In Requiem

The Riddle of the Sands portends the Great War; published in 1903, written by Erskine Childers and with Carruthers as the central character. How many Carruthers does it take to make a Foreign Office? There’s one in the Korda Bros film, The Drum, another in Sherard Cowper-Coles’s memoir, Ever The Diplomat.

Surely Hitchcock was thinking Carruthers in The Lady Vanishes and Night Train to Munich when he created Charters and Caldicott? Both films are highly recommended by the way. Where are we? I am reading When Willian Came by Saki, published in 1913. It does not portend conflict. It is a biting satire describing England after Britain has been defeated in a blitzkreig by Germany. Like SS-GB, the German flag flies over Buckingham Palace; the King has relocated to Delhi and Germany is colonising England.

Saki writes acerbically about the collaborators, those that affirm patriotism but will do nothing, those that have gone to Paris or countries in the Empire and, crucially, the lack of preparation that led to “the great catastrophe”. It is poignant that Saki (Corporal HH Munro) died in WW I. It could easily be an unreadable diatribe but there are many light touches.

If Cicely Yeovil’s heart was like a singing-bird, it was of a kind that has frequent lapses into silence.

… coffee, prepared with rather more forethought and circumspection than would go to the preparation of a revolution in a South American Republic.

She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the habit of travelling on his particular highway.

My grandfather was twenty-three in 1913. I never thought to ask him if he anticipated war. My guess is that he didn’t but, like most men of every class in his generation, he fought in the trenches and was lucky not to lose his life. His half-brother, Courtenay, served in the Irish Guards and survived just twelve days in France.

2nd Lt. Richard Courtenay Bellew was born on 16 July 1898. He was the son of Hon. Richard Eustace Bellew and Gwendoline Marie Josephine Herbert-Huddleston. He died on 21 August 1917 at age 19, from wounds received in action. He was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire, England. He fought in the First World War. He gained the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in the Irish Guards.