As part of our occasional series on the English a few comments from the obituary of Monica Fisher:

A veteran of the First World War, in which he won the DSO, Gore-Browne had bought 23,000 acres of Northern Rhodesian bush and at Shiwa Ngandu built himself a vast manor house that would not have looked out of place in Surrey, baking pink bricks from the clay of surrounding anthills.
The area was infested with lion, leopard and malarial mosquito and could scarcely have been more remote – Shiwa Ngandu was three weeks walk from Ndola, the nearest small town. But Gore-Browne was determined to live “like an emperor”, and insisted on a proper table with a white cloth and full china service even on jungle trips. “I loathe the kind of Englishman who travels with folding tables and enamel mugs,” he confided to his diary.

By the 1950s the Fishers had four children and had become increasingly involved in the politics of change. They were active members of the Capricorn Africa Society, founded by Colonel David Stirling with the objective of promoting racial equality, tolerance and understanding, and of its political offshoot, the Constitution Party.

Stirling was, I think, the founder of the SAS.

Though increasingly frail and confined to the house at Greystone, she kept herself mentally and socially active: reading avidly, playing bridge, and corresponding widely. In a misguided effort to alleviate her isolation, her sons bought her a satellite television; when she first switched it on, only to find a programme about a transvestite Thai kick-boxer, she pulled out the plug and went back to the BBC World Service on the wireless. Like her uncle, she remained a stickler for certain “standards”, always drinking tea out of china; she was known by local people as “the Queen”.

We’re just not making them like that anymore.