A Moment in Time reminded me of the sort of British expatriate women I used to meet in the south of France more than 50 years ago. They were very proud of their nationality, rather broke and talked down to most people. Colonel so-and-so and Lord so-and-so were distant relations or acquaintances.
It also reminded me of Separate Tables, Terence Rattigan’s brilliant play about snobbish souls living out their desperate lives in a grubby seaside hotel back in the 1950s. Except that poor old Veronica Lucan, now dead by her own hand, does not in any way write like Rattigan. Instead, she details her everyday disasters methodically, listing all the bad things that have happened to her. And I must admit there have been many.
She began life as the rather plain, middle-class Veronica Duncan, from a military background, with a beautiful younger sister, Christina, who married Bill Shand Kydd. He became a hero of mine for his death-defying horsemanship and his courage, following a riding accident, when he was left unable to move anything except his eyes.
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