Shortly after the birth, the family moved to Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. Their new home, Bishops House, was large and comfortable, with steep-pitched red-tile roofs and mullioned windows, surrounded by lawns and flower beds, and only a short walk from the station, where there were regular services to Sheffields work in London. Airey went to the local Montessori school, an enlightened choice at a time when the Italian educationalists ideas were just taking hold in Britain. Then, aged nine, he was sent away to St Ronans, an academically inclined prep school on the coast at Worthing, before arriving at Eton in the spring of 1929.
The school was undergoing the same painful transformation as the rest of the country as it adjusted to the post-war world. However, the curriculum would have been familiar to a boy from the previous century. Classics still ruled and an extraordinary amount of the boys time was spent construing Greek and Latin poetry and prose. Games were exalted and the stars of the river and cricket pitch were gilded demigods. Outside the classroom and the playing field, though, the atmosphere was stimulating, and independent thought was encouraged under the leadership of the lively and well-connected headmaster, Dr Cyril Alington, who as well as hymns wrote detective novels.
Neave had just turned fifteen when the surviving pages of his diary open. He comes across as earnest and hard-working, recording in detail all the homework he is set and the marks he receives. Mostly he was in the top half of the class, but his efforts seem to have been conscientious rather than inspired. It was the same story at games. He spent the afternoons kicking and knocking balls around, panting along muddy paths on cross-country runs or heaving an oar on the river.
All this effort brought little reward, not even the ephemeral pleasure of a ribboned coat or a seasons fame. In one cricket match, he struggled for seventy-five minutes to make nine runs. Though fairly robust, he seems to have been ill frequently. He suffered from a skin complaint and some other unspecified ailment which required regular physiotherapy sessions with a nurse called Miss Dempster, who weighed and measured me and made various uncomplimentary remarks about the shape of my figure.2
He showed an early interest in soldiering and joined the Eton army cadet corps, but found the drill a challenge. I am rather vague about bayonets still,3 he recorded a few months after joining up. Then, a day later, We learned field signals etc of which I understood little.4 Thus, an early pattern was established. Young Aireys zeal was not matched by natural aptitude, and much as he would have liked to, he did not cut a very convincing martial figure. He left school with the rank of lance corporal.
Eton encouraged a strong interaction with the world outside its walls, hosting a stream of distinguished visitors who came to address the boys. Many were former pupils. Others, such as Mohandas Gandhi, were internationally famous. By the time he visited in October 1931, he was well embarked on his campaign to liberate India from British rule. The invitation had come from the Political Society run by the boys, an initiative of Jo Grimond, who went on to lead the Liberal Party.* He wrote that when the school authorities learned of it, they were vexed However, they soon recovered their poise and fended off the indignant letters fired by blimpish Old Etonians. Gandhi, who wore his familiar loincloth as protection against the dank October Thames Valley weather, was only a modified success. Mr Gandhi was long-winded and shuffled round all direct questions. He did not impress the boys.5 Airey Neave noted in his diary that the Mahatma rose from his bed in the headmasters house long before dawn and prayed from 45 a.m. in the garden.6
That is as far as the entry goes. Politics barely get a mention in the diary at this stage. There is a reference to the political crisis of August 1931. It resulted in a new National Government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald, which saw taxes rise. As far as Neave was concerned, the main consequence was the economies that resulted at Bishops House. The new budget has made Daddy sack John, he wrote, a reference to the gardener Airey sometimes helped with his chores, washing the car and rolling the lawn.7 It is an interesting choice of words. The suggestion is that it is the Prime Ministers fault that John has lost his job, rather than a failure on his fathers part to make the economies necessary to keep the gardener on.
