There had been an episode very early in my time at Eton, when Jaques had been addressing those of his Lower boys who were assembled for M'tutor's pupil room, and he asked us if we had any ideas upon the subject of which of us would turn out to be the most famous in life. There was a dumb response in that fame wasn't one of the virtues which any of us were really able to perceive within each other. Viewing the matter in retrospect, I suppose that the first of us to climb to the top of life's slippery pole was John Ganzoni who, as Lord Belstead, was in middle age to emerge as the Tory Leader of the House of Lords. I daresay that Jaques was keeping some manner of personal record of any answers that we might give, and it would interest me greatly to be in a position to remind myself - because I do have some faint (and perhaps false) memory that I saw fit to suggest Ganzoni - on the grounds that he possessed what we regarded as "the gift of the gab".

I have a clearer recollection that Roger Cunliffe's name was murmured perhaps a couple of times, which was the nearest we came to a consensus of opinion. But then Richard Timpson blurted out the name Thynne. I felt deeply embarrassed in that I had yet to find my feet within the house, and with the ill reputation that I had for being above myself, I was fearful that such praise might be interpreted as a matter of self-promotion. But the remark passed unchallenged, and I was indeed flattered that Timpson should have thought of me in that light.

But my early years at Eton were hardly discernible as a success story. My self-confidence had been badly shaken over the course of the [F] crisis, and if it had been my lot to depart from Eton at this stage, I hardly think that I would now be remembering it with affection or esteem. But this was really only the half way point in my career at the school and, from now on, the whole environment began to improve for me.

So let me now take notice of some of the personal characteristics which had been emerging over my first two years at Eton. Despite the fact of taking the strictly moderate grade of Middle Fourth in the Common Entrance Exam, I had in fact established myself as a better than average Greeker in my Remove; and there were only four Greeker divisions, against six Kappa divisions in each Remove. (The distinction being whether it was judged that one could benefit sufficiently from studying Greek as well as Latin.) I usually obtained First Class honours in my trials' results, and a year prior to this, I did in fact just make it into the E 1 Lower boy Select division, which was then instructed by Mr Lambart - the Lower Master. I remember him once addressing the class and saying: "Have you ever stopped to consider whom Britain's intelligentsia might be? Well as far as the next generation is concerned, it's you!" This indeed surprised me somewhat, since I had never before been given to think of myself in such a light.

If I was managing to prove that I had some intellectual ability however, my level of cultural sophistication was sinking ever lower in comparison to the norm for my age. The habit of reading for pleasure had never really been developed with any of us boys - discounting the perusal of trash, such as is found in comic books. Caroline alone amongst us had grown up with a good knowledge of the classics in English literature. And the incessant hours in which we boys killed time during the holidays rearranging the battle lines for our tin soldiers, was perhaps a typical mark of the boredom, and intellectual stagnation governing our development when at home.

Where my cultural development remained upwardly mobile however, was in the realm of painting and writing. Whether at home or at school, I spent a great deal of my time in solitary. Over two successive years I indulged my talents in preparing Christmas presents for Daphne: the first being a book full of reversible upside- downside coloured drawings, inspired by the infinitely more artistic work in that field by Rex Whistler. His own book of such drawings, entitled OHO, was currently to be found on many a coffee table.

Then having persuaded myself that this gift had been well appreciated, I embarked upon a second project which was a book of some fifty limericks, illustrated around the edges. I was secretly aware that this gift was less well appreciated than the previous one, and I was also aware that it had failed on the question of humour. I had been attempting to make a pun of some kind within each of the stanzas, but I was soon sweating to think up anything fresh: even resorting to a paperback book of jokes to inspire me for a new gag line. The only verse which still reads well in retrospect, happens to be the very last.

