Ferdinand Mount

Cold Cream

Bloomsbury, 2008.

I was hired to teach English history and manners, including cricket, to the three children of David and Evangeline Bruce who had just moved into the American Embassy in Regent's Park...Nothing to do except set out the cricket stumps on the vast lawn, since David Junior, Nicky and the eldest, Sasha, a dark coltish fifteen-year-old, had a real nanny who looked after them most of the time

Recently down from Oxford, this was not how the author had imagined life in 1960's Swinging London. 'Ensconced in the garden wing of the enormous mansion that Barbara Hutton had donated to the American nation,' he noted that the children 'seemed ill at ease' with their parents.

As we played our desultory games out on the huge sward, the boys cross-batting the ball baseball-style despite my repeated instructions on keeping a straight bat, the Bruces' guests – British politicians, American senators, other ambassadors, sometimes film stars like Gregory Peck – would come out on to the terrace for pre-lunch cocktails. They seemed miles away. It was as though our little game was taking place out in the middle at Lord's or the Oval

It was nevertheless 'a wonderful carefree summer,' and the evenings were all his own. 'As I strolled out through the wrought-iron gates and down the Outer Circle under the limes and chestnuts, I no longer felt like a Chekhov tutor but rather like a young blood in Thackeray out for an evening's gaming...'