Caroline really is extraordinary. I was very much hoping to introduce [V] to her. (I mean, it might work out eventually that they become sisters-in-law.) So I was making a special point of arranging for [V] to come over to Eaton Terrace, in the hopes that such a meeting could occur by chance, without any fuss or bother. Altogether there were three different opportunities, of which Caroline could have availed herself to come and say hello to [V]. On the first of these occasions, she was already upstairs with the children, but failed to put in an appearance downstairs - despite the fact that we were waiting for her for quite some time in the drawing room. The next time she slipped upstairs just as soon as [V] arrived - after the barest of greetings. And on the third occasion, she deci/ded to take a bath just as soon as the doorbell rang. This was displaying a degree of shyness which bordered upon rudeness.

I do of course find myself wondering if she has made up her mind not to like, or even accept [V]. But why on earth should she come to such a resolution? And who on earth could have been feeding her with such an ill report on [V]? Or could it be that the world of High Society has been putting out danger signals that one of their stately homes is in danger of falling into the wrong hands, through the mismarriage of its incumbent heir? I continually find myself wondering if High Society and myself have very much in common. But I do see how Caroline is inextricably bound up with that social group, and my respect and admiration for her (as a person) is likely to remain undiminished.

On Thursday afternoon I went to Hamleys to buy some presents for Harry and Ann - because I do feel that I owe Caroline something for having allowed me to stay at her house over this period while I have been attending all these deb dances. Anyway the presents were a huge success, and my popularity with Harry appears to have tripled. It only goes to show that popularity can be bought - because hitherto, I've always suspected that Harry had been absorbing David's disapproval of me.

When I came back to the house with these presents, I found that Aunt Mary was there with Charmiane. Caroline's behaviour does get very odd when she's cornered into having to play hostess to her relatives. She was all nervous and gesticulating. Then she sat down in an armchair and, instead of picking up the parcel which was intended for Ann, so as to unpack it, she picked up the baby herself and started undressing her. And she'd almost completed this task before she looked down in her lap, and exclaimed: "What am I doing?"

I am never quite sure if I interpret Caroline's moods correctly. But it could be that she is currently going through a difficult patch with David - which makes me wonder if my own presence in their house might be construed as undesirable. I should really like to avoid becoming a problem for Caroline.

"I placed a cushion on the edge of the sofa and I told them to watch while I beat it with a cane. And I made a big thing of it, laying on each stroke as hard as I could. I gave it six of the best. And when I'd finished, I told them that this was what they could expect from me if I come to hear in future, from anyone at all, that they've been up to mischief. I can tell you that they were both looking petrified. The only way to get young boys like that to obey is to scare the living daylight out of them. We won't be having any more trouble from them!"

I felt a disgust welling up inside me, largely because I was identifying too closely with the way he used to justify his own treatment of myself - or the occasion when he beat me for washing my dog and splashing some water on the floor. I found it outrageous the way that he still thinks like that - as if patting himself on the back for putting on such a forceful display. He supposes that he can bend us all to his will, just by frightening us into submission. He was even expecting me to commend him on his behaviour.

I am curious to reflect upon his motivation in telling me all this. I hardly think that he was trying to remind me of how he had once treated me - even if it did have that effect. I think he was more concerned to elicit my approval for such firm-handed behaviour, so that he might then be able to suggest that he had done no worse to myself, when I had been their age - in that the cane strokes he had given me were light enough to discount. He is definitely aware how that beating still rankles in my heart, and how it is something that we have never been able to talk about openly. Or if we did, we'd soon be screaming at one another. But this was his way of approaching the subject, without specifically mentioning it - leaving it to me to decide whether I wanted to mention it. Well I didn't. There is too much humiliation involved, in the way that I failed to hit back at him with any manner of adequate response. So I was just sniping at him (in this present argument) upon the need for greater tolerance, and an absence of sadistic display - which was irritating him of course, and we were close to hating one another.

He then went on to discussing Valentine's recent relegation, during his training as an army officer at Mons O.C.S. He said that if he failed this course, he was going to cut off his allowance to make him see what it felt like to live on a trooper's pay. "That will teach him that he has got to work!" I told him that this would be a paltry punishment when measured against the feelings of inferiority that would undermine Valentine's sense of self-esteem, in the event of getting Returned to Unit.