Whatever the faults may have been in my personality, it was my sensitivity which may have been the predominant characteristic. And just how sensitive I could be is perhaps indicated by the way I nearly fainted when I first sat through a lesson where the human circulatory system was being explained to us in detail, with diagrams by Mr Weatheral, the beak I was up to in Biology. The very fact of imagining all these processes going inside my own body was sufficient to cause my vision to narrow, to the point when I almost lost consciousness. I had to remain with my head on the desk for a while, until I felt well enough to walk away at the end of the lesson.

The effect of the [F] crisis had been to render me agonisingly self-conscious and, with puberty approaching, it became a subject for ribald comment how I was liable to start blushing at the very mention of any item that might conceivably have some sexual connotation. My vulnerability was quite absurd, and I recognised it to be so. But that didn't stop me blushing as soon as one of the danger words had been uttered, thus triggering the embarrassing reaction. And each recurrence would reinforce the likelihood of blushing next time. Sometimes I would be sitting there in a state of mental agony, just waiting for one of the danger words to fall upon my ear - so that the final outcome came almost as a relief in that the anticipated penance had then been paid.

The self-consciousness had considerable bearing upon my choice of friends, outside m'tutor's. I still maintained a friendship with Francis Hoare, and had gone to stay with him at their house on Tiree in the Inner Hebrides, on one occasion. But we were in fact growing apart. He had gone to Eton earlier than myself, so was several moves ahead of me with an elder group of friends. Moreover he was far more sportively successful than myself, and his personality was extrovert. So I was seeing less of him as the years passed by.

As for Mark Jeffreys, my special chum at the time of arriving at Eton, he had more or less discarded me as a friend by now. After all, I had the stigma of being one of the school tarts against my name. He could do better than that in gathering his circle of friends.

But someone in the same Classics division as myself, and whose placing in our trials' results was invariably just above, or just below my own, was Steve Arkwright. We recognised in each other the sensitivity of self- consciousness, and possibly suspected the mutual influence of getting brought up by an excessively dominant father. (His was a high-ranking army officer.) We had long conversations together concerning the inner perplexity in discovering what the innermost identity might be, and its relationship to God.

The fact of the matter however, is that I was far less certain nowadays concerning my belief in God. I did still believe, but the idea of atheism was no longer abhorrent to me. After all, my own father proclaimed himself to be an atheist, and I still had respect for his viewpoint. In one of my letters home to Henry, I was at pains to explain to him how a belief in God might not, after all, be incompatible with our mutual reverence for Science.

But I was coming up now towards the time when young Etonians might conventionally get confirmed in the Christian faith, and I was by no means sure that this would be the right step for me to take. Pressure varied, depending on the tutor's you were at, and as far as Jaques himself was concerned, he left it very much to the individual himself to decide. But the pleasant, jovial Dame, Mrs Moore - who had been at Wayneflete during my initial years, had now been replaced by a more polished, yet dour Scotswoman called Miss Abercrombie. And she aired her views quite forcibly for example, on the disgracefulness of John Mander in declining to get confirmed. To have followed the example which Mander had set would have involved a series of endless discussions with M'dame, who was highly opinionated and apt to persevere.

I knew in my heart that it would have been more honest of me, in my currently agnostic state, to await a deeper conviction in the Christian faith before presenting myself for confirmation. But I was supposing that such faith would eventually come, and I foresaw a situation when I might be seeking confirmation at an age when I was much older than all the others who were doing so. I might then be inhibited by the unusualness of the situation. It would be far less bother all round, as I saw it, if I got the ritual safely behind me without any fuss and bother.

Not a decision of which I now feel proud, but I did go through with it - under false colours, so to speak, refraining from debating any of the issues with Mr Wilde who was my instructor, let alone giving voice to any of the grave doubts which I harboured upon the very nature of God. But even if my views on the subject remained unorthodox, I was still in the habit of discussing my life with God in the form of occasional prayer. Or another way of describing what I was up to is to say that I was sending out my very private signals to the Universe, in the hopes that somewhere or other they were getting picked up by a superior form of consciousness.

