Natasha Hamilton, formerly of the band Atomic Kitten and, far right, William Sitwell, restaurant critic for The Daily Telegraph, host as Roy Sommer, Managing Director of Davidoff cigars presents the ‘Davidoff Bon Viveur of The Year Award’ to Alexander Fiske-Harrison, for his article ‘Courage Best’. On the left is AFH’s old friend, whom he had not seen since 1991 and who recently left the British Army after 23 years, including two decades in the 22 SAS, and with whom AFH is now working on new project, more which later (Photo: Jules Annan)

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COURAGE BEST

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Britain’s only bullfighter and veteran bull runner, pays homage to British stoicism and bravery

THE most laconic tale of British bravery in combat is arguably Lord Uxbridge’s sang froid remark after being struck by cannon shot at the Battle of Waterloo: “My God, Sir, I’ve lost my leg.”

To which the Duke of Wellington replied:

“Yes, Sir, so you have.”

One doesn’t need to be a Kenneth Tynan to recognise this as a performance, even if made unconsciously, with understatement used to say infinitely more than the words themselves. It does not make much difference if the story is apocryphal: the mere fact that the story has survived in popular consciousness in this form tells us exactly what the British perceive their own particular brand of bravery to be.

It is also hardly surprising, then, that I grew up with the Charge of the Light Brigade as my model, as it was to the British Army. Indeed, it is from the cannon captured that day that most of the Victoria Cross medals are cast (more of the VC later).

Compare this form of courage with a tale from my adopted country of Spain. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the medieval Alcázar fortress of Toledo was under siege to little effect, when the attackers captured the son of the colonel of the garrison. They reconnected the severed telephone lines and summoned the colonel to the parapets so he could watch as his son was handed the telephone to tell him that he would be executed unless the fortification surrendered. The colonel told his son that ‘he knew what to do’. Father and son saluted one another, the son turned and told his captor to shoot him, which he duly did, before he turned to salute the father, who returned the salute.

The tales of Uxbridge and the Spanish colonel are extreme examples of courage. But like a cocktail mixed with alien versions of similar ingredients, the latter’s is somehow un-British. Nevertheless, we recognise the resemblance.

Seneca, the father of Roman Stoicism, was a Spaniard born in Córdoba, hence the Hispanic flair in his pronouncements on this subject. “A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave,” he wrote. It was no idle theorising, for within twelve months the Emperor, his former pupil, falsely accused him of conspiracy. Seneca duly took his own life, remarking, with more than a hint of caustic Britishness: “After murdering his mother and brother, it only remained for Nero to kill his teacher and tutor.”

One of the reasons I came to Spain was to witness an echo of such bravery outside of war. Ernest Hemingway gave a similar reason for coming to watch bullfights one hundred years ago. I remember when I first went to Pamplona to run with the bulls, I witnessed the boiling mass of 300 tonnes of humanity fleeing four tonnes of toros bravos, Spanish fighting bulls. The mass of people shattered and fled like a medieval rabble under a heavy cavalry charge. This was a sight few people in the modern era will ever see: a populace put to flight through its own streets, as though a siege had been broken, a city wall breached. Of course, I am aware that the event itself, and even talking about having done it, is all rather un-British.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison runs between two bulls in Pamplona in 2011

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