Y grandmother was born under the wide skies of the Argentinian Pampas, on an that belonged to her father; he’d made, lost and made a fortune, as only Victorians could, by investing in cattle and land. Back then, the Argentine, as my mother’s family called it, was close to being a British colony. Scottish engineers laid miles of track, British bankers laid out wads of capital, everyone in Britain ate corned beef and there was a branch of Harrods in Buenos Aires, the only branch in the world. (I inherited a linen jacket from the store and had it mended many years later by a tailor in
