Mortimer Charlie - Dear Lupin...

Constable & Robinson Ltd

5556 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2011

Copyright Charlie and Roger Mortimer, 2011

The right of Charlie and Roger Mortimer to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-7803-003-7
eISBN: 978-1-78033-013-6

Printed and bound in the UK

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This book is a tribute to my dad and a big thank you to him for never giving up on me despite my endless shortcomings, failures, disasters and general inability to live up to the high hopes and aspirations he and my mother had for me, which, as these letters show, over time became slightly more realistic. Initially there were hopes that I would get my house colours at Eton and become an officer in the Coldstream Guards. Ultimately my dad merely hoped that I would avoid being taken away in a Black Maria together with my then business associates, the now infamous John Hobbs (the colourful Chelsea antiques dealer to the mega-wealthy) and his brother Carlton. However, it is now twenty years since my dad died and I suspect he would be delighted that, now almost sixty, the same age he was when he wrote me the early letters, I had at least survived thus far and was moderately happy.

As he predicted it is only in later life that I have come to fully appreciate the affection and wisdom imparted by him to me. I am grateful that, despite what he described as my unorthodox lifestyle, I somehow managed to keep the majority of the letters he sent me, which is somewhat of an achievement in itself. At an early age I was aware that they were something special and not at all like the letters that my friends fathers sent to them. In fact, I used to regularly read them out loud, often after a few drinks, to whomever I was with at the time and there were always many laughs, mainly at my expense.

My dad was enormously self-deprecating. He saw himself as a patiently enduring and thoroughly respectable middle-class gentleman, much along the lines of Mr Pooter in The Diary of a Nobody, while I was the disreputable son, Lupin, who was always getting into frightful scrapes. Thus many of the letters start My Dear Lupin before launching into a thoroughly bleak assessment of my current situation and future prospects. The early letters were largely of concern and admonishment but, as time went by, a resigned acceptance of the way things were crept in. Despite everything, my father never showed me anything other than affection and tolerance.

I think in later years he almost used writing as a form of therapy to deal with his own ups and downs and this, together with his unique and sometimes devastating perspective on almost anything, made the letters real gems that have clearly stood the test of time. He was a great pricker of ego, self-importance and pomposity.

He was also a total original, as indeed was my dear mother, thus his descriptions and analogies of people, situations and such are both a breath of fresh air and highly entertaining. I clearly remember him summing up Yoko Ono, when she first came on the scene, as being as erotic as a sack of dead ferrets, while in one of his Sunday Times articles (c.1971), he wrote, At one time a little humdrum adultery could prove a barrier to The Royal Enclosure at Ascot but now something more spectacular is required, such as hijacking a Securicor van or taking too prominent role in a sex education film designed for circulation in the best preparatory schools.

This little collection of literary snapshots in the form of letters is a celebration both of a long-suffering fathers enduring relationship with his neer-do-well son and a humorous insight into the life of a mildly dysfunctional English middle-class family in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

My dad was born Roger Francis Mortimer on 22 November 1909. My grandparents were pretty well off and lived in a house in Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea, London. According to the 1911 census there were eight live-in staff members. My grandfather, Haliburton Stanley Mortimer, was a charming man but by all accounts not a great stockbroker. My grandmother, Dorothy (ne Blackwell) was an heiress of the well-known food company Crosse & Blackwell. My father had one sibling, Joan, born in 1907.

He was educated at Ludgrove School, Eton College and Sandhurst. In 1930 he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards. He was a captain when his platoon fought a desperate rear guard action at Dunkirk in 1940 during which almost all of his men were killed and he was wounded. Unconscious, he was taken prisoner and spent the remainder of the war in prison camps running the camp radio. Many of my fathers friends in later life were those he met as prisoner-of-war no. 481 in various Oflags and Stalags.

After the war he rejoined his regiment and, as a major, served in Trieste. However, in 1947 he resigned and took up an appointment with Raceform, the official form book for horse racing. He followed this by becoming racing correspondent of the Sunday Times until retiring almost thirty years later. He also wrote for various other newspapers, was a commentator for the BBC and became PR officer to the Tote. In addition, he wrote several classic books on racing, the greatest of which was undoubtedly The History of the Derby. His other books on racing included The Jockey Club, Anthony Mildmay, Twenty Great Horses and The Flat. My dad was also a keen gardener and quite an expert on military history.

He met my mother, Cynthia Denison-Pender, in 1947 and within six weeks had proposed to her. They were married in St Pauls, Knightsbridge, on 10 December of the same year. My older sister Jane was born in 1949, myself in 1952 and my younger sister Louise in 1957.

My mother: Cynthia Sydney Mortimer aka Nidnod (ne Denison-Pender, born 28 February 1921).

My older sister: Jane Clare Torday aka Miss Cod-Cutlet, Miss Cods Eyes, Miss Fisheyes, Miss Bossy Pants (ne Mortimer, born 23 January 1949).

My younger sister: Louise Star Carew aka LL, Lumpy Lou (ne Mortimer, born 12 January 1957).

My brothers-in-law: Paul Torday (married older sister, 1971; two sons, Piers and Nick); Henry Carew aka HHH, Hot Hand Henry (married younger sister, 1977; one daughter, Rebecca, and one son, Ben).

Fathers mother: Dorothy Mortimer aka Gar (ne Blackwell).

Fathers sister: Joan Cockburn (ne Mortimer, born 1907; married to Reggie Cockburn aka Uncle Reggie).

Mothers sisters: Pamela Darling aka Aunt Pam (ne Denison-Pender, born 1915; married to Kenneth Darling aka General Sir Kenneth Darling); Barbara Denison-Pender aka Aunt Boo (born 1917; divorced).