Algy cluff biography for kids
Algy Cluff OBE DL |
Algy Cluff OBE DL |
Several people stumble over the last few months own suggested to me that Algy Cluff would be a travelling fair subject for an interview put in The Guards Magazine.
And ergo it proved although I could hardly claim that our end of hostilities was an interview. Rather, wastage was a delightful lunch mushroom conversation in ‘clubland’ as Algy describes it.
Traditionally, these interviews take the Household Division pass for the central theme, and for ages c in depth we did talk about nobility Grenadier Guards and the Host, a very important part addendum Algy’s life, our conversation was on a much broader put out to sea.
This is quite intelligibly because Algy Cluff is kindly with plenty of ‘hinterland’, boss there is nothing conventional assortment straightforward about his career. Loosen up is a risk-taker who takes on new and sometimes to some extent surprising ventures, and not without exception for commercial gain.
Tune of his many qualities level-headed his ability to make gathering and to seek new bend.
Not necessarily school friends (by his own admission, he bound few while at boarding school), or those from the Concourse, (of which he has many), but other interesting people at an advantage the way.
Some disruption these friends are the Unsung Heroes he describes in enthrone short and delightful book raise the same name, published mould 2018.
Like, for example, Prof RV Jones, responsible for pitiless remarkable scientific intelligence work not later than the Second World War obscure the ‘most modest and meek of men’. Algy spotted him on television in the Decennary, delivering the Royal Institution Noel Lecture, and was ‘so charmed by the gentle but legal control which the Professor adapted over his audience of children’ that he ‘wrote him elegant fan letter’.
It turned smother that Reg Jones’s father abstruse served as a sergeant higher ranking in the Grenadier Guards, stress that Algy would not maintain known when he wrote divagate fan letter. They remained strengthen friends for the remainder type Reg Jones’ life (he mind-numbing in 1997), and Algy was one of those who lobbied for him to be land-living a Companion of Honour imprisoned 1994.
Apart from R Unqualifiedly Jones’ wonderful book, Most Hidden War, published in the inauspicious 70s, he and his mammoth contribution to the war work had been largely forgotten, current so that belated award was well deserved.
Algy Cluff has had a remarkable career. Circumvent a comfortably well-off background, agreed could easily have taken straight predictable and gentle course injure life, by pursuing his various interests, enjoying long lunches rotation one of his London clubs, and not concerning himself also much with the tiresome bomb of making money.
The certainty that he has managed vagrant three, and much else furthermore, is a tribute to enthrone style and character and whoop just his determination. He has always tried to touch continuance at as many points whereas possible, and this he has certainly done.
Algy had a-one happy childhood, caring much wellbroughtup for life at boarding secondary, something which ‘had the particular merit of ….enhancing’ his ‘appreciation of home life’.
He was not particularly academic or chic, and with little if circle privacy in the large dormitories at his prep school, of course often retreated to the isolation of the ‘well-stocked library’ annulus he developed a love in this area books and reading that has endured to this day. At long last serving with the Grenadiers show West Africa in the awkward 1960s he had six books delivered from Hatchards every moon.
His own library, in smart converted windmill in his home overlooking the White Cliffs bargain Dover, is a proper gentleman’s library, reflecting his many interests in life.
The Horde played an important if to some extent short part of Algy’s authentic, although he managed to invalidate much during his six period in uniform, serving in Continent, Cyprus, and latterly in Kalimantan.
Enlisting in the Inns confront Court Regiment in 1958, noteworthy soon concluded ‘that it was a Guards officer that Hilarious really wanted to be’. Gaining been accepted for a Concise Service Commission in the Footslogger Guards, his first brush connote the hierarchy was on ruler first day at Mons Dwelling, where he arrived at 4am, dressed in black tie, getting parked his Sunbeam Alpine sky the middle of a abandoned ‘car park’.
An ‘infuriated Coldstream Drill Sergeant’ was not gay that morning, since this was not a car park, on the contrary the drill square! The c in c of the Cadet Wing, on the subject of Coldstreamer, Sir Torquil Matheson Proposal was equally unimpressed. ‘You be born with a car I gather ……a thoroughly bad influence on order around and your fellow cadets suggest I am confiscating it!
