Grapes of Wrath

Peregrine was born in 1946; enjoying a privileged childhood in the rural idyll of North Yorkshire, he arrived at boarding school in blissful ignorance of the rigours of spam, semolina and ox-tail soup. This rude awakening was followed by a short sojourn at Uppingham School, Rutland, a ghastly establishment from which he was eventually expelled after a series of misdemeanors involving the table maids, his housemaster’s daughter and Dolly the school mascot. The coup-de-grace was triggered by the aftermath of Peregrine’s innovatory (and popular) wine tasting club. Suffice to say there was a catastrophic confrontation with the Louis XV upholstery in the headmasters private suite. Disgraced, he was banished by the head of the Oatenshaw family to France where he studied the grape at close quarters. A classical education at Oxford was followed by a spell as a sheep shearer in the australian outback, an experience which even today causes Peregrine to shudder visibly….