Dad was (just once again) irritating me quite considerably, with this perpetual inability to empathise with another person's problems, and with his conviction that humans can be brutalized into conformity with his wishes. I could feel the anger prickling inside me, and it always seems to get worse over dinners at Job's Mill - where the wine flows freely of course. I knew that the safest thing for me to do was to leave before any real row developed - which I did.

The awful part is that I find myself positively disliking Dad when I hear him talking like this. He threatens Val with abuse and discouragement, when what he quite obviously needs is sympathy and encouragement. Dad somehow feels that it would be unmanly of him to behave thus - as if the nearer he manages to appear like the role-model set by Adolf Hitler, the more people are going to admire him. But as far as I'm concerned, it's totally to the contrary. Whenever I hear Dad nowadays, puffing himself up as a little dictator, I wish to puncture him - or just cut him down to size. I've learnt the arguments now which might pinpoint the weaknesses in his position - arguments which reveal the strength of democracy versus all that bilge concerning the benefits of authoritarian rule, such as he delights to foist upon any of his captive audiences. And of course he is enormously vulnerable, in that he can be shown up for the inhumanity of his sentiments. And I do enjoy skewering him at the sharp end of those arguments. At the same time I know how it's safest that I refrain from so doing. Hence my decision to depart before the discussion degenerated to that level.

Dad has brought over some new plans for my apartments at Longleat. Quite a large sum of money was set aside at the breaking of the entail for the purposes of doing up the private apartments at Longleat - for my purposes, but under Dad's ultimate control. And the big question now concerns what we should do with the large empty space which used to be the chapel - much in use during Victorian and Edwardian times, but long since fallen into total disrepair. (I suppose that its demise can be dated from the death of my grandmother - shortly before Caroline was born.) Well Dad was asking me to study these plans, and then to report back on them by discussing them with Algar.

I have now done this, and I fear that there was very little that I could agree to in what was being proposed. Dad's idea was for stretching out the suite of rooms where I have now taken up residence, so that they join up with the Dowager Suite where I was formerly dwelling; and then to have a service flat constructed within the lower half of the chapel space. But my own idea is to get away from any notion of being cramped up inside a single flat, so as to regain some notion of spatial splendour when living at Longleat, even on this side of the house. I'd like to make full use of the chapel space for a Great Hall, to rival the one on the other side of the house - although this one could be done up in 20th century style. Unfortunately my idea for a hall conflicts with Dad's idea for setting the principal bedroom in what is now the top half of the chapel, whereas I'd prefer to keep the bedrooms situated upstairs where they already are.

I'm not at all clear how these differences in approach are going to be resolved, although my personal feeling is that, since I am going to be the one who is actually living here, then he ought to do his utmost to see that my preferences are respected. That would be much against his former style in such manner of important decision-making, however. So I have my qualms about how he is intending to proceed in these matters.

The evening after I had attended the Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, Caroline invited me to dine with them at Eaton Terrace. She has never done this before, so it must mean that David is beginning to accept me! Then afterwards we went round for a drink with Micky and Laura Brand. The main interest as far as I was concerned was that [T] was there; and this was the very first time we have remet since the time when he was Mum's lover - at Sturford during the war years. But I'm afraid he was exceedingly drunk. He came up and talked to me about Mum, saying that he still loved her. Then he came out with an interesting revelation. He made me promise to reproach her for breaking a promise that she made to him. I knew how there had been some talk of a possible divorce at the time, but it seems that [T] only agreed to withdrawing from the scene if Mum gave him her word that she wouldn't subsequently divorce Dad for someone else. And of course she did. These things were only being hinted at, but I think I got the gist of what he was drunkenly trying to say.

Then he was going on about Longleat and his own stately home. He was saying that he'd burn the place down before he let it fall into the hands of any Socialist government. I found this embarrassing, since my own feeling is that the state has every right to nationalize our stately homes if the time should come when we are seen not to be taking proper care of them. But it was a delicate issue for me to argue under the present conditions.

Then he kept calling out to his wife on the other side of the room, to come and meet young Weymouth - a meeting which she appeared anxious to avoid. In fact she barely even glanced in my direction. But this may have been because she was livid at her husband's (constant, as I'm told) inebriation. He was really in a bad way by this time, finding it difficult to remain standing upright; and he kept burning his fingers from the cigarette he was smoking. And when his wife tried to get him to leave, he was saying that he couldn't, since he was talking to "this capital fellow Weymouth". There was something in her eye which made me feel that she was blaming myself (or perhaps Mum) for his drunkenness. But she did finally manage to get him to accompany her.

