Tales from the Gunroom

by Michael Paulet (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $3.26

  When Stuffy Brewster - Major Arthur Brewster MC died, he left a curious bequest. A shooting man all his life, he left in his will a sum of money so that, once a year, his friends might meet in congenial surroundings over good food and wine. Stuffy made only one condition: members and guests alike must be united by a passion and concern for the sport to which he had dedicated his life. So The Gunroom was born. Over the years, the stories that flowed from tongues made fluent by conviviality and the memories of happy days were set down and collected, the result being this first volume of tales told within the hallowed confines of The Gunroom. Some are funny, some nostalgic, some sad, some mysterious; all are concerned with that indefinable quality which makes up the best shooting days, whatever those days may bring in the way of sport. Here then is the diversity of people, creatures, places, events, the beauty and mystery of the countryside, to captivate readers who understand that good sport is far more that the sum of its purpose, and far greater than any yardstick of size of bag or depth of purse. Here are the old East Anglian keeper who would carry, a rabbit on a bicycle, but never a hare; the sporting parson who knew a shoot to be excellent for seven guns, but terrible for eight, and took action accordingly; the exiled Punjabi prince who became a famous shot, and called Queen Victoria a thief; the wheelchair-bound wildfowler almost killed by a falling goose; the vile-natured old peer who liked to bully his paying guns; and, by contrast, the kindly and distinguished host who came back to his shoot, months after his death. Here too are sporting days in Northern Ireland, before guns became synonymous with another, more sinister, kind of shooting there; a Welsh keeper's funeral disrupted by one of his hated enemies, a cat, and, finally, 'Stuffy' Brewsters' own contribution, delivered to the Gunroom posthumously, a chilling vision of what will happen to shooting if many of those involved do not mend their ways. Perhaps not all the tales from The Gunroom are true. Who knows? What is certain, however, is that this delightful collection will amuse, move, and inspire anyone with the slightest feeling for the countryside, and for the part played in the long history of sporting days by shooting and its practitioners.