Dates are important to me. I have always been good at learning them, helped by mnemonics taught me by my mother. When I was seven, attending the convent school and in the class of Sister Angela whom I adored, I had a meretricious triumph, my first of a quasi-public nature. An official visit was paid to the school by the Rt. Hon. Oliver Stanley, president of the board of education. He was the first politician I had seen, let alone met. Big, tall, fat, red-faced, genial and courteous, he shook hands during his classroom tour. Sister Angela introduced me as ‘a bright young man’. ‘Bright, is he?’ said the minister. ‘Well, boy, date of the Battle of Hastings?’ ‘1066.’ ‘Right. Battle of Bannockburn?’ ‘1314.’ ‘Right. Battle of Agincourt?’ ‘1415.’ ‘God bless my soul! The boy’s a marvel!’ There was no particular merit in my performance. But Sister Angela said, ‘You did me proud.’
What interest me particularly are the dates when people are born and die, and the events that surround them. My own year of birth, 1928, witnessed a great culling: old Thomas Hardy, my mother’s favourite novelist, ‘Butcher’ Haig (‘He did for my brother Tom,’ my father used to say, ‘and nearly did for me too.’), H.H. Asquith and Ellen Terry. Odd to think she had been briefly married, as a teenager, to G.F. Watts. Takes you back, eh? The next year, before I was one, occurred the deaths of Diaghilev, Clemenceau and Rosebery. The same year, I may add, saw the birth of John Osborne, about whom I can tell many tales. Knowing your own historical context gives you a perspective on events, not always reassuring. There are clamours for peace treaties in the Middle East and elsewhere today. Well, 1928 was a great year for those.
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