Articles & Extracts

During that August‒September period we were always so outnumbered . . .

During that August‒September period we were always so outnumbered . . .

During that August‒September period we were always so outnumbered that it was practically impossible, unless we were lucky enough to have the advantage of height, to deliver more than one squadron attack. After a few seconds we always broke up, and the sky was a smoke trail of individual dogfights. The result was that the squadron would come home individually, machines landing one after the other at intervals of about two minutes. After an hour, Uncle George would make a check-up on who was missing. Often there would be a telephone-call from some pilot to say that he had made a forced landing at some other aerodrome or in a field. But the telephone wasn’t always so welcome. It could be a rescue squad announcing the number of a crashed machine; then Uncle George would check it and cross another name off the list. At that time, the losing of pilots was somehow extremely impersonal; nobody, I think, felt any great emotion – there simply wasn’t time for it.
Love at First Flight

Love at First Flight

I came across Frances Hodgson Burnett’s My Robin (1912) while doing research for a book I was writing about my grandfather. I had discovered, on reading through my father’s papers, that the family tales of connections to Frances and The Secret Garden were true. (Perhaps I’m still not convinced that Frances presented a pram with her initials emblazoned on it at the birth of my Aunt Gert, and yet it is consistent with her character.) My grandfather was gardener to Frances at Maytham Hall in Kent, and he was the inspiration for the book’s more interestingly named character, Ben Weatherstaff.
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Gloriously Over-the-top

Gloriously Over-the-top

Jan Morris loved to provoke. Though she wrote elsewhere of nationalities as a ‘cruel pretence’, she was not above outrageous generalization or outrageous distinction – in this case, between the sexes. Of all Venice’s visitors, she observes, ‘the British seem to me to provide the best of the men (often distinguished, frequently spare, sometimes agreeably individualist) and the worst of the women (ill tempered, hair unwashed, clothes ill fitting, snobby or embarrassingly flirtatious)’.
SF magazine subscribers only
Birth of a Nation

Birth of a Nation

It is 3 a.m. I have risen, as men of a certain age are wont to do, to answer a call of nature. Emerging from the smallest room, torch in hand, for I am staying with friends and the way is unfamiliar, I pass one of the innumerable bookcases which adorn every wall of every room. Each shelf is packed to bursting with an embarrassment of riches. I stop to look through them, as one does at 3 a.m., and notice on the bottom shelf a slim, grubby volume, its spine illegible. Curiosity creeps into my fingertips. Crouching silently, I prise it from its neighbours and fancy, as I blow several years of dust from its pages, that I can almost hear this little book sigh with liberation.
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Eye-wateringly Sharp

Eye-wateringly Sharp

‘I always see the faults of my friends,’ writes Walburga, Lady Paget, in the introduction to her two-volume memoir Embassies of Other Days (1923). ‘But I like their faults and I mention them as it adds to the piquancy of their personalities.’ The second volume closes with a further disclaimer. ‘I have related everything exactly as it appeared to me to be and may thereby have inadvertently hurt the feelings of some, but this must be put to the account of my sincerity.’ Reader, be warned: Lady Paget can be alarmingly sincere.
SF magazine subscribers only
Waiting for the Rains

Waiting for the Rains

When I saw that When Rain Clouds Gather (1968) by Bessie Head had been included in ‘The Big Jubilee Read’, seventy books published during the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth, I was gratified; I’d read it and knew it deserved its place. I was also reminded of a disconcerting encounter with the author, many years ago. One of the best things in my career with the BBC World Service was talking to writers about their work. The interviews might prove to be enlightening, challenging, unexpected, tricky – and occasionally not as interesting as I’d hoped; but this one didn’t even get off the ground.
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The Empress of Ireland | Part III: London

The Empress of Ireland | Part III: London

I arrived at Kinnerton Street one morning to find an extremely tall man standing on his own in the front room warming himself in front of the fire. He did not introduce himself but launched into an incomprehensible monologue. ‘I had dinner with her again last night. At the Ritz. We had the most delicious lamb cutlets. Served pink. She loves them pink like that. And a bottle of Léoville-Poyferre 1961 – do you approve? A whole bottle – not a half.’
A Countryman’s Summer Notebook Extract | ‘The Longest Day’

A Countryman’s Summer Notebook Extract | ‘The Longest Day’

Sometimes you plan a Sunday of sightseeing and come home exhausted and bewildered. Another Sunday you do nothing at all, and everything seems to come to you. You go to bed that night full of wellbeing and wonder. Such a day was today. I sat most of the time against a haycock. Only once a year, and that when days are longest, are there fragrant couches dotted over the paddock. I chose one facing a walnut tree. Yesterday I overheard a fragment of dialogue: ‘Whoever plants a walnut tree nowadays?’ I was going to tell him I had, but somebody broke in with something else, so my virtue went unrecorded. Sitting against the haycock gazing at its now ample foliage I was aware I had been watching this tree grow for fourteen years. It stands out very verdant against the ash-grey foliage of willows which have grown up behind it.
‘Ah, good morning my pet,’ said Grand . . .

‘Ah, good morning my pet,’ said Grand . . .

Grand was my father’s mother and Grandpa Holman-Hunt’s widow. I knew he was the famous Pre-Raphaelite painter and that she was also known as Mrs H-H. ‘Well, fancy you, going to pay a visit all alone,’ said Hannah, dusting a wooden chair for me to sit on. ‘Careful dear, you don’t want to crease that nice new dress.’ ‘Paying a visit is what Grand calls going to the lavatory, except she calls it the convenience. Unmentionables are socks and drawers.’
Basil Street Blues Extract | ‘What shall we do with the boy?’

Basil Street Blues Extract | ‘What shall we do with the boy?’

‘What shall we do with the boy?’ That cry comes back to me whenever I think of my early years at Maidenhead. As if to answer the question, my father, in the intervals from his career in France, would turn up at Norhurst with some devastating present – an air rifle, chemistry set, conjuring tricks or even golf club – and after a few flourishes and gestures, a few words of encouragement and a laugh, leave the fine tuning of my tuition as rifleman, chemist, magician or golfer to my aunt while he returned to fight the Germans or encourage the French. My aunt did her best, but I remember thinking one rainy day as we quarried out some lumps of ice to put on her forehead while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, that we shouldn’t have chosen the dining-room to play cricket.

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