Old Filth

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As will be obvious, I am very much indebted to Rudyard Kipling’s Autobiography and to his story “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” Also to Christopher Hudson’s fine novel, “Colombo Heat,” about the last days of the Raj in Ceylon (Sri Lanka); I have even taken the liberty of borrowing one of his characters and giving her a walk-on part with a crutch. Sir was suggested by Geoffrey Grigson’s autobiography, The Crest on the Silver.

I am also very grateful to friends, dead and alive, who were once Raj Orphans, and to Peter Leyland, K. S. Chung and my husband, David Gardam, all of whom set off in Wartime convoys to the East and two of whom returned.

I am very grateful to the late Michael Underhill, QC, who was for a few months junior Platoon Commander in the Royal Gloucestershire regiment which guarded Queen Mary at Badminton House. He talked to me about it, as did his wife, Rosalie Beaumont, who showed me a charming, innocent correspondence between her husband and Queen Mary. Thanks also to Mrs. Nettles, one-time housekeeper at Badminton, and her sister. I drew on Queen Mary by James Pope-Hennessy (1959) and HRH Princess Adelaide, Duchess of Teck (1900), a mighty work by C. Kinloch Cooke, Barrister-at-Law. John Saumarez Smith of the Heywood Hill bookshop in Curzon Street kindly introduced me to Osbert Sitwell’s hilarious Queen Mary and Others (1974).

To the Benchers of the Inner Temple, the Clerks and members of Atkin Chambers I am particularly grateful for many things over fifty years; especially to Stewart Goldsmith who often got me to foreign parts and home again.

Those who believe that they recognise any of my characters are mistaken, for they are all from my imagination except for Queen Mary; her lady-in-waiting; the Duchess of Beaufort; the stationmaster of Badminton (who, it appears, really did wear white gloves and call the platforms “lawns”); and my husband who in only one instance resembles Filth: he ate thirty-seven bananas on Freetown beach. (There were no ill effects.) His friend at Oundle School, “the best I ever had,” was called Pat Ingoldby; he was lost at sea in 1942 and I have made use of his name in his memory.

Any historical mistakes are my own.

Jane Gardam,

Sandwich,

Kent

2004