My relations with Dad have been all right since returning from Oxford, although a little restrained, and occasionally veering too close to the edge of the precipice. The strain is chiefly noticeable in Virginia’s attentive anxiety, in case the split should reappear. I am still convinced that the only safe thing for me to do is to set myself up independently at Longleat, and I have hinted upon this solution, linking it to a move from the Dowager Suite into the rooms at present occupied by the Longleat guides. I think he finds the first part of the idea to be acceptable, but I may have to wait for the rest. There’s no hurry.

Thank you so much for your very interesting letter, and you seem to be having quite an amusing time from the sound of it. Virginia and I both sympathize with you however, about being with a smart Spanish family, since nothing can be more smart than the Spanish when you get into that set, and consequently positively terrifying.

Your brother Valentine is being an exceptionally good boy, and the only one of my family who has ever helped in the garden. In fact he is being so good that I am considering not making him work in the woods!

I haven’t heard from Christopher for some time, so can give you no news about him.

About Uncle Tony, I shouldn’t write to Aunt Vicky because it’s rather a tricky business and all a bit complicated, and I do not think she would expect a letter anyway. Tony is much better and they think he will definitely recover. I am under the impression it was all an accident after rather a drunken party, but I really don’t know.

This place is dotty. There are endless parties, and people seem to live as they did in the twenties. There are fancy dress balls, beach picnics, barbecues, amateur theatricals - every day of the week. It is hopeless for work, and we shall soon have to force ourselves on to the road again. David Herbert, who is Lord Pembroke’s second son and an old chum of mine, has a lovely little Moorish house outside Tangier, and all the dizzy whirl revolves around him.

Xan and I bravely gave a Beach Party at night round our igloo tent - rather like the new boys asking all the monitors to a dorm feast. It became a pepper party. We started with peppered vodka, then Xan made a stew of beans and chillies, and overdid the Worcester sauce and chile peppers. Afterwards we had a green pepper salad, and someone having taught me the trick of putting pepper into Algerian wine (which makes it taste like Burgundy), I did that. Everyone’s tongues were hanging out, and people kept on plunging into the sea to cool down. And one guest said that when he went to the loo next morning, it was like passing mustard!

We stayed on in Tangier for a month. It is terribly gay, and there are all kinds of parties - particularly beach smooch-parties. We got no work done while we were there. But we have now reached Ain-el-Turk (What a rum name!) in Spanish Morocco, which is very exciting and untamed. The Riff Mountain country was impenetrable bandit territory until 1925, and you feel that they are still lurking all round you. And they all smoke kiff, which is a derivative of hashish. In Spanish Morocco one can buy it anywhere. (It’s not permitted in French Morocco, although they do smoke it on the sly.) It makes you feel very pleasantly rum, and you drift along in a slap-happy trance, very, very slowly. We went to a wonderful Arab cafe, where you take off your shoes and sit on a terrace, on straw mats, and smoke pipe after pipe of kiff - looking down on trees, and out to sea. Xan and I have equipped ourselves with two pretty bamboo kiff pipes, painted with a design of green leaves.

That brute Valentine hasn’t written me one line since he returned to Eton for the Summer half. Will you kindly blow him up sky high? I have not said anything to your father about it. But he knows that all letters will be forwarded to me from Cowrie.

The last place we settled down in was called Tigzirt. We suddenly came across a marvellous Roman temple to Minerva, standing by the sea. And there was a charming little hotel close by, so we stayed there for two weeks so that Xan could work peacefully on the translation work that he is doing.

You will have read about the ghastly earthquake, which might easily have turned us into anonymous corpses. But we had gone through the earthquake zone just two weeks previously....

It has been awful about poor Tony being shot by Mavis. It seems a miracle that he has survived, but he has suffered agonies of pain, and they couldn’t give him much dope. I don’t know what will happen eventually about him and Aunt Vicky. She went to him at once, and when she walked in, he said "You old rock!" - which is rather touching. It must be awful for them both now with the press publishing all of Tony’s love life. It has been plastered front page in every paper. I think Mavis must be mad. She has always gone rather crazy when drinking, but as a rule she just took off her clothes. She was the one who spilt chocolate soufflé down the front of her dress at a dinner party at Sturford, and then "I can’t - there’s a naked woman between me and the refrigerator!" undressed. And when Donald was asked to get some more champagne, he said

After we leave here, we must push on in Tunisia - which rather frightens me, as there are terrifying

bandits called Fellaghas, who every now and then hack up European ladies, or go about peeing and shitting on crucifixes. I am going to refuse to drive after dark, and am hoping they may respect the Union Jacks which are plastered all over our Landrover. It would be silly for us to get ourselves killed, just because they thought we were French.

Dad came round to see me after lunch today (Sunday), saying that it was time for us to have a chat. It related to my suggestion, before I went abroad, that he should allow me to move into the rooms that are currently occupied by the guides. But he wanted to open up the range of the discussion, so that we could talk about my life in general - what I intend to do with myself for a future career, and the way in which I intend to associate myself with Longleat.

