From the unrolling mists of oblivious babyhood, the strains drift back to me of ‘We’re Soldiers of the Queen, me lads!’ and ‘Good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you’. An organ was triumphantly playing the first of these tunes in a Macclesfield street one cold spring morning when I noticed that banners and gay streamers were hanging from all the windows. ‘It’s because of the Relief of Ladysmith,’ my mother explained in response to my excited questioning; ‘Now Uncle Frank will be coming home.’ But Uncle Frank … never came home after all, for he died of enteric in Ladysmith half an hour before the relief of the town. << less