Thank You

Thank you all so much for your very warm welcome. I’ve been distracted by that dirty word ‘work,’ but am now going through albums stretching back (almost) to the dawn of time, as, curiously, some of my relatives and family friends met Errol Flynn (lucky blighters), so I have some a few stories about the incomparable Errol which I hope will make a minor contribution to this wonderful and much-needed blog. Ride to the sound of the guns! Which reminds me that in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, the Union Jack was flown upside down. As Tennyson said; ‘someone had bungled.’ I also wonder why the charge itself was set in India, when it took place in the Crimea, against the Russians.

The Earl of Cardigan, who led the charge in real life, was a Flynn sort of fellow. He was known as the ‘Mad Earl’ and was the most prolific swordsman (in both sense of the words) of his generation. He was involved in numerous scandals that made front page news, was accused of debauching young women, drank two bottles of port with breakfast and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought about him. When he was asked, during an official government enquiry, how long the charge lasted, his answer was so precise that he was then asked how he could have timed it so exactly. Cardigan replied: ‘I was smoking a cigar at the start of it, and it was only three quarters smoked by the end.’

The Mad Earl, in as much gold braid as Errol wore in ‘They Died With Their Boots On.’

— PW