The only hint of interest in another realm that would later absorb so much of his energy comes when he mentions borrowing a book called Twenty-Five Years in the Secret Service from the college library. The author was Henri Le Caron, the pseudonym of Thomas Miller Beach, born in Colchester in 1841, who as a young man emigrated first to Paris and then the United States. The story he told combined two themes that would come to play a large part in the destiny of Airey Neave. One was the secret intelligence world. The other was violent Irish Republicanism. While living in Illinois, Beach saw the first stirrings of the Fenian movement. In 1866, the Brotherhood launched raids across the nearby border of Canada, the closest piece of British territory within reach. The rebels, some of them veterans of the Civil War, carried a banner declaring themselves to be the Irish Republican Army. They were easily defeated but the episode set in train the long campaign against British rule at home and abroad that continued with only temporary interruptions until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
Beach wrote about these events in letters home. His father notified his MP, who contacted the authorities. When Beach returned to England on a visit in 1867, he received an official communication requesting me to attend at 50 Harley Street. There it was agreed that I should become a paid agent of the Government, and that on my return to the United States I should ally myself to the Fenian organisation, in order to play the role of spy in the rebel ranks.8
According to his account, Beach wormed his way into the heart of the movement, rising to the post of Inspector General of the Fenian Brotherhood. He sent back a stream of reports on funding, operations and political lobbying then, as later, a source of alarm to the British government. Beachs view of the Irish rebels was very English, a mixture of alarm and amused condescension. What a sight! he wrote, describing a whiskey-fuelled gathering in Chicago in 1881. What a babel of voices and a world of smoke as for hearing, your ears are deafened by the din and clatter of many tongues and stamping feet [assembled] to clamour for dynamite as the only means of achieving their patriotic ends.9 Yet the rhetoric, he told his readers, was not to be taken entirely seriously: Always you must remember that you are dealing with Irishmen, who in their wildest and most ferocious of fights still retain [a] substratum of childishness of character and playfulness of mood, with its attendant elements of exaggeration and romance.10
Neave did not record his reaction to Beachs book. He was, though, greatly impressed by Within Four Walls, published in 1930, a personal account of the exploits of Colonel Henry Antrobus Cartwright, who had been captured by the Germans in the 191418 war and succeeded in escaping at his fifth attempt. I greatly respected him, he wrote. His book was a classic As a small boy, I had read it with romantic pleasure, and it played a great part in forming my philosophy of escape.11
Neave did not record his reaction to Beachs book. He was, though, greatly impressed by Within Four Walls, published in 1930, a personal account of the exploits of Colonel Henry Antrobus Cartwright, who had been captured by the Germans in the 191418 war and succeeded in escaping at his fifth attempt. I greatly respected him, he wrote. His book was a classic As a small boy, I had read it with romantic pleasure, and it played a great part in forming my philosophy of escape.11
Judged by the 1931 diary, Neave at fifteen was an unremarkable boy, an adolescent apparently free of angst. He seems cool and disengaged. There are no close friendships in evidence, no extracurricular enthusiasms except for an interest in collecting old books (I went to Mrs Browns and bought a very nice prayer book, 1811, with good plates for 4s 6d. I think it was worth it.)12 When the odd emphatic remark does pop up, it is often about school meals. He enjoyed his food and noted the menus with as much detail as his performance in class. The fare was not to his liking. Lunch at 1.30, he wrote on 6 July, veal and ham pie and jam sponge and custard. Awful. On 26 September, they were offered for boys dinner the usual type of cats meat. In this respect, school was a preparation for the prison-camp privations that would follow.
Neaves education also provided another lesson in how to cope with incarceration. The boys had a complicated relationship with authority. From the outside, the regime seemed strictly hierarchical, with the masters and seniors giving orders which those under them obeyed or suffered the consequences. The reality was more subtle and interesting. Neaves eagerness to do well did not preclude a bolshie streak. By now, he was well used to English institutional life and aware of its absurdities and injustices. Like his peers, he enjoyed finding ways to get round irritating restrictions. He also liked to challenge authority when the chance arose and the odds of getting away with it were favourable. It was good for morale, a reminder that those who ruled the school did not have it all their own way.
