As a young man, Fenton, who had served in the Scots Guards and King's Shropshire Light Infantry,[2] was impelled by a romantic disappointment to join the Foreign Legion but soon came to regret his decision.
By this time, the journalists and a camera man, who were following in another car, had decided that my presence ruined the romance of the story, so I came home.
Having married Margaret Lygon, the woman for whose sake he had joined the Legion and with whom he eventually had four children, Fenton lived for some time in Greece and ran idiosyncratic tours to the Soviet Union before settling permanently at Ebberston.
His obituary[1] recorded: The family lived in a relaxed style that was truer, perhaps, to the 18th century spirit than the conventions of costume drama would allow, in a jumble of chamber pots, gnawed bones and empty bottles, and on an equal footing with a menagerie of goats, chickens, pot-bellied pigs, deer, lamas, peacocks, and a baleful turkey called Henry.
West farmed his remaining fifty acres on loosely organic principles (‘It’s just easier, you don’t have to buy fertilizer’), grew his own vegetables, made his own wine, and shot his own rooks, which he would throw into the freezer with their feathers on.On one occasion, returning home from York, Fenton was dismayed when his train failed to stop at Malton station, where his wife awaited him, and accordingly pulled the emergency communication cord.