Having heard that I've only got a Third, I would far prefer it if I could withdraw myself completely from society, and from my family in particular. I drove back home from Oxford on the Wednesday, and for the most part have been able to keep myself away from people since then. But I have the misfortune tomorrow, Friday, of having to attend Richard Stanley's wedding to Phyllida Austen, where the entire family will be present - plus a horde of my Oxford friends. I'm an usher, so there's no way that I can seek to avoid this. But I'm not looking forward to it in any was at all. How can I look any of them in the eye?

They'll be full of sympathy, I daresay, but they won't have an inkling of how low I feel. At best, I might manage to conceal my misery, because I wouldn't like to upset the festive spirit for everyone else. But it's going to be a very difficult day for me.

So I went to Richard's wedding on Friday, which was being held in a church near Phyllida's family home in Hampshire. It was even more of an ordeal for me than I'd been anticipating. I had accepted a lift from Dad, with Virginia and Aunt Mary travelling in the same car with us. And of course they got round to talking about my Third class honours - with all of them managing to touch me on the raw.

Mary is such a kindly person and I love her dearly. Her general line was to tell me that degrees don't matter in life, and she was quoting the example of her son Charlie, who has apparently made an impressive start in a firm of stockbrokers - without bothering about a university education. And she was generally hoo-pooing the pretensions of the intellectual world. But she was missing the point on how it was so important to myself to succeed, and I was faintly protesting that these things did matter.

Then Dad chimed in, ostensibly on my side in that he was agreeing how these things did matter. But in reality he was knocking me, and rejoicing in the opportunity for doing so. He was telling Mary how Alexander was right in saying that degrees do matter, and it's important to take note if it's a good or bad one - saying all this when he himself left Oxford without even taking a degree! But from his point of view, I've been scoring too many points off him during the past three years, demanding the respect due to an emergent intellectual, and he is now indignant because he feels he allowed himself to be duped into the belief that I might be justified in such a pretension. However reluctantly, he had actually been giving me that respect - only to discover now that the results have been posted, that my intellect was far less worthy than I'd been proclaiming. So as he sees it, I need to be put back in my place by the one person in the family who knows how to do so - namely himself.

It was clear to everyone that his remarks were wounding me, and I wasn't trying to defend myself. So Virginia now made an attempt to soothe my wounded pride by saying that if someone as intelligent as Richard could only get a Second, then I ought to be very pleased with myself in obtaining a Third. I just didn't feel like answering. She doesn't perceive how it offends me that she is placing Richard in a different category to myself - in the same way that Dad always does. The Stanleys are more intelligent than the Thynnes - or that is the formula they appear to accept so readily.

I lapsed into silence over the rest of the journey. I knew how anything that I might choose to say was going to lead to additional pain. But the hatred that I do sometimes feel for Dad was rekindled in my heart. There is such a detestable rigidity about his whole approach to life. It is so important to him that others should perceive things in precisely the same manner as himself. There is no flexibility on that score. He cannot allow me to rate my own worth differently to himself, wanting to drag out from me an admission that I had been overrating my intelligence to him over this entire period of my life at Oxford. In fact he is acting as if I'd conned him on the subject - deluded him into higher expectations of me than I merited. And that needs punishment of course. So he is sniping at me to make me feel the humiliation now that the truth has caught up with me.

I hate him for having so little regard for, or understanding of my self-esteem. There are to be no concessions. Now that he has gained the upper hand, he is making it his business to see that my nose is rubbed in the shit. If I had an understanding father, such as is the good fortune for so many people to possess, he would be assisting me in a kindly way to come to terms with my disappointment. But that is not his way. He delights to rub salt in this wound. Yet neither he (nor anyone else in my family for that matter) have the sensitivity to discern how much they are making me suffer.

I might pause to contrast Dad's attitude towards myself with that of John Lucas. I have received a very nice letter from him, where he still manages to give me some encouragement, despite the wretched quality of my Schools results. He ends up by suggesting that I continue to send him any items that I might write upon a philosophical theme, for his comments. And I do appreciate this enormously. It's such a pity for me that my own father isn't someone more in that kind of mould.