While Daphne was apologetically of the Christian faith, (which is to say that she sort of believed, without conviction enough to make it an issue for argument or discussion,) Henry's creed was veering towards Indian mysticism via astrology. He was in the habit of cutting out the weekly predictions in The News of the World, and pinning them up on a board in his study - followed by his own judgement of their accuracy which was indicated with anything from a double tick to a double cross. The ticks predominated, and were regarded as proof that astrology was scientifically sound.

I know not what it may have been which set Henry upon this track, but someone then told him how there was an astrologer in Bombay, called C.J.Krishnaswamy, who was well worth consulting. He promptly listed his entire family with their places of birth, the exact time and the dates, and posted this information to the him. Some months later, the reports upon all of us began to arrive. And I remember how the information was treated as seriously as if it was a school report. I was praised for the commendations he had bestowed upon my character, and I was reprimanded for the lapses. There was no question of doubting the authority of the man to pronounce upon me in this fashion. It was assumed from the start that his authenticity must be valid. Fortunately he had more complimentary things to say about me than anything to the contrary. We were told for example that I would rise very well in life - in a career that was identified as being "some kind of a diplomatic service." Any other career would be like trying "to fit a square peg into a round hole".

Previously it had never entered my head that I might be destined for the Foreign Office. But the credence of horoscopes was so much encouraged by Henry that it now emerged as a real possibility within my mind. Indeed, it was a thought which was to remain with me for the duration of my years at Eton.

In my relationship towards my fellow human beings at large, my bias was still very much right wing, even if less so than Henry's. It was largely a question of the difficulty I found in identifying with anyone outside my own cultural background. There had been an instance when a group from the school who had gone skating on the lake at Stokes Poges, were ambushed by a group of local lads as we arrived at the bus stop to await the coach that had been hired to take us home. They had concealed themselves in the bushes on the far side of the road, and took us completely by surprise in a hail of snowballs. Then the atmosphere turned nasty, with particular individuals - including myself - advancing into the nomansland territory, inviting individual combat. Fortunately the coach arrived in the nick of time, but as we ran for it with undignified haste, I received a direct hit in my open eye from a snowball which must have contained a stone. It was agony, and did nothing to improve my disposition towards boys who came from state schools. Indeed, the experience had amounted to a foretaste of class warfare: a memory which recurred in my mind for long afterwards.

On the other side of the balance were the friendly relationships that I was developing with particular members of the forestry gangs, with whom I was working during the holidays; and in particular with Victor Trollope. But I didn't see quite so much of him now that we were no longer assigned to the same gang. When I spotted him amongst the beaters at a local meet for greyhound coursing, I sauntered over to him in front of the assembled crowd, thinking that we could chat. But as I approached, I saw that he was blushing scarlet and that there were smirks on the faces of the other beaters. I knew that I had done the wrong thing as far as he was concerned, and I was promptly afflicted with a similar embarrassment; so hastily took my leave.

The subject of politics was one that I might have left alone when in the company of the forestry gangs. Yet it seemed to me that they were often as much concerned as myself to talk in a critical vein about our Labour government. And it's possible that they were as interested as myself to hear how someone of a different background to themselves might talk upon the issues of the day. So they were perhaps drawing me out when the subject of politics cropped up. For my own part, I was anxious to test the comments that got thrown around at Henry's table, if only to discern the difference in response. So I did sometimes comply with such invitation. And for the most part, it struck me that they were not in any radical disagreement with the values I had learnt. My comments were greeted with a general buzz of consent or, at the very worst, with silence.

Then came the day however, when one member of the gang - by the name of Ted (Soldier) King - rounded upon the others in the gang to say that they wouldn't be talking like this, if it wasn't for the fact that I was present. There were protests of course, but it had struck me that he was probably telling me the truth. And when I recounted the incident to my father, he concurred that Soldier King was probably the only sincere person in the entire gang. "They're all bloody Socialists!" was his own verdict upon the matter. In an area like Wiltshire, I doubt if Henry was correct. But in any case it did bring home to me that the political values which were aired around the dining-room table at Sturford Mead were possibly different to those voiced within the cottages upon our estate.

