I was on pleasure bent, but even I had my limits; when I realised that Lady P was an ageing nymphomaniac, I thought 'Doris old girl' (although I'm convinced that at the time, it was more like 'Doris young thing'), what would Nanny Oxford think (dear old Nanny O was always my yard-stick), and I withdrew from the audition process (this was probably for the best, as I couldn't manage a note, and was later diagnosed as tone deaf in the Edward VII Hospital for Officers - one of the first females to be granted this privilege). Boat and I would occasionally run into each other after 1958, but not often as our lives grew further apart; however, I feel nothing but delight for our lives having run together, even if only for the briefest of moments. I hope you are now becalmed, dear dear Boat!

Prince 'Dado' Ruspoli 1924-2005

2005-01-29T12:15:00.000Z

Prince, Dolce-Vitaist, clairvoyant, actor, philanthropist

This one is a touch delayed, but I have been too too sad to compose anything sooner. For those of you who didn't know darling Dado (or Prince Picture Rail, as he allowed me to address him!), he was the life and soul of any party. The phrase had it that until the Picture Rail arrived, the party couldn't get underway! But Picture Rail and I had a deeper connection, founded I believe on the birds in our lives. I was of course by this time looking after Lady Ott's parrot The Borgias pretty much full-time, and he of course had what some called his 'Raven', although both he and I knew it was in fact a parrot, the same as The Borgias. In fact, the two birds would often enjoy a conversation that was fiendishly difficult to understand. We later discovered that we both came from ancient Scottish families, and spent many a calm hour in the middle of the night, feeling that frenetic energy of whichever dance we were at ebbing away, poring over his or my papers, until that glorious moment in the forties when we finally found a link. I have misplaced the piece of paper, and now that Dado has gone from my life, my glorious pictures of that delicious age have no rail left to support them, and are merely sitting in the corner gathering dust. Until the lady who does, does that is.

Veronica, Lady MacLean 1920-2005

2005-01-27T23:47:00.000Z

Volunteer, Debutante, Hostess, Lorry-Driver

Poor dear Veronica, or Ronnie as I called her. One thing those fearfully dull obits forgot to bring out was her early devotion to 'carriage exercise'. She would get Dash, her driver, to motor out in her fearfully large Rolls-Royce, and we'd take a turn around one or other of the London parks. This was in the forties, when bobbies would always wave us through, and children would move out of the way as we arrived, waving and bowing (or curtseying, depending on whether they were boys or girls!). Ronnie always had a bag of crumbs that she would throw at them, and to see the look of delight in their eyes was pure, and delicious. How many people today would feel less dissatisfaction were they to receive Ronnie's crumbs! Oh, Ronnie, how I do miss you. How we all do.