I have been over to dinner at Job's Mill on several occasions. On the whole Dad seems most friendly towards me, but it's somehow as if a new atmosphere prevails. He supposes that he has won his point - that given time, I'll now come to accept that I never was fitted for any manner of intellectualism, and that I can now get on with the essential life business of behaving like a good Thynne, in serving the best interests of Longleat. It's awful how he perceives that latter description as being averse to any intellectual pursuit! He thinks he's won, and that all he has to do is wait for me to discover my own means for adjusting my outlook. But he does try to nudge me along that track by dropping in the occasional comment where required.

What I hate most is that his friends are now ganging up in his support. They have all heard me in the past standing up against the idiocies in Dad's attitude, and they have seen how I have the capacity to enrage Dad with my superior argument. Well they are now persuaded that it is time to come out in Dad's support - as if previously, they were just waiting to see how I performed in Schools before knowing which side they should take. Well now that they know, they are showing their colours.

I might dwell upon one such instance. Harry and Prudence Weatherall were the dinner guests at Job's Mill, and I managed to fall out with Prudence - probably to Dad's amazement, since he has never seen me get angry with anyone other than himself. On the other hand she was indeed being rude to me - largely because (as ever) she and Harry were drunk.

It was a row which brewed up because of Prudence's fervent delight in the beauty of the Christian marriage service - especially the lines that bride and bridegroom have to proclaim to one another. My own angle was that I'd prefer it if we were permitted to make the vows that we might feel were natural to our individual personalities - because it would then establish the relationship on a basis of sincerity, as opposed to all the insincere twaddle that is foisted upon us within the ritual. Then quite illogically, I found that Prudence was working up her anger against me, verging upon the attitude that Dad himself might take.

The altercation ran as follows. Prudence was extolling the sheer beauty of the marriage lines, in that they laid the foundations for romance within a marriage. The concept of romance is important to her. But I was arguing that the individual bride or bridegroom should alter the vows into something such as they might really want to keep, and that there's no reason why those words should not be equally beautiful.

Prudence then went overboard, slamming me with Dad's line that it was sheer conceit for me to think that I could match such beauty in anything that I might personally write - thumping me with her fist as she was saying so. And I responded to this by flaring up in anger myself, probably with a touch of arrogance about it. Prudence was then scoffing sarcastically at my literary pretensions, suggesting the kind of vows that I'd make - all of them absurdly crude and vulgarly expressed. So by this time there was some real anger in the air.

Well it didn't go much further than that. But I was livid to find how Dad has now marshalled his dinner guests to his support, within this task of getting Alexander to perceive his own limitations. And the odd part was that Dad himself was virtually playing the role of peacemaker. He even took the trouble to come over to Longleat a couple of days later, to apologise for Prudence's behaviour. He said that she had been very rude, and was probably drunk. This was a nice gesture on his side, although I find myself wondering if he knew in his heart how he was responsible for prompting her behaviour.

Everything is coming to a head in my relationship with Dad. As he views the matter, I have been given a free run over these past three years, endeavouring to prove that I have intellect and that I should be permitted to seek out my own individual niche in society. But the way he sees it now is that I had conned him into furnishing me with such scope, and that this is a matter which should be rectified, in terms of setting me back upon the original path intended for me - by which he means me being obliged to toe the line traditionally expected for the heir apparent to Longleat.

He has obviously been mulling over what step he should take to initiate the new attitude towards me, and it was taken on the recent occasion that I went over to Job's Mill for dinner. Nothing was said on the subject until after the dinner had ended. Then I noted how the others tactfully withdrew, in a manner which I could tell was prearranged. It was known that he wanted the opportunity for a serious discussion with me. And I do have to admit that he was endeavouring to be most reasonable in all that he said. But he was politely telling me that, since I ought now to recognize that I had no talent for any of the more intellectual pursuits in life, then I ought to cut my losses and accept more humble ambitions.

In point of fact this new reasonableness was quite enfuriating me. But I matched it in similar style, pointing out (with equal reasonableness) how a man of genius should not too readily bow to the pressures which might make an average person accept average goals in life. And I criticized him for his absence of support, within a situation when he ought to be able to perceive the potential in a son, and be delighted to encourage him into maximum exertion towards the fulfilment of such promise. I did find myself much on the defensive, of course, with regard to my disappointing performance in Schools, and I was aware how lame it sounded in telling him how there were indeed some people who had expected me to get a First.

