An early memory from the years we lived near Stowe was the sight of my father pushing our front door firmly shut in the face of one of its headmasters, who was attempting to force his way in and apologise for some misdemeanour. He had, I believe, tried to seduce my mother. Later on I shared a London flat with a Stoic, a dark, mysterious, gipsy figure who worked on Ready, Steady, Go but was principally a beautiful tennis player, mentioned here for having helped Stowe win the Public Schools Championship in successive years. Sometime after I left, he was found by the police dead in the bath.

Nights there had been full of incident. His old school friends would pour in through the windows at all hours, some with their girlfriends, and the next morning the floor would be littered with their bodies. Stoics then seemed a reckless, raffish set, epitomised by David Niven. They danced better than anyone else, drove faster cars and married stars such as Deborah Kerr and ‘Georgeous Gussie’ Moran.

Their ruthless self-assurance owed something, no doubt, to the aristocratic background and atmosphere of where they were educated, once a mock-classical palatial home, surrounded by long lawns that sloped down to lakes, temples and pavilions, views that inspired Whistler’s murals in the Tate. The estate had been created by Lord Cobham. He had fought under Marlborough, then in an expedition to Spain destroyed most of Vigo, before retiring to the country, where he erased Stowe village, forcing the inhabitants to move elsewhere. Eventually ‘in his last moments, not being able to carry a glass of jelly to his mouth, he was in such a passion, feeling his own weakness, that he threw jelly, glass and all into Lady Chatham’s face and expired.’ His descendants rose to be Dukes of Buckingham. The last heir to Stowe was killed in 1915, leading a platoon against the German trenches.

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