The marriage between my parents had been badly shaken up during the war years. Originally this had been a question of Daphne's infidelities with a succession of admirers, while Henry had been fighting with the Eighth Army in North Africa. But on his return to Britain, I daresay it is true to say that Henry was now seeking to match the diversity of Daphne's recent sexual experience. But they had safely negotiated these treacherous rapids to emerge, each with his individualism intact, in the calmer waters of marital tolerance.

By the end of the war, they were even planning an increase to the size of the family, from the existing four children - for once again, Daphne was pregnant. They were hoping for a girl of course. (As it stood so far, three boys were more than sufficient to ensure that there would be a succession to the Longleat dynasty from Henry's direct line of male descent.) But they had run out of time, it would seem. I believe there were several of these belated pregnancies, but none of them managed to go further than three months. So the idea of expanding upon the existing family was sadly set aside. And I think this coincided with the development of a somewhat fiercer quest for marital infidelities on either side.

Now that I was at Eton, it sometimes struck me that they were no longer particularly settled in each other's company. Their altercations at the dining-room table were sometimes fierce, with voices raised on either side. And there was evidence too that each might be going their separate ways when, for example, Henry turned up to take me out from Eton with a lady who was completely unknown to me. There was a brief explanation about Daphne having gone off some place with the lady's husband, but I didn't find the afternoon any the more enjoyable for that. Indeed, I felt helplessly intrusive upon Henry's festive afternoon with the lady: their raucous laughter leaving me depressed, far more than mirthful. And it hurt me when Henry turned to the lady to pronounce that the trouble with Alexander was that he had no sense of humour. My inability to laugh with them merely seemed to prove his point.

My parents at this time were heavy drinkers, which fell way short of being drunks. They might become aggressively argumentative with one another after the usual round of whiskey and soda, or gin and tonic, which were their favourite tipples; and I knew better than to take issue with them on any subject which might then arise. But none of us children were in the habit of taking issue with either of them. Our points of view were seldom solicited. We were really little more than spectators upon their scene.

My sister Caroline, far more than us boys, may have been privy to what was really going on in the marriage. She was nearly four years older than myself, and the period when there had been any real intimacy between the two of us had now been outgrown. I had been valuable to her in our childhood as someone unswervingly loyal to her dictates. This meant in effect that I did her bidding without complaint. But my obedience to her became less certain, after I had gone to school, and she was gradually making me appreciate that our intimacy, if it were to be continued, must be on her terms - or not at all. It grieved me to recognise that the intimacy must therefore be regarded as belonging to the past, for I still greatly loved the memory of what she had been to me. But I appreciated how there was little dignity in permitting myself to be bossed around by her, so the relationship had become more distant as we matured. She had by now definitely decided that her identity lay on the adult side of the fence, whilst `the boys' (as we were collectively known within the family,) had for the most part still to contend with that traumatic development of becoming teenagers.

Being the only daughter, Caroline had always been regarded as something rather special within the family. And she merited our high regard by her self-restraint in keeping herself aloof, and somehow mysterious, rather than risking the rebuffs that might have been entailed by taking sides within our more contentious bickering. At the same time she was developing as Daphne's confidant.

Dating really from when I first went to school, a divide had been opening up between Daphne's way of thinking about the world, and my own. Male chauvinistically perhaps, I might identify this with distinctions that were becoming apparent to me between the way a woman's logic might function, in contrast to that of a man. Between the two examples that I had readily available for study, it was beginning to strike me that my mind ticked more along the tracks that were exemplified by Henry. Daphne's logic was all a bit vague, or inclined to shoot off at a tangent from the central point under discussion. She had a greater fund of knowledge than Henry concerning anything which appertained to the arts, but she gave more weight to matters of feeling than to matters of fact. It did strike me that Henry's statements offered me something of more discernible potential for my understanding.

Caroline on the other hand could discuss women's matters with Daphne in a manner that I wouldn't even begin to understand. I didn't feel excluded from their intimacy, in that I was beginning to perceive that my own concerns in life were rather different to theirs. Much as I loved my mother, knowing in my heart that she was more supportive, and more protective towards my identity than my father had ever been, I somehow appreciated that there was a whole side of me that was more akin to Henry: which is to say in the technique of thinking about life, as opposed to the basic feelings (the likes and dislikes), where I still identified more closely with those of Daphne.

In another respect too, Caroline had left me behind, for she was developing an ability to flirt with the opposite sex. The first occasion when I had cause to wonder if there was a side to her about which I knew very little, came when I was out on the lawn at Sturford, with Christopher, when a small spotter plane (the kind that was commonly called a Flying Jeep), made a series of low-flying swoops over the house. Caroline had been sunbathing naked at the time, up on the roof. But she threw a tizzy when we shouted up to her that the plane had actually landed in the field just across the main road. She had hastily thrown on her clothes, and come down into the garden to try and dissuade us from running over to meet the pilot. But that is what we did.

We found in fact that there two young airmen waiting disconsolately for something to happen - which quite evidently was not our own arrival upon the scene. Then after deciding that it was evidently not to be, they took off once again, to disappear from our lives forever. The point which interested me however, was the way Caroline was in such a fluster when we returned to the house - in case we had invited them to come to tea, or something. It was only later that I appreciated how she must have been up to something pretty sexy, while sunbathing up there in solitary. But this marked a side to Caroline that I had never even remotely glimpsed.

