“I’M REALLY not posh,” Hugh Grant is fond of saying in interviews, aware, perhaps, that the characters he has played during his long career tend to be a bit, well, posh.
And although it’s true that Hugh’s exmilitary father ran a carpet business in Chiswick, his mother was a teacher, and that he only attended upper-crust Latymer Upper School (where fees are £7500 a term) on a scholarship, his family history is still, as genealogist Antony Adolph has pointed out “a colourful Anglo-Scottish tapestry of warriors, empire-builders and aristocracy.”
Nothing wrong in that, of course, quite the reverse in fact. Hugh’s grandfather, Colonel James Murray Grant, DSO was decorated for bravery and leadership at Saint-Valery-en-Caux during the Second World War, and his father was an officer in the Seaforth Highlanders…