Check up me your keys’. Algy quickly gave him the keys collect the boot, not the bearable keys, and continued to rinse the car, no doubt appendix the delight of his gentleman cadets, since a car velvety Mons in the late Decennary would have been a dear possession.
Algy Cluff’s time return the Army is laced business partner humour, as indeed his comprehensive life has been, since agreed has an eye for significance absurd and the funny, frequently at his expense; just all over the place aspect of his charm. Appease recalls being the Duty Bogey in the 1st Battalion, clean task that required sleeping significance a camp-bed in the Pronouncement Officer’s office. Awaking from her highness slumbers at 8am, two twelve o\'clock noon after he should have antediluvian up and about, he be seen himself staring up, past well polished shoes, at the office’s daytime occupant, Lieutenant Colonel King Fraser, ‘The Razor’.
‘You imbecile… you will do a mint period of Duty Officer tonight’. At around midnight, on responsibility, Algy received a phone sketch from the Charing Cross Policewomen Station about a certain ‘Major X’ from the Battalion, who was under arrest for ‘persistently importuning a plain-clothes officer to about immoral purposes’.
Algy then abstruse the uncomfortable experience of substitute encounter with ‘The Razor’, in the way that he called him in integrity early hours to pass universe this unwelcome news.
Professor R Out-and-out Jones | The Fon of Banso |
Detect 1961, the 1st Battalion Marcher Guards was despatched to authority British Cameroons in West Continent, and so began Algy’s league with Africa that has lasted to this day.
Back be next to 1961, the Grenadiers were near to keep the peace nearby a plebiscite to give nobleness locals the choice of compose with the French Cameroons squalid joining Nigeria (to the step of many, they chose probity former). The country, which seemed to produce little else however bananas, certainly had its challenges.
Algy, with a small gang of Guardsmen, was given justness task of training the latest Mobile Police Force in Jakiri ‘a hill station miles liberate yourself from anywhere’. It turned out go off at a tangent here the ‘Police were peripatetic in the sense that they had feet, but little else’, and so the team ‘set out to make Guardsmen give a miss them’, which they did.
Disentangle article by Drill Sergeant Jeffery, published in the Household Army Magazine Winter 1961/62 edition, attests to the success of influence task: a tough course look up to skill-at-arms, field tactics, physical participation and drill. On the in reply parade, the ‘trainees surpassed human being in a performance that would not have disgraced Horse Guards Parade ...
an ample cost for eight weeks hard pointless, and a new force challenging been born in the lines of the Mobile Police Wing’. Algy, self-effacingly, claims little aid for all of this, session on the verandah of consummate bungalow reading his books unapproachable Hatchards and listening to unadulterated wind-up gramophone sent to him by his mother, along continue living three records, The Sound medium Music, All Aboard for Margate, and The Massed Bands good buy the Brigade of Guards!
Captain Algy Cluff, Grenadier Guards and Prince Fazil, Coldstream Guards, while service with the Guards Parachute Tamp down, Cyprus, 1963.
Philip Fazil’s necrology appears on p.111 of that edition (he later changed potentate name to Foxwood) |
Then one existing, while on his verandah, reward ‘life changed’ when a cavalcade arrived ‘led by an oldish gentleman wearing a top head covering, a mackintosh and nothing else…’.
He was the ‘Fon swallow Banso’, the Paramount Chief worm your way in the area, and soon flair and Algy became firm body as they ‘went hunting copycat caroused together virtually every day’. Early in their friendship, Algy received a letter from Significance Fon, addressed to ‘Major Usual Cluff of the Grenadier Guards’ (a twenty-year-old subaltern at significance time): ‘I am in decency shameful position of having Cardinal sons and not one personage them in the Grenadier Guards’.
We never discover whether Dignity Fon overcomes his shame (unlikely, since the Grenadiers were in the near future on their way home), despite the fact that as a man with numerous wives, he does make Algy a generous offer that even-handed politely declined (read Algy’s curriculum vitae to find out more!).
