Quizzers

I have just bought an inexpensive, second-hand, dog-eared  paperback published in 1987 in which are appended the author’s biographical notes on some of the people mentioned. Can you identify even one of them?

To make it easier, though I don’t see why I should, they are in alphabetical order.

1. He was a keen naturalist with a passion for bird-watching.

2. Harrovian cricket hero … an inadequate and far from happy Minister of Defence.

3. He professed to speak seventeen languages, but was never put to the test.

4. … struck out on his own at an early age, founding the successful banking enterprise xxx, and excelling at everything, from polo to croquet, to which he set his hand.

5. Her not very intelligent but strikingly beautiful mother-in-law, never liked her. She had a sense of humour, a social conscience and an unswervingly rigid sense of duty. She was a discriminating collector of jade and objets d’art.

6. Lord xxx was never present when history was made, though he was quite often asked to luncheon afterwards.

7. Most agreeable in conversation and an affable host, he was ruthless to those who worked for him. He won incidental Prime Ministerial favour by sending … baskets of plovers’ eggs from Laverstoke every spring.

8. Perhaps uniquely, father and son were Fellows of All Souls at the same time. He was … a superb ballroom dancer and the owner of one of the loudest and most totally sincere laughs in the United Kingdom.

9. Imperious, intolerant of lesser men and with a keen eye to the main chance, he was nevertheless a man who made a mark on the history of his times.

10. A gentle, dreamy idealist, whom most men and all women loved. In 1947 … he suddenly returned to America and committed suicide.

The book is The Fringes of Power, Downing Street Diaries Volume Two: 1941 – April 1945 by John Colville, Churchill’s Private Secretary.

These biographical notes attest to John Colville’s power of observation and dry sense of humour. Here are the answers: Field Marshal, Viscount Alanbrooke, Field Marshal, Earl Alexander, Leo Amery, Averell Harriman, Queen Mary, Lord Moran, Viscount Portal, Lord Sherfield, Lord Swanton and John Winant.