While looking for something else I came across an obituary for JH Emlyn Jones:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10656812/Emlyn-Jones-obituary.html
I knew him in early eighties as a Member of the Lands Tribunal and as such was aware of his prowess as a climber. I'd no idea though of his wartime career in bomb disposal. Guess, like a lot of that generation, it wasn't something he spoke of still less bragged.
Heard him on radio a few years ago when Edmund Hillary died and it seems he was active to the last, still playing bridge at his club aged 98.
IIRC he lived in Ivinghoe so a neighbour of Manatee?
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Hmm, he did lead a rather full life.
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Another example I always feel of the need for "living obituaries" of interesting people who are still alive.
I love obituaries, but I am always saddened to read of someone it is now too late to meet.
Especially when there is a poignant photograph of the person when young or in his/her heyday.
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We have a new neighbour who is turning out to be quite colourful. He's retired here and is a member of the Munro clan, of mountaineering fame (the 282 'Munros' in Scotland) and whose great-great grandfather was a governor of Madras. Our man has spent some time in Cuba, where he barely survived a machete attack (scars to prove) and before then in India as a big game hunter. He is the only person I have met who once had his own elephant...
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>> I
>> have met who once had his own elephant...
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That's exactly the kind of thing I mean. How thrilling - one could actually pop in and meet this chap rather than reading about him when dead. The thing I've often noticed is these ex-Raj fellows with military moustaches is how sociable and jolly they are.
The same with maharajahs.
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There's a pretty good biography waiting to be written, I think. He is extremely sociable and almost impossible to visit for a mere few minutes!
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They Don't Make 'em Like That Anymore. - Slidingpillar
