Today is the 110th anniversary of the birth of a former Spectator correspondent who took part in and survived more wars than any other English writer in modern history. Yet he is practically forgotten today because he fought all his life for unfashionable conservative causes.

Peter Kemp, the son of a judge in the Indian Raj, was born in Bombay on 19 August 1915. Educated at Wellington, and destined for the law like his father, he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, the alma mater of the notorious Communist sympathising Soviet spies Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt.

He remained utterly unashamed of having chosen the ‘wrong’ side in Spain and was proud of fighting for Franco

Kemp gravitated to the polar opposite of his leftist contemporaries and became a right-wing Tory. A

See Full Page