The last occasion when we had this kind of a discussion (which was several years ago), I had thoroughly disappointed him by insisting that Longleat must always remain as a background to whatever I might do in life - that it wouldn’t be healthy to let it become too dominant over me - that I must be free to do my own thing without feeling that the house (and my service to it) has got to be the ruling passion in my life. But Henry had expressed his horror at my attitude - relegating Longleat to a position of mere background. It sounded to his ears like sacrilege! To treat it that way (he argued) meant that I had no strong feelings about the house. But I had told him that this was nonsense. I felt strongly about it as my background, and that would make of me whatever I might have the capacity to become.

Now that he was raising this subject for a second time, I felt dubious about the consequences. But I knew how there had been no significant change within my position, and I told him this to get the discussion moving. His line of counterattack was that I was drifting into life aimlessly, and that I would never make good unless I got myself a serious job. I explained to him that I did regard my painting and my writing as the equivalent of a serious job - even if he doesn’t. And quite frankly, I do regard it as most offensive of him that he cannot treat these professions to which I aspire in the same light as myself. Instead of that, he is at pains to argue that I’ll never make any serious money from such efforts, and that nothing can count as serious until it pays the bills.

He was taking the line that I am wasting my life attempting to do something which others do much better, and that I ought to come to my senses and admit that I haven’t the mental calibre for such intellectual pursuits. I’m not clear if he was just goading me, to bring me out in the utterance of even more conceited remarks so that he might attack me the more easily; but he was certainly irritating me. Why should I take it from him (of all people), when my Oxford tutor is telling me that I have an unusually high intelligence? But I didn’t want to put a foot wrong, so I adopted an essentially modest line, saying that I felt spurred on towards such achievement by what might possibly be described, in the final analysis, as a severe inferiority complex. I need to achieve greatness in these fields, as the means of attaining my own peace of mind. And it is my relationship with himself which stands as the catalyst that is liable to get me moving in that direction.

He said that I was attempting to be far too dramatic about myself - although he was prepared to recognize that, in some contrary way, I did appear to be doing precisely what he doesn’t want me to do, for the reason that I have been pushed into it by himself. But as so often happens, he now began to niggle at me in a way which was really most offensive. He took the idea that if I was to be nudged into doing what I was doing by his attitude towards me, then I must be an "insignificant little character" to be so easily influenced. And if I thought that I had an inferiority complex, then perhaps it was because I am inferior. That wasn’t at all the way I wanted him to view the matter, and I urged him instead to regard my endeavours as something part and parcel of me - something that was bound to happen, since that is the way that I am made. But he was arguing that there’s still time for me to change my direction in life, and to be of some use to Longleat in the process.

While regretting my inflexibility on that issue, he went on to discuss what I might see as Longleat’s future. He saw a danger of it becoming little better than a museum, with the Thynne family gradually withdrawing from it. He stressed that, within his own vision, we should find some role for Longleat that will integrate it within the mainstream of contemporary life, and bring in plenty of money in the process. He cited the example of Checkers, which is there for the use of whomever might be the Prime Minister of the day. He was suggesting that we offer Longleat as the permanent base for some particular branch of government - he didn’t specify which, and I don’t think he yet has precise ideas on that subject - while doing up some portion of the top floor as a residential flat for the Thynne family. Or there was an alternative use for Longleat he suggested, which was to turn it into something like a health resort, with Tring or Elton Hall being the examples in mind.

I told him if financial circumstances reduced us to the need to accept such measures, I thought that I personally would lose all interest in Longleat. I might abandon the place entirely, and go and live somewhere abroad. The appeal of Longleat is that I shall eventually be in complete control of it. I have no intention to live in it as second master - at the sufferance of governmental or health resort officials. I said that I even felt badly about the superior status which he gave to the guides at Longleat - permitting them to lord it in the rooms formerly occupied by his mother, while I went scuttling in by the back door to house myself in the Dowager Suite. Not only was I finding my present quarters too cramped (for the purposes of entertaining, and the like) but I also felt that it gave people the wrong impression as to who might assert the greater authority within the hierarchy - the guides, or his son and heir.

Dad regarded all this as `folie de grandeur’, and he wanted to hear what kind of a future I managed to see for Longleat within my own vision. I said that I didn’t yet feel myself to be under pressure to come up with a definite statement on that issue. To answer him but vaguely, I told him that I saw Longleat as the backdrop for my future creative efforts. And I knew how I was irritating him with such assertions. He said we couldn’t be content to sit back and do nothing with the part of the house which was still unshown to the public. So I pointed out that I wasn’t suggesting that we did nothing. I asked him to excuse my conceit, but I intended, with the use of my own skills and talent, to transform that part of the house with my own creative efforts, so that it would become an object of interest to the touristic public - something to match the interest that is aroused by the decor on the other side of the house - and thus to enrich the Longleat revenue.

