Raymond Carr

Behind the fighting lines

Memories of an SOE Historian, by M. R. D. Foot

issue 31 January 2009

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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