It frightens me to hear myself taking this manner of line. I am deliberately leaving myself with no manner of retreat left open for me. I am facing up to Dad all right, with a self-confidence that I do not genuinely feel. The reality of the situation is that I feel shit-scared with regard to the imminence of total failure - perhaps to the extent of mental breakdown, and indefinite hospitalization. Suicide could be another possible outcome, or just the gradual disillusionment of turning into an embittered old man, taking it out on my own children as a revenge upon life for the way it has treated me. But all that is on the supposition that I'm not going to make it as an artist and author, and that such an admission will finally be dragged out from me. So I cannot possibly allow that things are going to turn out that way. I have the ability to succeed, and I shall prove my point. I cannot accept that any other alternative lies open to me.

I don't think that Dad was really supposing that he'd make any headway within this discussion, but he wanted to feel that he'd tried - which is precisely what he has done. And now I'm hoping that we can both get on with the process of regulating our lives to the pattern of our own selection. These next few years are going to be a horribly critical time for me. Of course I worry that I'm not going to have what it takes to match up to the ambitions I have set for myself. But there can be no backing out now.

I have been neglecting to make entries in this journal - largely because the actual events are too trivial for comment.... But there has been a bad row with Dad. This was about a week ago.

Caroline and David had come over to dinner at Job's Mill. And Caroline was in an argumentative mood. I see it as another instance of Dad summoning his friends and relatives to his assistance in what he sees as the necessity of bringing Alexander to his senses, down from "cloud-cuckoo-land". I am up against their common will in these matters, where they are all set to gang up against what they regard as my conceit. They are striving to oblige me to take a more humble line, and I'm hell-bent to retain my self-esteem intact, despite their combined pressure.

Caroline's behaviour was the most aggressive of all. It was as if she suddenly feels that it falls to herself to drum some sense into me - perhaps as a service to Dad, but also as a matter of re-emerging in my life with all the authority she once exercised over me. I found this tiresome. It seemed that everything I said, she promptly came out in opposition to it. She was disagreeing as a matter of principle, and far more hotly than the points merited. In fact we were both making frontal assaults upon each other's positions, without any desire on either side to explore the middle ground where there might well have been scope for agreement.

In retrospect I can see how we were all giving a typical display of how the Thynne family indulge themselves in argument - a matter of obnoxious displays of niggling irritation, where points were being scored for the psychological effectiveness of such thrusts. Or that is the way that I assess their motivation. I still feel that I was endeavouring to present my own arguments for whatever logical value they might have. But I found it difficult to retain my equanimity in the light of their endeavours to unsettle my composure. So I began making some unfair thrusts of my own.

The main disagreement hinged around the importance of sympathy in the manner that we conduct our lives, with the examples drawn largely from the way Dad seeks to handle Valentine, or with the way that the nations of the West treat the Egyptians in the current political issue of whom should exercise the ultimate authority over their (our?) Suez Canal. Dad was taking his usual line, extolling the advantages (or even the necessity) of using a strong hand. But where has this got him with Valentine, for example? He has been threatening to cut off his allowance if he fails to obtain his commission. But that sort of threat isn't going to have the slightest influence on Val, who has always fallen back upon some inner streak of sheer obstinacy, whenever he's under pressure. Dad will never get any response from him at all until he becomes more humane in his attitude as a father.

What I found particularly uncomfortable was the way Caroline was all too eager to argue in Dad's support. And none too pleasantly, I felt. For example, she was deriding the value in the exercise of sympathy in the paternal relationship, by asking what I meant by it. "I suppose you'd like Daddy to put his arms round you and call you `Darling little Diddums', whenever you'd made a fool of yourself!" I retorted that I'd regard this as a display of sarcasm, rather than sympathy - after which she fell pleasantly silent for a while.

The discussion turned nastier all round when it was the example of the Egyptians that we were discussing. Dad was proclaiming all his usual fascist clap-trap in asserting that we should teach them a thorough lesson - marching in and wresting the Canal from their control. David was taking the line that this was what any government would do, if they thought they could get away with such an action. But I was arguing that such action would be morally wrong, unless the government had the support of the people in the country - meaning both Conservatives and Socialists alike.

