I was born, at the earliest of ages, in a palace, on November 30, 1874, in the county of Oxfordshire, England. I knew nothing about my parents, and was unable to communicate with them since I had not yet learned to speak the English language. Cradled in my mother’s arms, I was helplessly dependent on these two people for all that I needed. Although I was only a few moments old, squinting at them, my senses seemed to tell me that my birth was an enigma of contradictions; having been born in England on Saint Andrew’s Day, the patron saint of Scotland, to a mother, I believe, of foreign extraction. A woman who had chosen to forsake all others to wed my English father, the youngest son of the seventh duke of Marlborough. And, in addition to all that, I was a commoner. Would I be growing up in a foreign country?

As my mother moved, my head rolled to the side, giving me the opportunity to scrutinize my father with his very English disposition. At that moment, viewing his noble, proud, loving features, concerns for the legitimacy of my birthright subsided. I experienced a feeling of stability and security, a sense that our family was staunchly British, and that this moment in time belonged to an age of magnificence for Britain and her Empire. This England of Shakespeare, this jeweled domain, was perched on the threshold of discoveries and inventions that would propel us all, and particularly my generation, into the modern world of the 20th century.