Scope and Content
"I hope this will arrive on your birthday with my best wishes for many happy returns. I arrived home on March 1st. exactly two weeks ago, on a glorious sunny day, and when I saw the primroses and daffodils round the castle, I felt I had managed to escape the winter very nicely.
After leaving Tenerife, I spent a few days in Las Palmas, and then flew thereafter to Tangier, accompanied by a French friend who is well known as a writer of travel books in France. From there we went south into Morocco, to Tetuan, Marrakesh, and into the Atlas Mountains, far beyond picture postcards, to an oasis called Tafilalet. Here we really were among the Bedouin arabs, and accomodation was primitive, but it was a wonderful experience. The desert at night is something quite unforgettable, the stars twice as large as in Europe, and what with camels, and Arab music (mostly through the radio from Casablanca!), I often felt I was living in some kind of film. I did indeed regret for once that I had no camera with me. I gave up taking photographs some years ago, as I have albums and boxes full of snaps which I never look at. Fortunately my friend has a camera and took many photographs which I am looking forward to seeing. There is one of me in complete Arab dress mounted on a horse a la Lawrence of Arabia which should be amusing. I returned home via Lisbon and stayed a few days there, but I found it noisy and crowded, and not at all to my liking.
Since my return I have as usual been busy writing letters and catching up with things generally. There was a large pile of Amphtill News sent by Perton week by week, and parish mags from Valder. I have not had time to go through them yet. I did see in one Sunday paper that Sir Albert had got his way about various things in Ampthill.
Now I must thank you for your letter, the Bedfordshire magazine and the cardigan. You must think I have been putting on some weight, since the circumference of the cardigan at the bottom is many inches larger than my 31" waist! You will have to take it in for me at the sides. At present it hangs like a bolero! Not that it really matters, since I intended it to wear under a coat or a cassock in cold weather.
I have been looking at your holiday list for 1961 which I kept in my desk for reference to see when you are free, and how my dates fit in. My future programme is that I go up to Yorkshire on March 24th. to stay with the Waddingtons at Wistow. There is to be a service of commemoration of the Battle of Towton (fought on Palm Sunday 1461) at the church near the battlefield, and I am very keen to attend it. The Waddingtons are getting me a ticket, and the Archbishop is going to preach. I shall come back here the next day and stay here for Holy Week and Easter, and Sydney Crouch is coming to join me. On Easter Tuesday I am going over to France, and I expect to be there for the rest of the month. Back here in May, Mrs.Stavert is coming to stay (date and length of visit unfixed), and I am booked to go to Oxford for Whitsun. I should be back here on Tuesday the 23rd. Whether Mrs.Stavert will be here then remains to be seen.
She flew out to join Patricia, (who is on a visit for two years to the wife of the Governor General and returns home this summer), and will be back at Hoscote for Easter.
My next departure for abroad is on June 10th. when I fly to Sweden on a visit to a friend who is Headmaster of a boys' school at Malmo. His summer holiday begins on June 10th. till the middle of August. He is an ex-Olympic gymnast (now 40) and carried the Swedish flag into the arena at Wembley when the Games were in England in 1948(?). He has been pressing me to go to Sweden for a long time, but I have not been able to get there. He will return here with me in early July, and I intend to take him on a tour after we have exhausted the sights of Kent and London. That will bring me up to the end of July, when I go up to Scotland as usual to spend August with the Staverts.
And that (apart from a promise to join a cruise to Greece and Istanbul at Easter in 1962!) is as far as my arrangements go at present.
I see that Whitsun week is a free time with you, so if you would like to fix Wednesday or Thursday in that week for a visit, I shall be pleased to see you. Nothing has happened at the castle during my absence, except that Col.Douglas has to go into hospital for an operation (gall-stones). My neighbour Mrs.Olley went to Israel for the winter, and is due back at Easter. The upper hard tennis courts has been dug up, soil laid over it, and it is to be turfed; so we shall have a much bigger lawn. I was sorry to see the other day, when I took a visitor down to see the smugglers' caves that they have been bricked up! So you will not have the thrill of emerging gracefully backwards again from the hole in the wall, as on a previous visit! Before I forget, you must let me know how much you paid for the wool for the cardigan.
Everybody in Yorkshire is very thrilled about the engagement of the Duke of Kent to Katharine Worsley. I can remember, as a child, going with my parents to Hovingham Hall (which is only 2 miles from Malton where we lived) to visit the then Lady Worsley, who was a friend of my mother. She would be the grandmother of Katharine, as I should be about 10 or even younger at the time. Over half a century ago! It was before the days of motorcars, and I remember driving in an open carriage through lanes which are now wide roads. I am so glad the wedding is going to be in York Minster - the first royal wedding there since the 14th. century!
Did you ever read the life of Florence Nightingale by a woman called Cecil Woodham-Smith? It was first published in 1951, and is now a Penguin. I read it recently, and was very much impressed. If you have not read it, it would be a good buy on your crossword dividends.
Yours sincerely,"