Chipps with everything

Commander Chipps Selby Bennett was a traditional officer and a gentleman; a Dorset dandy with a monocle, tartan trews and size 12 shoes. He’s a man whose life experience encompasses the navy, hunting and the Conservative party. His autobiography, Seahorse! Between the Sea and the Saddle, reflects with characteristic eloquence his surprisingly wide-ranging life, and chronicles the highs and lows of a man who has navigated his way through all levels of society.

The memoirs start with an unusual upbringing and the Spanish Civil War and continue with adventurous travels in the wartime and peacetime navy. One moment Chipps is nearly drowned as a midshipman in Scapa Flow and again in the Clyde; the next, aged 18, he is in love with the daughter of an Egyptian bey. He finds himself in a motor- launch running arms at midnight to the guerrillas in Crete, only to discover that their precious crates contain whisky and women’s frilly underclothes instead of machine-guns.