Like everybody else, I wondered what to make of Gyp. I’d met him one evening when I was hired as part of an entertainment. Lord Cartin’s Condottieri Company was home after a long campaigning season and Lord Cartin would put on a ball to celebrate. He doesn’t do it every year, but some years he obviously feels that such an event is needed.

It was a grand affair, spread across the entire house. The centre was the grand ballroom. Here anybody who knew the steps got up to dance. I saw Lord Cartin dance with three different ladies, one a man-at-arms, one a cook, and one the wife of an infantryman who travelled south with him as ‘a camp follower’ and helped with the cooking, nursing and anything else that needed doing.

I was summoned to deliver a couple of poems, old things really. I gave them some verses by…