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spot, but with this the first glimmerings of proletarian solidarity were evident, for although no more Liberal posters went up, several Conservative ones were taken down. For all that, Sir Henry won in a landslide.
    Life in the country had undergone much dislocation during the war and had continued to suffer from shortages of every kind for so long after its end, but was beginning to pick up again. Agricultural produce, still in short supply, fetched satisfactory prices. Farmers admitted to not doing so badly after all and could afford small increases in wages. The big houses were taking on staff, and girls brought up in the poverty-stricken democracy of the Lane now became domestics dressed in fashionably old-style uniforms, working fourteen-hour days and learning from butlers such as Jessop how to return short toneless utterances to orders received, ‘Will that be all, madam? Shall I clear away now?’ A better class of car was back on the roads with the appearance of a beribboned Bentley from Brimsdown snuffling softly through the dust of the Lane on its way to a wedding.
    At this time of recovery and renewal the first shoot on a pre-war scale took place over Sir Henry’s land. It was organised in a precisely planned fashion by Sir Henry and landowning friends, all of them military men and accustomed to dealing with bodies of men in warlike situations. First came the long front line of beaters followed by twenty-four guns on a half-mile front. Birds with no experience of such a disturbance scuffled aimlessly through the trees and fell an easy prey to the lady pickers-up with their dogs and the small steel hammers known as priests with which remnants of life would be deftly extinguished.
    So successful was this pheasant holocaust that it was judged to have been almost worth waiting for. Champagne kept for such an event flowed in abundance, and the euphoria generated gave birth to the idea that an equivalent event—a fair of some sort—should be organised for the village. It was a project enthusiastically backed by Sir Henry himself, who despite his tyrannical outbursts remained a boy at heart and was noted for a passion for fairs. Until precluded by the disciplines of war, these had been held in his grounds on every possible excuse.
    It was the brilliant idea of Canon Carr-Smith that Empire Day—24 May—should be chosen for this popular occasion on which a good time for all could be linked to pride in the possession of an empire which, leaving out the emptiness of the seas, now covered one-sixth of the globe. By this time I was in my last term at Enfield Grammar School, where the art mistress had produced a huge map in which these overseas territories stood out in brilliant scarlet among the extremely dull colours of those left in the possession of foreigners. This formed the background to the assembly-hall stage from which local dignitaries addressed us on imperial topics on the eve of the great day.
    The fair held at Forty Hill was to outclass all previous entertainments of the kind. On the night before, the village had been full of the iron noises of tractor engines crashing through the potholes, and by mid-morning on the twenty-fourth a great, garish encampment, so alien in this rustic setting, covered the summit of the hill and spread aggressively through the grey-green monochrome of hedgerows and fields. It was peopled by gypsies with fierce, handsome faces, flashing eyes and shrieking voices from whom the locals drew nervously away. At the entrance each child was presented with a Union Jack, but after a few perfunctory waves, these were tossed into the bushes.
    Blocking access to swings, roundabouts, coconut shies, hoopla stalls, fortune-tellers and gypsy boxers who could defeat local challengers with ease was a large tent bearing over its entrance the sign PEOPLES OF THE EMPIRE . Into this the villagers were firmly directed and here they were faced by a row of dark-complexioned men lined up on a platform, all