Whooping it up at the ball, without the hoops

Scotland, held last Monday in the National Gallery of Scotland on

Edinburgh's Mound, is an occasion not to be missed.

We have attended these splendidly social dinners for the past three

years, and being seated at that mile-long table surrounded by all those

wonderful paintings, not to mention almost the entire sorority of one's

fellow Scottish aristocrats, is how one imagines one should spend the

rest of one's life.

The first person I spotted on arrival was Veronica Linklater, Colonel

Lyle's guitar-playing daughter, so I was looking forward to a repeat of

last year's performance when she so sweetly sang to us. Instead, the

Hon. Sir Steven Runciman, who lives near Lockerbie, made the most

interesting speech, and most amusingly compared the National Gallery to

Dame Barbara Cartland. I'm told that despite this, however, Tim

Clifford, the gallery director, is not planning to paint the gallery

walls pink.

TONIGHT Camperdown and I will once again be in the heart of

Midlothian, this time for the Victorian Christmas Ball taking place at

Parliament House in aid of the Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund for Children.

Lady Kirkwood and Lady Cullen, both married to Court of Session Judges,

have organised the committee, so I imagine a three-line whip will have

been sent around Edinburgh's legal establishment to come and whoop it up

before Christmas.

I really have no idea what to expect. Our hostess has suggested we

wear Victorian dress, but I'm not really in the mood for a hoop or

bustle. And being Edinburgh, one doesn't want to appear too conspicuous.

Somewhere in a trunk I have a brilliant aquamarine ostrich-feather fan,

so I've decided to wear a slinky Bruce Oldfield in a matching colour

which I must have had for at least five years.

AS a child, I would often hear my grandmother talk in the most

animated fashion about somebody called Don Roberto. From what I recall,

she gave the impression that this wildly romantic-sounding individual

spent virtually all of his life on horseback, which, for me as a

teenager, sounded pure heaven.

Years later I discovered that she had been referring to Robert Bontine

Cunninghame Graham, a one-time Member of Parliament, who had lived at

Ardoch in Dunbartonshire and, in keeping with his left-wing politics,

also owned a house in London, another on the Isle of Bute, and a ranch

in Argentina.

Throughout his 84 years, Don Roberto wrote a number of the most

fascinating travel books, many of which we still have in our library,

and, eight years prior to his death in Buenos Aires in 1936, he was

elected the first president of the Scottish National Party. One can

quite understand how my grandmother, a militant supporter of the

suffragette movement, but an unashamedly sentimental old thing none the

less, came to fall under the spell of this swashbuckling Scotophile

South American cowboy.

What brings all this to mind is a charming letter from my old friend

Lady Polwarth, Don Roberto's great-niece, who lives at Harden, near

Hawick, and who has privately published the most enchanting account of

her childhood entitled Sailor's Daughter.

Jean Polwarth's father was Admiral Sir Angus Cunninghame Graham, at

one time Commander-in-Chief Scotland and Northern Ireland, and in her

book, which has prefaces by Richard Hough, the naval historian, and

Admiral Sir Julian Oswald, a former First Sea Lord, she recalls the

first 18 years of her life up to 1946 when she made her debut, as we all

did in those days, at Queen Charlotte's Ball in London.

And what an exciting young life Jean had -- travelling in her father's

cruiser to South Africa; trips to the Far East and living in Hong Kong;

recollections of shooting and stalking in Perthshire; being bombed by

the Japanese in Canton at the start of the war, and later by the

Luftwaffe in Chatham and Clydebank.

Jean's easy prose brings those unhurried days of childhood

effortlessly to life. I am astonished by her recall. For somebody whose

family moved about so much, her memories from the age of three are so

amazingly vivid. She explains in her introduction her reasons for

writing these memoirs: ''Not so much an 'ego' trip, but a means of

describing for posterity the very different world we lived in during the

1930s and 1940s.''

And it was such a different world. For better and for worse, so much

of what so many of our parents took for granted has gone forever. As a

measure of just how compelling Jean's book is, Camperdown has been

locked up in his study with it since Thursday (he reads slowly and

dislikes interruption). For my part, I must say I think it a pity that

Sailor's Daughter is not, as yet, available on general release.

Secondly, please Jean, let's now have the follow-up.