The idea that I should be arguing a moral position has always been an irritant to Dad, who regards such argument as akin to priggery. And we were now ranging over the requirements of government. I was taking the line (like most of the Labour party's supporters, with whom I identified - for the sheer hell of irritating Dad) that the Tory party would forfeit the next election if they took it into their heads to invade Egypt, without the support of the opposition. So it then became an argument over the question of principle. Should government be free to make important decisions, unimpeded by the fear of popular reaction - or should they endeavour to interpret the popular will, and then enact it?

Dad now felt that he had succeeded in drawing me into the killing field, where I had identified myself as a supporter of the Labour party, and where I was advocating a wishy-washy concern for the popular will. But as ever, he was goading me to come out with some of the other utterances which have irritated him so much of late. He was doing his utmost to evoke what he regards as my arrogant conceit - deliberately pronouncing that my viewpoint was "foolish". And of course I did promptly become very angry, and perhaps arrogant in some of my remarks. For it seemed to me outrageous that Dad can dismiss as mere foolishness a viewpoint that is broadly held by half of the British electorate.

Now that he had drawn me into a display of arrogance however, he'd got me where he wanted - where he could martial the others in a bullying dismissal of all that I might say. and they were all flinging their barbed comments at me, until I began to fluster and to lose track of the argument - because there was no precise trail as to where it was all leading, apart from their general concern to give me an intellectual battering. The more I floundered however, the worse they all became. I was endeavouring to plead that I must withdraw from the discussion, because we had all lost the thread concerning what we might be trying to prove. But Dad wasn't going to permit me such a graceful exit - jeering at me for pretending that I was so clever, when I simply couldn't follow anyone's argument. And this was in fact the point where I could take no more of it, and left the table to go home.

I was feeling terrible. I had been given a real drubbing. But it had been so unpleasantly delivered, while at the same time revealing every one of us in what might be described as our true colours. Dad's behaviour in particular had been typical. He isn't in the least concerned to explore anyone's argument. His one concern is to browbeat his opponents in discussion so that his own viewpoint should triumph through attrition - with such a profusion of foul blows, and sheer idiocies, compiled within the case that he is presenting. And in an instance of this kind, where it might be claimed that he had triumphed, he behaves quite atrociously in the moment of victory - crowing with delight, and flinging all manner of additional (and quite irrelevant) insults at me, in order to heighten the peak of his ascendancy. It's all so unpleasant and unnecessary. But it's utterly typical of him. I am aware how, at other times, he can exercise enormous charm. Yet at times like this, I perceive him for what he really is - which is a bullying shit!

I obtained quite an insight into Caroline as well. Towards the end she was proclaiming how she had always supposed I might make a good barrister - because of my ability to keep abreast of an argument. But she was now claiming to have reversed her opinion in the light of my current performance. She was much enjoying this opportunity to put me in my place. In fact David was finding it all quite amusing. He said how Caroline goes at me hammer and tongs when she's actually in my company, but that she won't allow anyone to criticize me when I'm not around. And I daresay that such might indeed be the case!

I felt that Virginia might have been out of her depth as the evening's in-fighting grew fiercer. Her big desire is to unite the Thynnes, in the wake of the divorce - for which she may secretly hold herself to blame. But we don't make the task easy for her. She can see for herself how there are dangerous emotional divides, which are liable to keep individual members of the family separate from one another. The best will in the world cannot serve to unite us. But she keeps trying, while appearing embarrassed at the way we get so angry with one another. She must be beginning to perceive however, that this is all a part of the natural order for this family.

I had worked myself up into quite a state by the time that I had driven back to Longleat. There was a real hatred for Dad churning up in my heart, and the thought of having to live cheek by jowl with him (in our mutual attachment to Longleat) over what may well turn out to be a long period of time, conjures up a nightmare of frictional incompatibility developing between the two of us. We've got to learn to respect the idea of there being an established distance between the two of us - for the sake of my own sanity, if not of his as well.

The first thing that I did, on arriving back at Longleat, was to write a searing passage for `The Lost Ideal’, where one of the characters is thinking about his relationship with his father. (It still strikes me as being quite good!) Then I started thinking in more personal terms, as to how I might seek a solution to the existing state of affairs. And having cogitated the problem for a full three hours, I sat down and wrote Virginia what I'm hoping is the right (and necessary) letter, explaining to her how she must use her influence to establish this distance between myself and Dad. My problem is that she'll probably fail to understand just how important this is - still supposing that she'll work the final miracle and persuade us both to love one another. So I expect that there are problems still ahead of us. But it's going to help that I shall be moving to Paris, in little more than a week from now - probably until the end of the year. It could be that we'll manage to establish the relationship in some new manner and form, by the time that I return.

