“If you buy one more book this year, do make it To War with Whitaker” wrote Dirk Bogarde in The Daily Telegraph in 1994. His advice holds true today.
Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly, got married in 1939 and soon her husband was posted to Palestine with the Sherwood Rangers, a Yeomanry regiment not unlike the North Somerset Yeomanry in which John Verney served. Verney, too, had married just before the war and sadly left his wife at home. There was a peculiar regulation that although regular officers could be accompanied by their wives on overseas postings, officers in the Yeomanry were not accorded this privilege. Hermione Ranfurly was a resourceful young woman and found her way to the Middle East. She was found out and sent packing back to England. She jumped ship at Durban and doubled back to Cairo. There was a shortage of secretaries and she was allowed to stay so long as she was working.
The Whitaker in the title is her husband’s valet who flits in and out of her story as comic relief. Her husband, Dan, doesn’t play a large part in her story either as he is captured in the Desert and held prisoner in Italy until he is able to escape and hide in the Apennines. A similar story to Verney and Newby.
Hermione’s story is of working for SOE in Cairo and then for senior Generals. She was a stickler for security getting her SOE bosses into trouble for security lapses. Quite how she reconciled this with keeping a diary I don’t know. She observes everything going on around her, devoting as much attention to servants as Generals. This is what makes her book so enjoyable. She must have been a remarkable character to have held down important jobs as a civilian. She worked tirelessly – eleven hours a day, seven days a week was normal. Her world for six years is a whirlwind, one I enjoyed being caught up in for 365 pages.
I have also read a very short memoir, To War with Waugh, by John St John. He served with Evelyn Waugh and points out the reality on which some incidents in his novels are based. Not very interesting and better covered in biographies of Waugh.
I believe Ranfurly was one of the Duke of Windsor’s successors as Governor of the Bahamas. I also note that his earldom, like the Bellew barony, was one of the few Irish peerages created after 1801.
When they were living in the Bahamas, Hermione was concerned at the lack of books available in schools & libraries. She asked friends to donate books and eventually started Book Aid International.
‘The Ugly One’ her autobiography covering her childhood, shows how her tenacious personality developed.