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Patrick Thursfield: the last Tangerine

Contemporary Review, April, 2004 by Allan Ramsay

PATRICK Thursfield, an occasional contributor to Contemporary Review, died in Tangier on 22 August 2003, a few months short of his 80th birthday, in the last of the many homes he had made for himself on the Vieille Montagne since his arrival in Morocco over a quarter of a century earlier. He had begun quite grandly, occupying, first, a spacious house overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar next door to the palatial residence of Malcolm Forbes, the multi-millionaire American magazine proprietor (in which Forbes kept his famous collection of toy soldiers), moving, in progressively reduced circumstances, to the smallest in which he spent the last ten years of his life. It seemed an unpropitious little place at first sight, with no particular view and not much of a garden, standing in the shadow of the high walls of the villa owned by Madame Beaufre, the widow of the French General who had been Deputy Commander of NATO. But Patrick Thursfield had a way with him, with people, with houses and with gardens, and under his touch the place was transformed. His indispensable assistant, Ahmed--in Moroccan pronunciation, 'Hmed--was with him to the end, catering for four or forty, as required, though becoming a little unsteady and self-indulgent as time went on.

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The Thursfield family come from North East Norfolk, from the village of Thursford, not far from Burnham Thorpe, where Nelson was born. Like Nelson one must be born there to understand and appreciate it since to the outsider the countryside appears uncompromisingly bleak. The grey wastes of the North Sea are not far distant and the wind from the Polar icecap blows unchecked across the fields. For a time the family owned Creake Abbey, Fakenham. It was still then a mediaeval and monastic place and very little had been done to make it comfortable. There were stone flags, bare boards and no central heating. One of Patrick Thursfield's duties as a boy was to distribute hot water bottles among the guest bedrooms. Visitors were never frequent and those that came seldom stayed for long, so it was not a particularly onerous task, but the recollection of icy rooms and interminable freezing corridors never left him; the best antidote, he would claim, to the midsummer heat of Tangier. 'Alright going out, one had the bottle. Coming back was quite a different matter. It needed a stint by the Aga, waiting for the kettle to boil, to recover. Every minute was precious'.

When, after the Second World War, Creake Abbey was sold, the new owner, a progressive and ambitious lawyer of conventional tastes and little imagination, transformed it, at enormous cost, into a neo-Georgian country house. At his housewarming party he welcomed his guests, who included Patrick Thursfield and his father, with the words, 'Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Creake Abbey, Fakenham!' 'What's he saying?' cried the old man, who was by then a little deaf. Patrick explained, sotto voce. 'More like Fake Abbey, Creakenham!' was the derisive retort, delivered in a penetrating voice. It was, as Patrick Thursfield later admitted, his first lesson in the art of pricking the bubble of pretentiousness.

The Thursfield family had long connections with the Royal Navy. Patrick Thursfield's grandfather was for many years Naval correspondent of The Times and campaigned effectively on the side of Admiral Fisher over the Dreadnought controversy before the First World War. His father became the youngest Admiral in the Service but found himself out of a job and out of the Navy under the principle 'Last in, first out', as a result of the cuts introduced under the Geddes' Axe in the 1920s. By the time the Second World War broke out he was considered too old for active service. What had begun as a highly promising career ended in sadness and disillusionment. Patrick Thursfield's elder brother, a classical scholar and first-class cricketer, idolised by both parents, died at the age of nineteen of polio. 'He was not the sort of person one could compete with, good at all the things I wasn't', was his younger brother's comment. That remark, and the photograph of an exceptionally good looking young man in the drawing room of his Tangier home, served as the elder's obituary.

Patrick Thursfield followed his elder brother to Charterhouse, going on to read history at Christ Church, Oxford. On coming down he enlisted into the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and spent the last years of the war taking part in amphibious operations in the Far East. Coincidentally David Herbert, perhaps the best known of the post-war Tangier British community, with whom Patrick Thursfield had a rather wary friendship, served in the same theatre as a wireless operator in the Merchant Navy. (His experiences included being torpedoed and spending some days in an open boat before being rescued, an experience not always easy to square with the spoilt David Herbert, younger son of the Earl of Pembroke, let alone the Tangier icon of later years.) After the war Patrick Thursfield spent some time as Diplomatic correspondent for The Times, which was followed by a stint with the Westminster Press Group.

Patrick Thursfield: the last Tangerine

Contemporary Review, April, 2004 by Allan Ramsay

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