John despised himself for being dominated by such a man. A storm would slowly gather in his mind when he asked himself why he should quail before the tyranny of this dour old Scotsman. While thinking about him, he was raised into a silent fury. His father was a man with the narrowest of minds, and the most petty outlook upon life that could ever be conceived within a diminutive brain. There were tramlines of thought, to which the family were ordered to adhere. Any person who strayed from the path decreed had to run the gauntlet between derision and anger. If John should dare to advance an adverse argument, he was branded as a fool who was too young to know what he was talking about; or if he should give vent to an opinion which had pretensions towards a display of intellect, he was upbraided with conceit. To his father, words had only one meaning - the meaning which he had managed to grasp. Once a statement had been uttered, it was placed upon the scales for mental assessment, and it was then pronounced true or false. There was no attempt to grasp an inner meaning, and the whip was applied to every brand of falsehood. Nor was it ever spared. Yet the fact remained that he allowed himself to be dominated by this man.

The entire family was dominated for that matter. There was loathing in John's heart for all the traces of his father's attitude, which he recognized at work within his own mind. He was determined that they should be expunged from his consciousness, for he had sworn that he would never allow himself to remain beneath this yoke of unnatural subservience. He was obliged to regard himself as worthless until he had freed himself from this tyrant, who had constantly besmirched this sense of his own personal value.

It was useless for him to pretend that there were any grounds for self-respect. He wasn't the person whom his father would have liked him to be, and this was all he was ever allowed to perceive. Whenever he had attempted to create a personality of his own choosing, his shortcomings were ridiculed. Nor could the feeble structures of pretence withstand the crushing onslaught of reality - or at any rate, not in the fashion that reality was interpreted by his father. It was impossible to be adequate when the criterion for inadequacy was held up to be himself. And yet he'd been fool enough to continue trying, in search for a mental outlook which would enable him to rise above the squalor of all this self-destruction.

Why he should be afflicted with these doubts was entirely beyond his comprehension, for he had always been able to hold his own in any of the fields in which competition was necessary. When he was a child, he'd been sent to school with a magnanimous wave of the hand, while his teachers had been instructed to bottle him with the best vintage of learning. (His father was a man who expected his instructions to be obeyed.) There had been no fault in the quality of the teaching, nor in his achievements for that matter; but they had fallen short of brilliance. This was the fact which his father remembered, while all the successes were forgotten.

When the mood of revolt was in him, John would flourish opinions which were in flagrant opposition to his father's creed. He would be curtly reminded that he wasn't an intellectual, and therefore his opinions were valueless. On such occasions John would flare into an outburst of conceited fury, claiming degrees of intellect that were never there. He revolted against the lashing scourge of stupidity - a scourge applied by the most authoritative fool in Christendom. He felt nothing but contempt for the whole horde of his incarcerated family. He would exclaim opinions to his heart's content and, if others were too dumb to comprehend, then he would extol their value with his own lips.

Conceit was something which had never been tolerated. In situations like these, his father's temper would begin to rise. His son was a fool, and lacked the sense to admit it. Nor was there any use in attempting to understand the absurdities of the child's thought. If he should attempt to reassert the heresy, then he must be branded a braggart, and the lapses in his education must be dangled afresh before his eyes. His achievements must be ridiculed against those of his friends and relations. What did he know of music? What of art, or poetry? The comparisons were always unfavourable.

Then his father would adopt a softer tone. He would try to explain that theirs was not an intelligent family. Intellect was the private property of scientists and schoolmasters. Theirs was a family of commercial traditions, being men of determined industry and astute finance. Intelligence was an undesirable quality in this field. A family such as theirs did not need to acquire anything so commonplace as intelligence. Clever people were generally dishonest, and honesty was always the best policy. So eventually John had grown to accept the situation. He was unintelligent - but who wanted intelligence? He belonged to an unintelligent family, in a social group that was unintelligent - according to the national heritage of which he must be proud. All divergences from this viewpoint had to be kept private.

