Shropshire Star

Life in the freezer which set Simon a class apart

1. God. 2. Horses. 3. Husband ( a close third). 4.The dogs. 5. The children.

Published
Simon Dewhurst has written a memoir of his privileged early life

Those motherly priorities were just the way it was for Simon Dewhurst growing up at his childhood home, a grand mansion near Whitchurch.

His mother Noel was a glamorous and vivacious lady, 20 years younger than his father, Tony, who like most of his generation was impervious to cold, which meant the house was freezing.

Noel would sometimes appear at dinner dressed like Captain Scott, complete with balaclava, and the children would use boiled eggs as hand warmers.

That 1950s upbringing at Barmere forms the backdrop to Simon's memoir, which captures the fading echoes of a way of life which, while still within living memory, has disappeared.

The children were in the care of a nanny. The Dewhursts had a groom to look after the horses and even had a part-time butler, George Clawley, for special occasions.

Noel's faith was a dominating feature for the children. She was a Catholic so devout that she referred to her husband as "the heretic." Religion pervaded Simon's life and early education and he got a major telling off as a nine-year-old for eating sausages - i.e. meat - on a Friday, being told there could be a way of escaping going to hell if he went to confession and said sorry.

The other dominating feature was foxhunting.

Yet something went wrong with the trajectory for Simon that his parents had planned. Yes, he went to Eton, his father's old school. Yes, like his father, he went into the Army - but as a squaddie and then quit. His father, who had been a Colonel, gave up on his ambitions for him and Simon's job path was nothing if not varied, including being a disc jockey, jockey (horse), ski instructor, actor, and office work, with lots of travelling as well.

He does not demur from a description of himself as a classic drop-out.

He tells of the first part of his life, up to January 1978 - when both his parents were killed in a car crash - in his autobiography called "Broken Lunch."

The title is a term which will be familiar with film extras, because for years Simon has been a film extra, taking work when he needs to fill his coffers. Among movies in which he has appeared are First Knight, starring Richard Gere and Sean Connery and filmed around Trawsfynydd in Mid Wales - Simon was part of the Arthurian cavalry - and Shakespeare In Love, when he was a courtier to Judi Dench as Elizabeth I.

Incidentally he came across Harvey Weinstein, whom he describes as an intimidating character.

So what did Simon, who is now 70, become?

"I haven't become anything. I'm sorry to disappoint you. I've been a professional skier, so the winters were taken care of. I teach in the Alps. I've always been a professional jobbing builder. At the moment I'm bricklaying.

"I live in the same area - Cholmondeley. I have never moved in 70 years and I live in a little cottage on the Cholmondeley estate."

Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he says he had just about swallowed it by the time he was 30.

He has written his memoirs because people kept saying that he had had such an interesting life that he should write about it.

"Not a lot of people are brought up like we were brought up. Quite honestly, I don't meet all that many people who had such an extraordinary schooling."

It was also, he says, an interesting social era he thought needed to be written about.

The Dewhurst children were dragged off to church either at Malpas or Whitchurch, where the priest was Father Calderbank, and at the age of seven he was sent to school at Hampton House, eight miles away, and then aged eight was packed off to a Catholic boarding school called Ladycross in Sussex which he describes as little short of hell on earth. A rather more pleasant six months followed under the wing of James West, a retired housemaster of Shrewsbury School, living at his family cottage near Pontesbury and being crammed up for the Common Entrance Exam. He passed, opening the door to Eton.

Simon says that if his parents were snobs, they were quite good at hiding it.

"In the book I describe us as upper class. I wanted the book to sell in America and thought it might make it slightly more interesting. I would like to think I was classless now.

"My father, like my mother, was addicted to hunting the fox, which of course was the be-all and end-all. Everything revolved around foxhunting. In the 1950s that was the way it was."

Simon, who is married with two children, says he has no regrets about the way his life has turned out.

"A lot of people do, who think they have not quite achieved what they wanted to, but I've never been like that. I'm lucky in that way.

"And I have laughed. Everything has its funny side - even death. I can't help it, that's just the way it's turned out and the way I am."

"Broken Lunch" is available from Bookshrop in Whitchurch, on order through other bookshops, or on Amazon.

Having covered the first 30 or so years of his life, Simon is planning to write a follow-up memoir taking his story on.