ABSTRACT
Throughout his Wiltshire boyhood Stuart was exposed to two distinct family traditions. His father came from Oxfordshire farming stock, and had retained close links with the countryside whilst building up a prosperous business in the distribution of agricultural machinery and farming supplies in the southern counties. He expected that his son would succeed him in the management of his business, and was concerned to pass on to him his own interests as a naturalist, a sportsman (he was a keen golfer and horseman) and in the literature of the countryside. He was a devotee of Matthew Arnold. Stuart’s mother, on the other hand, came from an Indian Army family. She herself had been born in India, and her father and her brothers were all military men. She would have been happy for her son to maintain this tradition, and to her influence in this direction was added that of his school where there was a strong military connection and amongst the boys a high percentage of the sons of army families.
