Few journalists achieve legendary status in their lifetime, but Sir Max Hastings - war reporter, Fleet Street editor and acclaimed historian and author - is one of them.
On Saturday, in our first extract from his tender, entertaining and candid family memoir, he revealed for the first time the sadness in his peculiarly British childhood.
Today, he describes the man he hero-worshipped - his father Mac Hastings. An eccentric romantic, Mac was as charming as he was selfish - but his passion for adventure and his unwavering belief in his son inspired Max to achieve greatness.
When I was a boy, the appearances of my father, the writer and broadcaster Macdonald Hastings, in my life were most readily identified with the presents he brought home from far-flung places - an authentic cowboy outfit from America, smelly Bedouin robes from Jordan, the mounted hoof of a bison he had shot in India.
For the most part, however, he was more frequently observed going rather than coming - to shoots and fishing expeditions and on work assignments abroad.
How I yearned to accompany him, and how romantic he made even the most commonplace destinations sound!
Max Hastings with his father Mac looking at a steam engine: Max loved to listen to his father
When he spoke portentously of taking "the Great West Road" to Berkshire, where we had a country cottage, the journey seemed vastly more promising than a mere drive down the dreary old A4.
He seemed possessed of superhuman powers to make exciting things happen.
Because of his contacts, it was in his gift to provide such things as stars" autographs, and it seemed to me a miracle of social alpinism that he was invited to the annual Christmas lunch of Bertram Mills"s circus.
I took it for granted that if Father chose to command a boon, it would be conferred.
When once we took the Golden Arrow train en route for the Cote d"Azur, I threw a shocking scene because my request to travel on the engine footplate was denied.
It seemed likewise monstrous that, when we saw Len Hutton lunching in the Oval restaurant, Father had to admit he lacked the acquaintance necessary to introduce me to the great cricketer.
I loved to listen to Father, and from my earliest years, I was captivated by his gifts as a raconteur. Once in a while, he took me to watch him broadcast from the BBC"s studios in Portland Place.
I stood with face pressed against the glass wall of the control room, peering at his elegantly suited figure, addressing the microphone in impeccably modulated tones.
I swallowed some of his prejudices only temporarily, but adopted others for life - a suspicion of beards and bow ties, a loathing for cats and football, which he declared to be played by brutes for the amusement of other brutes.
Mac Hastings in the Kalahari Desert in 1956, where he sought out some of the last wild bushmen
He told me that team activities were mere games, while anything worthy to be dignified as sport must involve individual exertion - shooting, fishing, riding and suchlike.
The unworthy thought did not then dawn on me that the Hastings distaste for ball games is rooted in our gross incompetence at them.
Father"s life seemed the pattern of what I wanted for myself, so that as soon as I started to buy my own clothes, I dressed in imitation of him.
When I was old enough to choose my own holidays, I hastened to destinations which he loved, mostly Scottish.
When I wanted to test myself against physical danger, which he persuaded me that every right-thinking Englishman should do, I addressed the same perils he had confronted, regretting only that the Germans were unavailable to play their usual 45 minutes each way on the other side.
In only one respect did his personal record disappoint me. I was an eager and somewhat credulous reader of P. G. Wodehouse, whose works formed my image of how young English gentlemen comported themselves.
One day I asked Father how many times he had spent the night in chokey after stealing a policeman"s helmet or being discovered dancing in the fountains of Trafalgar Square. He assured me with some asperity that he had never served even an hour behind prison bars.
This was a blow to my image of him as a man-about-town, a role which in all other respects he seemed to fill with assurance. It was, however, as I later learned, a role he entirely created for himself.
Mac was the son of a journalist and playwright who had one big stage hit and then little but disappointment thereafter.
Aged seven, he was sent away to a Jesuit prep school in Lancashire where he was bullied mercilessly. When tormentors suspended him from a ladder in the gym, the master who released him slapped his face to stop him crying.
He found the brutality unforgivable. Because the boys" letters home were censored, it was impossible for him even to reveal his miseries.
In that cold, dank, draughty, cavernous place, he contracted pneumonia, at which the matron shrugged her shoulders and wrote him off. A priest gave him the last rites. He survived, but never forgot the readiness of his keepers to deliver him to his Maker.
It was there, however, that he discovered a gift for public speaking, and always applauded the fact that the school taught elocution as a specific skill.
He also shared the enthusiasm of almost every Hastings schoolboy through the generations for tales of war and adventure.
"I swallowed some of Father"s prejudices only temporarily, but adopted othersfor life - a suspicion of beards and bow ties, a loathing for cats andfootball, which he declared to be played by brutes for the amusement ofother brutes"His language - things were "topping" and "ripping" - reflected not only the period, but also a natural exuberance which persisted for most of his life.
He loved the school cadet corps, and relished any opportunity to use firearms - the start of a lifetime obsession.
He was increasingly fascinated by the countryside. Roaming the fields and woods around the school, he developed a knowledge of birds and plants remarkable in the child of a family which was anything but rustic.
At home, he grew up in a mildly bohemian literary world and sat at the feet of such friends of his father as G. K. Chesterton, J. M. Barrie and Hilaire Belloc, whom he asked breathlessly whether he had indeed, as he recounted in print, walked from London to Paris with only sixpence in his pocket.
"Young man," responded Belloc magisterially, "I am a journalist," a remark which provided him with an early hint about the merits, when composing contributions for newspapers, of tempering a strict regard for truth with some savouring of romance.
When his father died early, aged 47, and penniless, Mac was abruptly brought home because there was no money for his school fees.
Rich family friends offered to fund him through Oxford but, with a delicate sense of honour, the young man refused, seeing it as his duty to go out and make a living to support his mother.
He came to regret this. For the rest of his life, he was nagged byself-consciousness about his lack of a university education anddisplayed an exaggerated deference towards those who possessed it.
For a few miserable months, he devilled as a clerk at Scotland Yard.
Then he found a job in the publicity department of the catering companyJ. Lyons, located at 61 Fleet Street, where he not only hugely enjoyedhimself for the next nine years, but also revealed a talent for writingadvertising copy.
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