His constant rejection of the idea that I am artistically qualified to make such a contribution does indeed infuriate me, and it was making me come out with conceited utterances just to goad him. My biggest thrust was to tell him that the fact of me living here at Longleat would augment the capital value of the place by a few million pounds - from its association with me, and from the works of art that I’d leave behind on its walls. He told me this was nothing but self-delusion and stupidity, and if I didn’t come to my senses, I’d be making a real mess of my life. He bemoaned the fact that I didn’t display a more practical attitude to life - more like Christopher in effect. He feels that I am living in the clouds, and that I’m going to come down to earth with one hell of a bump.

The outcome of this conversation was that we now may better understand our respective positions, although we made no progress on how these matters should be resolved. There is the encouraging point that we managed to get through the discussion without either of us losing his temper. And I suppose it is good that I should now feel myself more committed to this artistic gamble, on whether I can succeed in life within my two chosen creative fields. Dad has obliged me to come fully out into the open, and to declare my intent. There can be no easy way henceforward, for me to abandon those endeavours. I feel as if I have crossed the Rubicon and burnt those proverbial boats.

But of course there are worries in my mind. What kind of life is in store for me if I gradually lose confidence in my own ability to succeed? I may shut the possibility from my mind, but I still know that it’s lurking there somewhere behind the scenes. And I find myself wondering if, in such an event, I possess the inner strength to cope with such a crisis. A bitter disillusionment could utterly shatter me - and that is what Dad is predicting for me. My self-confidence is already experiencing some difficulty to keep afloat, and it could so easily founder. I hate to contemplate these matters, because suicide might then be the only logical solution.

For the time being I can see but one outcome - that I shall prove to posterity that I was justified in having this faith in myself, and that Dad was short-sighted in his vision. I shall learn to harness the fears and doubts that lurk in my mind, so that their energy can fuel my drive towards success. I really do believe that I’ll get there in the end.

My relationship with Dad isn’t going very well. To some extent this may be my own fault in that, at meal times, I am apt to raise the topics which give rise to argument. I may be hoping at the time that we can indulge in friendly discussion on such issues. (There are indeed one hell of a lot of these issues which will require ventilation at some time or other, since Dad’s whole perspective upon life is constructed around too many untenable positions.) But once Dad has got it into his head that I am attacking his views on life, he’s like a runaway bull.

His precious cliché positions are all so vulnerable, and he doesn’t want to shift from any of them at all. So he gets furious, and shouts more and more of them - often with total irrelevance to the topic in hand. And I find it difficult then to argue any manner of coherent case. He seems to think that the way you win an argument is to succeed in re-uttering the greatest number of catch slogans - so that they have all been repeated and reheard, without any of them having been effectively disproven. He sees them as his military barrage which he fires upon any attacking forces. And while his guns still fire, he thinks he’s winning. Or he feels as if he’s winning because I haven’t actually obliged him to retreat from any of his reiterated positions.

The problem to those who might wish to salvage any manner of sense or purpose from such debate, is to hold him to one particular track. He creates chaos because, in his illogic, that’s his best defence. But my dissatisfaction with his methods shows up quite readily within my expression, which only serves to needle him still further. So he retaliates with goading remarks - sneering at my incapacity to argue my case, or whatever other taunt might come to his mind - constantly striking out below the belt, endeavouring to wound me on a point of vanity (or whatever). He becomes such an unpleasant person, and we soon arrive at a position when further discussion is rendered impossible.

There were several cases of this kind of situation occurring during my final week at home, and I finally gave up entering into contention with him about anything at all. Perhaps that’s the way he wants it. But it’s no basis for us to continue meeting with friendliness in heart.

I think he realizes that I have adopted this policy of holding myself back from any real participation in his discussions because, on my final dinner at Job’s Mill (before returning to Oxford), with Virginia and Harry Stavordale also present at the table, he was goading me quite deliberately by charging out over all the same ground as before. I think he wanted to give Harry the chance to see just how "aggressive" I have become, so that he might seek consolation from him afterwards concerning the attitude of the younger generation. But I was careful not to put a foot wrong. I listened politely to him proclaiming all manner of stupidity, and even to "win" all his arguments by the criterion of his success in shouting down his opponents. But I knew how my restraint was exasperating him even more than the reasoned arguments which I was formerly using against him. For I was giving him no cause for complaint whatsoever, with which he might persuade Harry, later, that I was a difficult son.

Virginia has a most delicate path to tread. I think she feels that Dad’s heart is already in the bag, and that the one she still needs to capture is my own. So it is Dad that she seeks to moderate, without actually taking up any stance that might seem antagonistic towards him. There is just a faint feeling of her being coyly flirtatious towards me, in some of her remarks. But on the whole, I think she projects the best possible attitude - a concern that Dad should be reasonable with us, and that his views are really not quite so abominable as they in fact are. In any case I regard her as a mellowing influence over him.