Now that she had left school, Caroline's ambition was initially to act. Her performances on stage had been much praised at Longstowe, and she had in fact gained one of the coveted places at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. But she was not to survive this course for very long. She was somehow unprepared for the barrage of ego-bashing to which she was exposed from one particular teacher - possibly on the grounds that she was too self-assured in her aristocratic background. And she failed to develop any special liking for the group of drama students in her intake. She couldn't identify with them, and felt critical about their attitudes and their priorities in life. She felt a far greater affinity with the people that she was beginning to meet on the London social scene, and her ambition to become an actress rapidly faded. So she departed instead for a spell at a finishing school, in Switzerland, biding her time before the next season of debutante balls, after her presentation at court.

I know that Caroline regarded me as her favourite brother, but it may also be true to say that she couldn't really be bothered with any of us. Or we didn't rank that highly upon the scale of her current concerns. There is a complaint in one of my letters back home that Rose Grimstone, a school friend who had accompanied her to Switzerland, had sent parcels of confectionery to her brother Michael at Eton, whereas none of us boys had received any at all. But I didn't really resent it, for we'd never been brought up to be concerned, or even considerate about others. The influence had been far more in the direction of developing a self-centred egocentricity of outlook, which might be regarded as a healthy survival factor, if somewhat anti- social.

my two brothers, were nowadays far more concerned about pairing up for their own company, than they were in cultivating my own. And it seemed natural that this should be so, now that Valentine had joined Christopher at Ludgrove. But I had never been really close to either of them. There were quite a few influences in my life which were currently prompting me to develop as a loner.

I'd always felt that I knew Chris quite well, despite the lack of any real compatibility. My viewpoint upon his personality was an unfair one, however. It seemed to me that, as a schoolboy, he had no prospect of ever matching up to my own example: which is to say that he lacked the ambition at least, to emerge as Captain of the School, or anything like that, and his grading in all scholastic subjects was excessively low. Nor had he ever demonstrated any proficiency in the boxing ring, which had always been the one sport where my own rating stood high.

But Chris was in effect mounting his own brand of challenge to my position of dominance: far more so than I ever liked to admit to myself. There was rivalry in our artistic and musical skills. When I taught myself to play a recorder-like instrument, he promptly made it his business to be as proficient as myself. And his skills as a draftsman had been much praised at Ludgrove, to an extent when I felt peeved that he might be usurping my established pre-eminence in that field. And what unsettled me greatly was the way in which Daddy was all too quick in praising his efforts (no matter what the subject), in contrast to my own. There was this feeling in the air that I was - to use my father's clichés - too big for my boots, and needed to be cut down to size: which was more or less what they thought of me at Eton too!

Somehow I felt a greater respect for little Valentine, who was five and a half years younger than myself. Not that he was above criticism. Far from that! The whole family was a bit shocked at the way he had denied stealing from the kitchen garden the huge cucumber, which Presley (the gardener) had been saving for the Corsley flower show. We all knew he had picked it since Nanny, who could tell no lies, admitted from her cottage retreat that he had brought it to her as a present. But even when confronted with this evidence, which he had never expected to be delivered against him, he stuck stubbornly to his denials, and eventually lapsed into total silence upon the whole issue. We may have caught him out, but he was damned if he was going to give us the pleasure of hearing him confess.

The holidays at Sturford Mead were all a bit boring for us children, if the truth be told. We were left almost completely to our own devices, and it cannot be said that we displayed much ingenuity in the enrichment of life's quality. We didn't resent such an environment. Indeed, we regarded ourselves as fortunate in having been born with the proverbial silver spoon in mouth. But in retrospect, I do now feel that something of the traditional tender loving care was absent from our upbringing.

I loved Daphne largely because I knew that she accepted me for what I was. Our regard for one another was reciprocated. But like many another teenager, I was wary about the ways in which a mother's behaviour might prove embarrassing. To quote but one example, she came down to take me out from Eton with her hair (in the latest fashion) tinted with a blue rinse. And shortly afterwards, I was making an offensive - and unnecessary - comment about the protruding nature of a friend's teeth. This was Emlyn, and he promptly retorted: "So what? Your mother has blue hair!" I blushed crimson, and was terrified thereafter about any of the latest fashions that Daphne might see fit to wear, on any subsequent trip down to Eton.

Henry had the capacity to embarrass me in other ways. Although uncertain by now about the extremity of his right wing political views, I was still trying to learn my own position in such matters from within the values which he extolled. But there was an occasion, immediately after Sir Stafford Cripps had displayed too great a zeal in his determination to tax the rich, when I saw Henry wreak an unpleasant revenge upon one of his foresters - partly on the assumption that this man was one of those who must have voted the Labour government into office.

I was walking in the woods with him at the time, for Henry always took this personalised delight in making his presence felt within the organisation, by dropping in unexpectedly to see for himself how any particular gang was performing. In his current state of rage against the Socialist government, it didn't bode well for the luckless forester whom he espied sitting on a log when the rest of the gang were at work, trimming the undergrowth. Henry went storming up to berate him for his idleness. But an altercation then ensued: the man asking how anyone could be expected to perform the work that was demanded, when the leather gloves issued to the gang had holes in them. My father then rounded on him, saying that they couldn't have better gloves because the socialists whom he had put into power, had robbed the estate of all its money reserves. And he ended up by firing him.

could see from the expressions on the other foresters' faces that they were out of sympathy with Henry's behaviour. And I could feel myself that it had been a case of over-reaction; and quite unnecessary to have dragged politics into the issue. Nor were his subsequent comments upon the incident of the kind which indicated a balanced viewpoint. It was all too black and white in his condemnation of the man's insolence. I felt embarrassed that I had been witness to the scene: as if my presence at Henry's side (flaunting a walking stick in similar manner to himself), somehow implicated me in the same brand of insensitivity towards working class conditions.

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