Gerald and his greys

Fingers clasped beneath the wooden frame and rough thumbs on top, Gerald Gray holds the picture of his grandfather up to the light. I look from the moustached face of the man sitting next to me, to the face in the magazine cutting. The nose is longer but there is the same kind curiosity in the dark eyes.

‘James Henry Gray,’ Gerald says proudly, ‘you can see where that was. That was in The Gamekeeper Magazine.’ Down at the bottom of the stained paper, a date is written in bold: ‘September 1931’. I read it aloud. ‘That’s it,’ Gerald replies with a smile, as though he’s asked me a question and I’ve hit on the right answer, ‘that’s when it was.’ He passes me the frame, then turns and looks away out of the small shed window across the soft December fields.

The feature, from the 361st issue of a now-defunct publication, is a profile of one of the great keepers of the interwar years. The writer notes that Newsells Park, ‘an estate any motorist travelling from London to Cambridge will have driven through’, is