It wasn't as if I was thinking for myself at all in any of these matters. I was merely attempting to discover my values by repeating those which had been commended by my parents. But to some extent I had already acquired for myself the reputation at Eton of being mildly eccentric. Nothing too extreme of course, for it was really nothing more than a tendency to keep myself to myself. But when it came to the home environment, my personal isolation was coupled with a sense of insignificance that had been imposed heavy-handedly, upon a childhood memory of automatic worth. I am suggesting that this formula quite often produces erratically eccentric behaviour in youthful members of the British aristocracy. A conscious effort to re-establish personal individualism, after such individualism has fallen under a state of siege within the family. So let me mention a few cases where this may have been in evidence.

There was the occasion when I was flying a kite on the waste land near the Dorney road, but the string broke and, after floating over a belt of high trees, it disappeared without trace. The usual practice under these circumstances was to put up a notice in the window of the school stationary shop, offering a small reward for the safe return of the item which had been lost. These took the form of brief factual statements upon small scraps of writing paper. But my own effort was something far more artistically colourful, eccentrically worded and penned in a whole variety of coloured inks. Something about an air-sea rescue kite with the owner's red dressing-gown chord attached, last seen flying in the direction of Slough after crossing the Dorney road. It gave rise to more than one comment that the author of such a mad notice could be none other than myself. But in any case it served its purpose, since the kite was reported as found - by a beak's wife in her garden. She disappointed me greatly however by accepting the small reward that I had offered, promising with a bland smile that she would donate it to the Eton Charity.

I was by nature of a parsimonious disposition, being required to itemise all details on any list which required Henry's reimbursement. So I watched my own spending habits accordingly. But at that age, I was not averse to the idea of quick financial gain from winning a bet - which explains how I got myself lumbered with the necessity to prove that rodents are edible, (as indeed I remembered hearing from one of the American officers who had visited Sturford during the latter period of the war,) by actually eating one in the presence of Parker minor. I had best continue with this tale by quoting excerpts from my letters home.

Henry complied with my request, although Mrs Sims declined to do the cooking on the grounds that it was "such a disgusting little creature." Therefore this task was given to Donald, who was by no means quite so skilled as a cook. And in order that the animal could be properly identified as a squirrel, he left the head and the tail intact upon the body. In my next letter, I thank them for their co-operation.

Achievements of this nature may have enhanced my reputation for eccentricity. Or to mention but another, I remember how the Jolliffe brothers, who were both King's Scholars and therefore far from being fools, regarded me as distinctly odd when they came over to have tea with us at Sturford - probably after a day's shooting. We were up in the nursery playing Vingt-et-un: in point of fact with a pack of marked cards which had been given to me at Christmas. My brothers were in the know - concerning how to read the face of each card from the back. But there was no particular advantage to be gained unless Raymond and John could be persuaded to sit upright with their deck of cards spread out in fan shape before their eyes.

I was constantly insisting that they adjust their postures - to an extent that it might have been assumed that they would become suspicious. But they weren't suspicious (as they informed me later) despite the fact that they were losing all their chips to us, because such fierce regimentation of guests was something they regarded as part and parcel of my eccentricity. I hasten to add that no actual money was extorted from them by these methods, and the big delight really was in telling them at the end of the day just how they had been duped.

The extent to which I had developed a reputation for parsimony however, gave rise to public comment on occasions - much to my private chagrin. I can remember once trying to refute the charge, by taking a pound note from my pocket, and then setting light to it in the presence of Parker minor and Graham-Wigan, whose comments had given rise to my offence. I don't think the gesture impressed them in any way at all. But the sight of those flames certainly caused anguish in my own heart!

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