The man who taught King Charles falconry

 

Greetings!   Last week I was sent this photograph of the actor James Robertson Justice taken at Whitchurch Fulling Mill on the River Test in the late 1940’s. For those of you who know Fulling Mill you might readily recognise the spot where it was taken, just below the mill race in front of part of the house that remains wood clad today as it was back then.   At this point in his life Justice was only just embarking on the acting career, which was to bring him fame, if not fortune (he died penniless in Romsey in 1975) as the demanding surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt in the "Doctor" series of films of the 1950s and 1960s plus starring roles in Compton Mackenzie's Whisky Galore!, Rob Roy, Moby Dick with Gregory Peck, with David Niven in The Guns of Navarone and as Lord Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This really was as much as I knew of Justice, but as I researched his life it became apparent, he had quite some Royal connection with both our late Queen and her husband, Prince Philip and King Charles.

 

 

James Robertson Justice

 

There is a great deal of smoke and mirrors about Justice’s life. Bon vivant. Buccaneer. Adventurer. Fantasist. He claimed to speak 20 languages, though he was certainly fluent in a number. He claimed to have been born under a distillery on the Isle of Skye; in fact, her was born in southeast London. He replaced his middle two names Norval Harald with Robertson. He went to the posh English public school, Marlborough College in Wiltshire where he likely leant to fly fish on the River Kennet which runs through the grounds. After that he had two unsuccessful stabs at university in both London and Germany.   Abandoning education, he become a Reuters journalist bedside Ian Fleming before emigrating to Canada working as an insurance salesman, taught English at a boys' school, became a lumberjack and mined for gold. Penniless (there is a theme here) he returned to England to try his hand at ice hockey and motor racing before he headed to Europe again to become a policeman for the League of Nations, before fighting in the Spanish Civil War and then World War II in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.   It’s unclear how Justice, the living embodiment of the term bon vivant, a man who invented his ‘Scottishness’, a serial womaniser (a young Bridgit Bardot starred beside him in three films) and with a which a love of fast cars became a friend of Prince Philip, but it was clearly a deep and extended friendship. By 1947, the year of the Royal wedding Justice was living at Whitchurch Fulling Mill, upstream of the Royal honeymoon destination, Broadlands House. In great secrecy, a few days after the wedding, the newlyweds headed the 24 miles to have tea with Justice, his wife Dillys and young son. Of course, the secret got out, the lane to Fulling Mill lined with well-wishers.

 

 

Royal honeymooners at Broadlands House 1947

 

Justice, aside from his hedonistic lifestyle, had three great passions in life: shooting, he was founder of the Wildfowl Trust, fishing and falconry. This may have been what originally bought him in contact with Prince Philip who invited him to join his exclusive Thursday Club, an eating and drinking club, reportedly dedicated to ‘absolute inconsequence’ and sent his teenage son Prince Charles to stay with Justice one summer, to learn about falconry and country pursuits. It would be interesting to ask our new King what memories he has of that particular phase in his life!   But for all the adventure Justice’s life seems to have been peppered with sadness. His young son drowned in the river at Fulling Mill, his marriage never recovering, dissolving into numerous affairs and soon after Chitty Chitty Bang Bang he had a series of strokes that effectively ended his acting career to see him declared bankrupt in 1970.    In Whisky Galore!, as Dr Maclaren, Justice advocates the use of whisky as a tonic and delivers the famous line: ‘It’s a well-known fact that some men were born two drinks below par.’ It is an accusation that no one could level at Justice himself.

 

 

Beside manner Dr Maclaren style!

 

 

Our new leader   In the excitement of the new Carolean age and the arrival of Liz Truss you may have missed the imminent arrival of Alan Lovell DL as the new Chair of the Environment Agency on Monday.   Yes, I’ve never heard of him either though he is local to these parts, living near Winchester in Hampshire so with an open mind I went to discover how exactly he might be qualified to care for our rivers and coastal waters.

 

 

Alan Lovell DL

 

I was confident that because of the ‘rigorous’ selection process run by George Eustice at Defra we would have a water champion with a CV that suggested a man with the skills and interests to tackle the many ills that afflict water policy. What are the chances of my confidence being well founded? If you are thinking somewhere between nil and zero, you are not far wrong.   Lovell, who is 69, trained as an accountant and spent all his working life in the construction industry. Nothing wrong with that but I don’t think it unreasonable that we might hope for someone with a hinterland that suggests a wider view of the world. But truly I can find nothing beyond his six year stint as Chairman of the Consumer Council for Water which is a strange beast of an NGO part ombudsman/part social welfare body. The Our Values graphic gives you a clue the tone of his tenure for a body that doesn’t mention the word pollution or clean waters in its aspirations.

 

 

So, how has Lovell, educated at Winchester College, with a Classics degree from Oxford and a lifelong passion for real tennis made it to this post that pays £100,000 a year for 3 days a week? Clearly, the Council for Water was a major steppingstone but for the most part he seems to be part of that network of the great and the good. His father-in-law was Bernard Weatherall, Speaker of the House of Commons and in his own capacity Lovell is a deputy lieutenant (that explains the DL ….) of Hampshire, chairman of the Mary Rose Trust, chairman of the board of governors of Winchester University and a trustee of Winchester Cathedral.   Hopefully he will find the time to save our rivers.

 

 

The long reach of fly fishing   Kashmir, the northernmost region of India, butting up to the Himalayas and China, with governance divided between Pakistan and India, does not evoke visions of fly fishing but last week the Tourism Department in collaboration Kashmir Anglers Federation organised a competition on the Lidder river.   Roughly translated as the ‘long bellied goddess’ the Lidder is fed by water from the Kolahoi Glacier, with the bluish/grey water holding both brown and rainbow trout, the former I believe originally stock fish transported from a River Itchen hatchery in the late 1800’s.

 

 

Judging by the fly box, and the evidence of the photos, downstream wet fly seems to be the method of choice though I think I spied a Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear.   Another great English export!

 

 

 

 

The Duke on the Test   It is always great to see new businesses opening in the Test valley, especially when they embrace the whole ethos of the famous River Test and our fly fishing heritage.   The Dukes Head on the road south from Stockbridge to Romsey has long been a landmark but for too long has been closed, pretty well derelict as a succession of owners played pass-the-parcel in a long decline. However, the new owners have gutted the place, renamed it The Duke on the Test, and built 12 bedrooms to create a stop slightly reminiscent of, in the best sense of the phrase, a wayfarer’s inn.   I ate there twice last week, once at lunch and once in the evening, and it was packed both times. It is not a super gastro pub which is no bad thing, but the food is good and the service impeccable. More details here ….

 

 

 

Quiz The normal random collection of questions inspired by the date, events or topics in the Newsletter.   It is just for fun with answers at the bottom of the page.   1)     There were 15 US presidents during the reign of Elizabeth II. Which one did she not meet?   2)     At which famous bone fishing destination bid the British perform a nuclear bomb test on this day in 1958?   3)     What is the origin of the word honeymoon?

 

 

 

Have a goog weekend.    Best wishes,

 

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

 

 

 

Quiz answers:   1)     Lyndon Johnson 2)     Christmas Island in the Pacific 3)     No absolutely correct answer to this but the Oxford English Dictionary suggests the origins in the writings of Samuel Johnson with the inevitable waning of love like a phase of the moon. The modern meaning is more positive!