Last of the Empire generation writes his memoires May 17, 2010 A MAN who was brought up by five different sets of guardians while his parents travelled the world has published his memories in a book. Tony Orchard, 83, says he is one of the last of a generation children born into well heeled families whose parents worked in various corners of the declining British Empire while their children were at boarding school. In fact it wasn't until Mr Orchard got married at the age of 31 that he finally settled down and lived in one place for more than three years. He has lived at his home in Burkes Road, Beaconsfield, ever since he moved into it with his wife Lene shortly after they married in 1957. The young Tony was born in Kenya in 1926, where parents had met while his father was working for Burmah-Shell in Mombasa. At the age of four he was sent to boarding school in England and for the next ten years was to see his parents only every three years when they came home between his father's work assignments. At first he spent his holidays with his grandparents, but when they died, he was left in the care of various teachers and distant relatives. And despite that, his memories of are happy times. He says: "In those days it took three weeks for a letter to get to India, and an exchange of letters took six or seven weeks. "It was the norm and you didn't have a choice, you just got on with it, but I was exceptionally lucky with the people I lived with." One couple who looked after him - a head teacher and his wife who had no children of their own - took him to visit every cathedral south of a line between Ely and Chester, for example. He said: "We also visited ancient castles and Roman remains, it was a wonderful thing for a school boy to do. It would have been better than being with my parents, my father was wedding to golf. When he was on leave he played golf and I had to carry his clubs." Mr Orchard met his younger brother Tim for the first time when when he was ten, and next met him when he too was sent to school in England. In 1940 he and 300 other children whose parents also worked in India were evacuated to a European school in Calcutta. "It was on the Hooghly river, and we called it Harrow on the Hooghly," he remembers. On finishing school at 18, he joined the Navy and travelled the world before going to university and embarking on a career with Quaker Oats in Canada, with whom he was to stay for the rest of his career. He was posted to England in 1956 and met his wife, a secretary at Quaker Oats, soon after. The couple sent their own two children - now in their 50s - to boarding school after they failed the 11 plus. He said: "It wasn't my choice, I'd rather they had passed and gone to the grammar schools here but in those days the standard of secondary modern eduction was so low." Mr Orchard's book, entitled Here's to Our Far Flung Empire, is available from The Beacon Bookshop in Beaconsfield. He is donating royalties to the charity Combat Stress. http://beaconsfield.buckinghamshireadvertiser.co.uk/2010/05/last-of-the-empire-generation.html ---------- --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar