There wasn't really much of a rapport between any of us siblings. Well between Chris and Val perhaps, but not between anyone else. And much as I liked and respected Caroline, there was an increasing divide which stemmed largely that our whole system of schooling was still in the process of making us perceive the distinction between our sexes. Ever since I first went to Ludgrove, I had been instructed on how one should be deferential towards females - out of courtesy, if for no better reason because, after all, men had by far the most advantageous position in life. I was always deferential towards Caroline and considerate about her wishes. But I saw comparatively little of her nowadays; particularly now that she was spending quite some time in Switzerland.

My parents got quite a shock one morning to receive a telegram from her which read something to the effect: "Am engaged. Deliriously happy. All my love Caroline." Frantic telephone exchanges produced a somewhat different picture however. She would now have them believe that she never had been engaged: just a little bit friendly with someone called Heug. And she put the telegram down to being a silly practical joke on the part of her friends. But the point of special interest to myself was that, on coming home, she no longer saw fit to confide in me whatever the true story might have been. I was no longer sufficiently close to her to expect such confidences.

With Chris, I had no real rapport because I was identified too closely with the authorities that were criticising him, and his especial need at this time was to discover his own independent identity in life. There was an occasion for example when Mr Barber came over to Eton - to participate in a cricket match, or something of the sort - and he invited a group of Old Ludgrovians to come and have high tea at Rowlands with him afterwards. In his conversation with myself he was concerned that I should pass a message to "that loony young brother of yours" that he should stop playing the fool and get down to some hard work. Otherwise he was going to fail his Common Entrance Exam, I was told.

On the advice of Mr Barber, Chris was removed from Ludgrove, and sent to Edgerley Hall, which was then regarded as a crammer, taking on difficult pupils along with others, to prepare them for Millfield. Even so, it was only on his second attempt that Chris managed to pass the Common Entrance Exam into Eton. Such precarious scholasticism however, merely managed to enhance the feelings of affinity that already existed between himself and Henry, who had of course gone to Harrow after failing his one attempt at getting into Eton.

Val was never really in the same orbit as myself. But I daresay that I always was too authoritarian in my attitude towards him. If I told him to do something, then I expected it to be done, and for the most part he complied with such bidding. But he couldn't be pushed too far. This I learnt at my expense one day, when I was attempting to oblige him to perform some bidding of mine - I remember not what - and was threatening to dribble spit on him unless he complied. I believe that I was only saying this in jest, for it would indeed have been the first time that I ever did such a thing to him. But I was counting on him responding favourably to the pressure.

So it took me very much by surprise when he suddenly took the initiative by aiming a spittle shot which hit me in the face - just as it was lowering towards his. I daresay that I then lost my temper briefly, spitting at him and perhaps even slapping him a few times. But I felt respect for his indomitable retort, and set it in contrast, mentally, to anything that I might ever expect from his elder brother, Chris, who would never have seen fit to challenge my dominance in such a fashion.

Our Stanley cousins were really so much a part of our family tale, that I shall here include the story of their own recent tragedy under this heading of `siblings' - when two of the brothers were killed in an accident. There were in fact three of them playing the dangerous game of tunnelling into the sand dunes on one of the beaches on Angelsey, so as to blow them up with explosives. During this process the tunnel collapsed, and the two eldest brothers, John and Martin, were suffocated beneath the sand. Tommy who was the third brother, was away at the time - fighting in Korea - and thus became the heir presumptive to his own first cousin, Lord Stanley of Alderney. The youngest brother, Richard, had yet to enter the tunnel when it had collapsed. So his was the really traumatic experience, and he came to stay with us at Sturford for a while in order to distance himself from the immediacy of that experience.

I always got on well with Richard. But what irritated me somewhat was the way that on all sides, in my family, it was assumed that all the Stanleys were more intelligent than all the Thynnes, which was a demonstrable falsehood in matters of detail if not in the generalisation itself. John, the eldest of the brothers, had been distinctly subnormal on the question of intellect. But it's true that Martin had done brilliantly at school, and Richard now was said to be following in his footsteps. The cultural level within the Stanley household had always been on a more intellectual plane than that to which we ourselves were accustomed, and their mother, my Aunt Kate was, in my judgement, the most intelligent of Henry's own siblings. What I didn't like however, was the way that my father seemed to accept it as one of the facts of life that the Stanleys were more intelligent than ourselves.

This judgement was reiterated to some extent, by our grandfather, who felt that he saw, in Richard, someone closer to his own vision of caring for Longleat than in anyone else - including Henry, whom he had always distrusted as being someone ill-disciplined, ill-educated and of unsound financial judgement. But Richard had always managed to win Grandpa's high esteem - partly I believe because, when at Longleat, he used to converse with him, posing to him some questions about the contents of the library and kindred subjects. It was a relationship with my grandfather which, on my own side, I never did manage to enrich - despite the fact of often being informed by others that I looked more like him than did anyone else in the family.

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