To War with Whitaker

To War with Whitaker: The Wartime Diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly 1939–1945 is a memoir of World War II written, in diary form, by Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly, that was first published in 1994 to immediate and general critical acclaim.

The actor-novelist Sir Dirk Bogarde wrote in the London Daily Telegraph: "If you buy one more book this year, do make it To War with Whitaker." The author Robert Rhodes James wrote in the London Sunday Express: "An extraordinary story. No review can do justice to the writing." The London Daily Mail commented: "These absolutely spiffing diaries offer a madcap, aristocratic window behind the lines of war" and the reviewer for Woman & Home wrote: "Few diaries from any era could be as fascinating … This is truly compulsive reading."^[1]

The book's paperback publisher Mandarin Publishing described it as "A love story that knows no bounds":

When World War II broke out, Dan Ranfurly was dispatched to the Middle East with his faithful valet, Whitaker. These are the diaries of his young wife, Hermione, who, defying the War Office, raced off in hot pursuit of her husband. When Dan was taken prisoner, Hermione vowed never to return home until they were reunited. For six years, travelling alone from Cape Town to Palestine, and meeting such charismatic characters as Churchill, Eisenhower, and a parrot called Coco on the way, she kept her promise.^[2]

The Countess's husband Daniel Knox, 6th Earl of Ranfurly, was a lieutenant in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. He was captured by soldiers of Rommel's Afrika Korps, along with General Richard O'Connor and other officers, in Libya in April 1941 when their driver became lost in the dark. A military historian later described it as "the most valuable car-load of booty to fall to the Afrika Korps during its entire existence".^[3] He spent the next two years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy.

Daniel and other British officers escaped following the Italian surrender in 1943 and, after several months on the run behind German lines, he was finally reunited with his wife in Algiers in May 1944. After the war, he served as Governor of the Bahamas where his wife established a lending library service in Nassau that she later extended to other parts of the world in need of English books.

When the Countess died in 2001, her obituarist for the Daily Telegraph wrote: "Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly, who has died aged 87, was the author of one of the most delightful memoirs of recent times, To War with Whitaker (1994), and the kind of woman for whom words such as pluck and spirit might have been invented."^[4]

To War with Whitaker was first published by William Heinemann in 1994 and republished as a paperback by Mandarin in 1995.

Its lively prose style is characterised by frankness, a sharp eye for character – not least that of the short, chubby, phlegmatic valet Whitaker – and a sharp ear for dialogue. For example, when the Earl received a telegram at the outbreak of war in 1939 ordering him to report to his regiment, the Countess writes: "After reading this Dan asked Whitaker if he would like to go with him. The old fatty looked over the top of his spectacles and said, 'To the War, my Lord? Very good, my Lord.'"^[5]

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