The very model of a modern duke
John JoIliffe
MILES by Gerard Noel Michael Russell, £15.95, pp.176, ISBN 0859552896 Miles Fitzalan-Howard was one of eight children of a fairly distant cousin of the previous two Dukes of Norfolk, and so grew up in the give and take of life in a large family. Up until the age of about 30, he had no great expectation that he would succeed his predecessor, who was married, with four daughters, and might well have produced a son and heir. He had been a rather average
schoolboy at Ampleforth, excelling neither at work nor games, but 'always cheerful and keen'. He made life-long friends there, including several of the monks. Likewise, when he went on to Oxford, he claimed with typical openness and self-deprecation that he had worked hard, 'but not all that hard'; certainly not as hard as he did later on in the army, both in war and peace, and later still as a significant champion of Catholic principles. It was unquestionably through the army that he developed from a good-humoured but not outstanding young man into a vigorous, brave and efficient officer, eventually to reach the rank of major-general, and later still becoming the leading Catholic layman in England. A bluff, breezy military manner became natural to him and in later years sometimes seemed to approach self-caricature.
But it was always marked with humour and kindliness. He had become a close friend of an uncle of mine at school and university, and after successfully returning with the Grenadiers after Dunkirk he trained with them, as adjutant of his battalion, near my uncle's family home. One hot day, 1 can remember him going for a swim in the pool not far from the house. While in the water, he spotted a mischievous village boy running off with his trousers. He leapt out of the pool, pursued and caught the boy, removed the belt from his trousers and proceeded to chastise him with it. Nowadays, he would have been prosecuted for assault, and the boy would have been consoled and counselled for weeks. It was not so in 1940.
He served with distinction in the Italian and Normandy campaigns, and was steadily promoted. After a stint in Washington, he commanded the King's African Rifles in Kenya. He was quick to apply the lessons learned in several very different parts of the world, with the result that his outlook was far from blinkered. Meanwhile he was steadily promoted, and finally became director of military service intelligence. After retiring, he made wise decisions about the future stability of the Norfolk family estates, and also of the College of Arms, for which, among many other tasks, he was responsible as Earl Marshal. He also probably played a considerable part in the excellent appointment of Basil Hume as Archbishop of Westminster. But it was as an independentminded layman, both in the House of Lords and outside, that he took the lead on many social issues: educational administration, data protection, immigration laws, mental health, and of course embryo research and the harm of abortion.
Though sometimes a little bland in style, this book, by a friend since childhood who is also an experienced author, is a lifelike portrait of a distinguished natural leader. It would make an ideal Christmas present for anyone who shares, or aspires to share, traditional Catholic (and also aristocratic) values, updated for the modern world.
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