The family creed was given respect by all the minions who clustered round his father's table. They all paid lip service to the principles of careful costing and pristine cleanliness. Nothing had any worth except in its relationship to money. It was a barren, soul-killing creed which froze the waters of imagination, leaving no scope for the development of sensibility or taste. A drought of culture had parched all their minds. For music they had been given bagpipes and sentimental songs. For occupations they had been goaded into thrashing timid rabbits with a stick. As far as ideas were concerned, they had caught up with the advanced movements of the previous century. They had been forced to caper in obeisance to the whims of one pervading will. They had learnt that self-expression must give way to courtesy and respect for those who were indicated as being worthy of example. They had tasted abnegation upon the palates of conceit, and had known the shame of punishment for the benefit of temper's ventilation. These were the themes that had gnawed into their souls to create their present mentalities. This was the environment from which they were to be launched into the world - there to be reviled and spat on for their own stupidity by the self-same author of their intellects.

John gritted his teeth, for he had to think of nice respectful things to write in a letter to this man....

Over the course of my final weekend at Longleat, I learnt from Caroline L-T that Christopher has been writing to [Y] from America - telling her how lonely he is, how he hasn't met any girl yet that he likes, and how she might like it in America if she came out there to join him. There's no suggestion that she is liable to comply with that suggestion, but it does irk me to hear how he's still endeavouring to steal a girlfriend from me. I'm inclined to suspect that there's something more to it than mere lust - as if it would be a considerable psychological fulfilment to him, to be able to think he'd had the capacity to do this to me. A matter of finally surmounting whatever negative comparisons were implanted on his psyche within the years of our upbringing. Well it's all most tiresome as far as I'm concerned.

I feel that I'm well rid of him, now that he's out in America. I sincerely hope that he makes good out there, so that his return visits to England might be increasingly rare. Each of us have our respective identities to establish and conserve, and it would seem to be far healthier for both of us if we endeavour to achieve this with the distance of the Atlantic ocean separating us. With him out there, I really wouldn't mind it very much if I were to hear that [V] had married him - so long as they made their home in America, rather than coming back to flaunt themselves before me in London. But in any case, no one has yet given me to understand that this is liable to be the final outcome.

Dad made an effort to establish the new kind of relationship that he supposes now exists between the two of us, when he brought over Sir Hugh Casson (of the Royal College of Art) to have a talk with me concerning the best use that we should make of the former chapel at Longleat. It was very much the "See how reasonable I'm being?" approach. But to my eyes he's not being half so reasonable as he'd like me to think. I mean, he keeps me in the dark about Sir Hugh Casson's visit until he actually arrives there in my drawing room with him - then tells me to explain the ideas that I might have in mind. But I know full well that I was only being asked to contribute my ideas as a gesture, without them being seriously considered. It was obvious that Dad had already gone over the whole ground beforehand, indicating what was really wanted, and explaining why my own suggestions could not be tolerated. Sir Hugh was listening to me politely all right, but I could tell how he wasn't concerned to consider my ideas within the context that it's me (and not Dad) who will be living here.

Well I told him how I'd like to get a grandiose entrance installed upon my side of the house, and to occupy this space in a style which might match our ancestors. Dad's line was to hint that I'm suffering from illusions of grandeur, and he'd probably stated that viewpoint quite openly before they arrived. So Sir Hugh was already preparing his ground for siding with Dad, by intimating that the Ancient Monuments Department might well refuse us permission to make any extensive alterations to the exterior of Longleat. But I'm not sure if he appreciated how my own ideas are really quite flexible. It's the general style of living on this side of the house that I'm concerned to keep grandiose, without insisting upon particular features like the size of my front door. It sounded to me as if Dad was trying to lump all my ideas together as being impractical and pretentious - which might well mean that Sir Hugh is being persuaded to ignore them completely. I think I've got to appreciate that he is undertaking this task on Dad's behalf, and I'm just to be treated as the difficult child whose whims can be heard - and then ignored.

I feel the gall rising in my throat. Dad thinks that he's got me where he has always wanted me - down to his own level and intellectually discredited. And it's back to the childhood disciplines with which he formerly afflicted me. But I'm damned if I'll stand for it if he's going to push me any further down that road. And this question of my apartments may well turn out to be the arena where I've finally got to give him battle. He has got to learn to treat me as an adult. He has got to learn that it's me who is living here - not him. All right, we can always discuss things - because Longleat certainly does belong to him. (Or rather he's what they call the tenant for life.) But he's got to realize that I too have my rights on this issue, and he's got to start treating me as an adult human being.