M. R. D. Foot confesses that he has always endeavoured to follow Whistler’s counsel, ‘Not a day without a line’. His written output is impressive and his judgments severe on those who do not come up to his standards. Heinz Koeppler, his boss at a Foreign Office study centre, with his fawning on his superiors and bullying of his staff, turned out not to be a gentleman.
Foot makes clear in his first chapter that he himself comes of gentleman stock and is proud of it. True, his father married a Gaiety Theatre chorus girl; but his grandfather had married an heiress, retired as a general from the army to set up as a country gentleman. Often staying in his grandfather’s house, Foot would hear discussions over the port about whether shooting a fox was a greater social sin than wearing a made up white tie.
In spite of his upbringing Foot did not become a country gentleman, lacking the money to sustain the status that such a position demanded.
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