Last week, on 20th August, St. Stephen’s Day was celebrated in Hungary. I challenge you to name who wrote this, between the wars, about the St. Stephen’s Day procession of The Holy Right Hand in Budapest. “…the swaying canopy above the sacred relics borne by the Cardinal Prince Archbishop, glorious in crimson and ermine….bishops, monsignori and censer-swinging acolytes…all the rank and nobility of Hungary, some traditionally booted and be-furred with velvet dolmans slung across silk-embrodered tunics…all ablaze with the forgotten orders of a vanished chivalry.”
Do I hear a chorus of “Paddy Leigh Fermor”? Wrong, so here’s a clue.
The style is grand cru P L F but the author is in fact another knight, Osbert Lancaster writing about a summer in the late 1920s on his first Long Vacation from Lincoln College, Oxford. You wouldn’t think of him as a travel writer but he could turn his hand to it. He could turn his hand to pretty much everything. He had a part in an OUDS production of King Lear with Peter Fleming, who really was a travel writer. He was a bit lucky, as he got a proper part only because John Betjeman was sacked from the cast a fortnight before the first night. Had he gone on the stage he would have given Robert Morley a run for his money but then he mightn’t have got round to creating Maudie, Countess of Littlehampton.
His first trip out of the British Isles was with his mother to visit his father’s grave. His father was killed at the Somme. They went by train to Arras. If they had encountered a gunman his formidable mother would have disarmed him before her son could display any heroics.