Stiff Upper Lip

I may have posted it before, I received it by mail from Gavro a couple of months back but there are few things I've enjoyed more in recent months than this. There's something very British about the mix of stoicism in the face of horror and saucy seaside postcard humour:



H.M. EMBASSY
MOSCOW

Lord Pembroke
The Foreign Office
London

6th April 1943

My Dear Reggie,

In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time. So I propose to share with a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.

We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when Spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.

(Signed)

Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr,
H.M. Ambassador.