There are frequent references in the diary to mobbing: semi-spontaneous outbreaks of high jinks which could erupt at mealtimes and even in chapel. After tea there was a great mob which mtutor came up and stopped, he wrote on 26 September. Mtutor was his housemaster, John Foster Crace, a classicist who had been at the school since 1901 and had married late and recently become father to a girl. Then, a few hours later, the captain of house got mobbed at supper. According to Neave, when Crace appeared to break it up again the boys ran off, but after prayers the housemasters tone was almost apologetic, telling them, I lose my temper sometimes [titters] but I am not really so bad as you may think [laughter]. He did not see anything wrong with the mobs but they were rather near his family. Craces cautious reaction to the shenanigans was perhaps a recognition of the truth that, as in prisons, without recourse to brute force, order in school essentially depended on the consent of the inmates. Imposing authority was a tricky business. The boys could spot and instantly exploit any perceived chink in the armour. When the class was assigned a new master called Mr Kitchen Smith, Neaves first impression was that he was quite nice but rather weak.13 This assessment must have been shared by the others, because when asked, they assured the teacher that they had no outstanding homework to do. It was a fib that was soon discovered, but it had been worth a try.
It is an insignificant episode in itself, yet indicative of the spirit that prevailed among a section of the British prisoners held in German camps in the war to come. The camp guards were uniformed versions of the beaks and prefects they had known at school, and their instinct was to defy them, test them, rag them and keep them off balance whenever possible.
Neaves school and home life meshed easily. Beaconsfield was only eleven miles from Eton and his mother often visited him at weekends, turning up to chapel or dropping off treats such as baskets of eggs. Neave seems to have been close to her, and sympathetic to her frequent indispositions, when she would retreat to bed with unexplained illnesses. Family lore represents Sheffield Neave as a Victorian father, large and imposing, but absorbed in his work, neglectful of his wife and distant towards his children. By the summer of 1931 there were four of them. After Airey came Iris Averil, 13, Rosamund, 10, Viola, 6, and a brother, Digby, 3. According to Aireys eldest child, Marigold, He didnt have a great relationship with his father He was not a very warm man, I think. This was his problem. He was quite difficult to warm to, quite frightening to look at he had rather prominent, stern features.14 As for the other children, They were all girls except for little Digby, who was so little no one hardly bothered with him. And the girls were just considered as girls, and in those days thats all they were. Nobody paid any attention to them. They were not very important. It was rather a dysfunctional family I always felt.
Neaves diary presents a warmer picture of Sheffield. On 11 July, they went to the EtonHarrow cricket match together, which Eton won handsomely by an innings and 16 runs. After breakfast Mummy took some photographs of Dad and I. We went by the 10.00 to Paddington and then took the underground to St Johns Wood. We got to Lords about 11.10, when play had just started. We had quite good seats in Stand G. Harrow were all out for 230 by about 12.45 and by the lunch interval were 59 for 0 [having been forced to follow on]. We went to a tent at the back of the grandstand for lunch Sandwiches, cider cup, strawberries and cream, cake and iced coffee After lunch we walked about and watched the match. We met on the field a friend of Daddys
In the summer holidays that followed, father and son pursued a Betjemanesque routine, playing golf and tennis together, making family visits to friends and relations in their Home Counties residences. One day, Sheffield took him off to Woodwalton Fen in Cambridgeshire, to check on the progress of a population of rare Large Copper butterflies that had been introduced a few years before. The diary entries are light and natural, with no hint of tensions or conflict. They contrast with the references to childhood that appear in the diaries Neave kept towards the end of his life, which do not suggest cloudless happiness or any great affection for the patriarchs of the family. His paternal grandfather was a selfish shit.15 As for the rest, they were a sad quarrelsome family. No one was happy. I suffered from them in my time.16
Beyond the security and comfort of Eton and Bishops House, the world was swept by confusion and conflict. The early 1930s were a tumultuous time at home and abroad. Britain was sunk in an economic depression that brought misery and despair, not just to the industrial North but to the mellow towns and villages of the Home Counties. In Europe, it was clear that the recent war had settled nothing and old hatreds burned as fiercely as ever. Late in 1932, a speech by Stanley Baldwin raised the spectre of a new war in which the bomber will always get through.
It was in this baleful atmosphere that Airey Neave made his first visit to Germany, in 1933, at the age of seventeen. The trip would be a turning point, jolting him into political awareness and fixing him on a moral bearing that he would follow for the rest of his life. Later, he would refer to the experience often, presenting it as an awakening: to the dangers of totalitarianism and the fragility of civilisation.