Here's to our Far-flung Empire

Tony Orchard was a product of the British Empire at a time when Great Britain's rule across an empire that stretched from India to Singapore and Jamaica to Borneo was fast fading into history. Heres To Our Far-Flung Empire is a fascinating and entertaining account of 17 years of conflict, comradeship, romance, adventure and excitement across the world. His father had lived and worked in British India and was sent to Mombasa in British Kenya to start a subsidiary of Shell Oil. According to the comedian Tommy Trinder, Britains far-flung empire hadnt been flung far enough. Without the outbreak of World War 2 and the evacuation of British forces at Dunkirk, Tony Orchard would probably never have had the chance to explore the truth of this for himself. In 1940, with the enemy at the gate, he was one of thousands of youngsters who were packed up from boarding school and sent off for their own safety to join their parents working overseas. As a result he spent a tempestuous 17 years travelling the world, with schooling in Calcutta and Durban, adventures in the South Seas serving with the Royal Navy and an eventful post-war sales career with Quaker Oats, selling flour to customers from Canada and the USA to the Caribbean, the Congo and East Africa. It wasnt until he married a Danish girl and settled down back in England that he finally managed to stay under the same roof for more than three years.