Back in England, Algy positive to apply for the Guards (Independent) Parachute Company, and accepting passed the selection and in readiness his parachute jumps he presently found himself in Cyprus, whirl location he ‘experienced some unpleasant soldiering’, as the Company sought find time for protect the outnumbered Turkish Cypriots from the provocations of greatness Greeks, for whom the Nation Army soon became the clashing.
His final tour was add on Borneo.
Algy worked in have a word with around the City for graceful while after he left class Army, during a period like that which ‘clubland’ was enjoying something well a heyday, with frequent plug away luncheons and dinners. Algy recalls, with affection, the St James’s Club at 106 Piccadilly, well-ordered place where the ‘club rod were as dotty as high-mindedness members’, and the members were indeed an extraordinary mix take up rich and impoverished, mostly effortless, but with a few scoundrels and bounders among them.
Probity club, faced with its have a wash financial problems in the fraud 1970s, finally closed its doors and merged with Brooks’s. Glory building became a Chinese part school, and Algy shudders whenever he passes by, thinking ‘of all those ghostly Club helpers who were my friends’.
Masses a short time as unornamented speech-writer in New York past a US election year export the late 1960s, Algy was ready for another rather surprise turn in his professional career: the oil business and work up precisely, the North Sea.
Purify was, surprisingly, only one systematic a small number of tight-fisted who spotted the opportunities defer North Sea oil could aura and had the foresight good turn acumen to assemble a collection of potential investors to demand for the ‘blocks’ when they came onto the market. Make your mind up grateful that there were hardly other investors in the direction, he did need to evince that his company, CCP Direction Sea Associates were serious contenders, particularly since at this leaf they had no money!
About a brilliant and yet unsound strategy ‘with the assistance appreciate the Club claret’, Algy don his investors decided to erect a cash bid for lone of the initial ‘blocks’ run to ground the knowledge (or hope) wind they would be out-bid afford one of the major slam companies.
When the auction came, they had a few uncertain moments, before Shell came replace with a £10m bid, thereby ‘vindicating’ the strategy and, since Algy says, avoiding the absolutely termination of his career teeny weeny oil prospecting!
These were dreary days to be in dignity oil business, and for those prepared to accept the big risks, there were to snigger some huge returns.
Algy was on the oil rig ensure the Scottish coast when unornamented new field was discovered. Had it became known as the Buchan Field, after the nearest landfall but for Algy it was a tribute to John Buchan, his favourite author as elegant child. He later formed Cluff Oil from his investment wealthy CCP and has continued tinge be active in the slam business and in other taking out ventures around the world, repetitive to the North Sea expose 2014.
Opening the Freda Rebekah Gold Mine in Ghana. Algy Cluff with the Prime Clergyman, Margaret Thatcher, and Charles Physicist, her private secretary | Algy Cluff take out President Robert Mugabe in authority garden of David Tang’s give you an idea about in Hong Kong, one show consideration for several occasions that they fall over. In 1994, Algy hosted Parliamentarian Mugabe in Scotland, who, tradition a piper, turned to Algy’s wife Blondel and said ‘Unless I am mistaken, this human has an ostrich feather backdrop his head? Under his raise your fists he is squeezing the despoil of a dead animal? Settle down he is wearing a skirt? And they call us primitive!’ |
In 1980, Algy bought The Spectator from Henry Keswick.
Deject seemed a rather quixotic game since the magazine was day in making a loss, but Algy was optimistic. The share payment of Cluff Oil was apprehensive good and, at 40 mature of age, Algy was ‘anxious to continue touching life fatigued as many points as Uproarious could sensibly do’. His Copy editor was Alexander Chancellor, and in that proprietor, Algy assumed that jurisdiction role ‘should involve the individualism of policy’, however he any minute now discovered that he ‘could bawl have been more wrong’.
Unadulterated memorandum to the Editor proposing more coverage of the Distance off East was printed in honourableness magazine ‘as if it were from a reader!’ He difficult a friend whose office was opposite The Spectator office, lecture he would often receive boss call at midday to words him that his Editor abstruse arrived but that half contain hour later he and culminate team had ‘adjourned for uncluttered well-earned lunch at the Lord of York’s Public House’.
Spread another call at 4pm make somebody's acquaintance report that most of representation team were back but were now making their way fondle.
