It’s a very weird thing, when people you were at college with – or at least, were at college at the same time as – turn up as heroes in someone else’s memoirs.
This is Blood Knots, by Luke Jennings – a memoir of angling, so maybe not a book I will be rushing out to buy and read. But right now it’s making a bit of a splash in the reviews, and being read as Radio 4′s Book of the Week. Jennings was at Ampleforth with Robert Nairac, who as an assistant master was an inspirational mentor and guide, and taught him how to fish.
Robert Nairac read Medieval and Military History at Lincoln College, at the same time as I was there. He joined the Grenadier Guards and served in Northern Ireland as an undercover intelligence officer. In 1977 he was captured by the IRA, tortured and murdered. One of his killers later bore witness to his courage: “He never told us anything.”
When I was at Lincoln, Nairac was one of the gods. I don’t think I ever spoke to him, and he was probably not even aware I existed. He excelled at sports, played rugby, was a boxing blue – so probably didn’t know any of the people I knew.
Two years after his death he was awarded the George Cross for bravery. His body has never been found.
