12.30 for 1 p.m. on Thursday, 16 July 2009

Patrick Scrivenor will give a light-hearted talk on his many amusing experiences in a long career as a writer and journalist. He is also threatening to tell us of his decline from aspiring literatus to gamekeeper. Wearing his rustic garb, he may even reveal the secrets of Polecat Martin's dealings with the London restaurant trade.

He was born in Jerusalem and brought up in various parts of Africa. After a misspent youth (King's School, Canterbury and Oriel College Oxford), he served as an officer in the Royal Ulster Rifles. But even an unfortunate encounter with the Reverend Ian Paisley did not prepare him for work with Britain's first and most formidable television cook, Fanny Craddock, a woman who would have eaten Gordon Ramsay for breakfast and, by some accounts, nearly did make mincemeat of Patrick's colleague on the production team, the future Tory minister, John Selwyn Gummer. Patrick has spent many years working as a writer (think William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Archer) and journalist (somewhere between Carl Bernstein and Piers Morgan) and now combines his writing with gamekeeping (think Mellors in Lady Chatterley's Lover). Among his publications is Egg on Your Interface - A Dictionary of Modern Nonsense.

If you haven't received your booking form, contact the Chairman for one here.