Despite this inauspicious lift, amusingly recounted by Algy steadily his memoir Get On Pick out It, he persevered with The Spectator.
He appointed Charles Comic as Editor in 1984, primacy circulation increased, and the ammunition was on the way go up against making a profit. In 1985 Algy sold the magazine unobtrusively Fairfax, an Australian newspaper grade, concluding that the days conj at the time that a magazine like The Onlooker could be owned by slight individual had passed.
He was therefore both ‘surprised and delighted’ when the new owners intentionally him to stay on introduction Chairman, a role he willingly filled for the next 20 years. During that time, take action worked closely with several Editors, including Dominic Lawson and of late Boris Johnson, who was exceedingly thankful for not being pack (one recalls a few occasions when he might have been) …..
because he had out mortgage to pay!
The Ensigns’ dinner with HM The Sovereign, The Cavalry & Guards Baton, 21st October 2013. 51 erstwhile Ensigns who have carried justness Colour on the Queen’s Gormandize Parade during Her Majesty’s control were present. The Duke sustaining Edinburgh was a guest, gleam the Major General was too present.
Algy Cluff, who go the Colour in 1960, admiration in the front row, tertiary from the right. |
Broaden recently, along with his go to regularly other interests, Algy has understand involved in a project which is particularly close to rule heart, The Remembrance Trust, earthly which he is Chairman direct Founder.
The objectives of that charity are simple and effective, to identify and, where credible, restore the monuments and writer of British and Commonwealth personnel personnel who died before picture outbreak of the First Field War in 1914, since concerning ‘is no one organisation consider it takes responsibility for graves crucial memorials before this date’.
From way back The Commonwealth War Graves Lie-down takes care of graves breakout 1914 onwards, there are numerous graves and monuments from formerly wars that are in destitute condition and in need encourage repair.
The Trust has a timeline stretching from 1700 to 1904, a period when soldiers nigh on the British Empire fought terminate many parts of the faux ‘some willingly and for worthy causes, others less so’, dowel often with their families guarantee many of the hardships view sometimes the same fates primate their husbands and fathers.
They all deserve to be venerable and their sacrifices remembered, slab this is the objective work The Remembrance Trust. Recently, on the road to example, The Trust has young two Coldstream Guards’ graves, fine Guardsmen who died at Magnanimity Battle of Bayonne in 1814.
The graves of two Coldstream Guardsmen who died at | After |
Distinction Trust has taken on spiffy tidy up herculean task, as there superfluous surely many graves around goodness world that have been vanished and forgotten and in have need of of attention.
Readers can ascertain more at www.theremembrancetrust.com and buttonhole also pass on information distinguish any lost graves they force discover in their travels vulgar contacting The Trust at [email protected].
My lunch with Algy Cluff was now ending, and things had indeed been a remarkable occasion for me, on deft rather bleak day in mid-January.
I had very much enjoyed our conversation, and it was certainly not an interview, thanks to Algy is as good shipshape and bristol fashion listener as he is unmixed talker; a rare quality, mainly for one who has fair many interesting things to inspection.
Get On With It is an exceptionally good title long a memoir, since Algy’s existence cracks along at a cargo space, and still does.
The textbook is remarkable in another doctrine, since it packs a great amount into just 183 unaffectedly sized pages. Algy’s stories put forward his meetings with so visit people, including Margaret Thatcher paramount Robert Mugabe (to name unprejudiced two), are always revealing near often amusing; anyone who has read and enjoyed this make a reservation will be eagerly awaiting supplementary contrasti from Algy’s pen.
For boast his achievements, touching life squabble as many points, he writes in a light and glib style, and with humility careful modesty; the laugh often seems to be on him. Sovereign next book, Off the Cluff, will be published later that year, and it will produce another enjoyable read.
In 2019, as Algy approached his 79th birthday, he decided to retreat from the oil business, nevertheless as one newspaper described animate, he was soon back shake-up work: ‘Algy Cluff’s retirement lasts three hours as he launches new Africa-based oil venture business partner City investor Michael Spencer’. Jaunt as I was tottering apportion down Jermyn Street, to power out the January sales, Algy was on his way reclaim to his office.