Percy Grove

The best description of Percy comes through the eyes of his grandson, Eric, in Chapter one of the novel, which is detailed below.

My Grandad’s name was Percy and it was an understatement to call him a character

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he could be spotted anywhere, rigidly-upright, with a bowler hat, brandishing either a walking stick with a fancy handle or a rolled-up umbrella. Always suited, he wore a shirt that only sported a collar and tie, on Sundays. Hob-nailed boots reflected the world from highly polished toecaps, and a moustache stiffened to the size of a pencil-lead with soap and water. A stickler for punctuality, he would tell anyone who’d listen, of his World War One adventures, in the Grenadier Guards.

He was vertically challenged. About five foot eight.

“Don’t you have to be six foot to join the Grenadier Guards?” Someone outside the pub, said to my dad.

“He had a three-foot busby,” Dad told him, with a grin. They thought it was funny.

Sipping lemonade from a bottle, as a boy, it was about right. Anyway, Grandad had a brother who was a detective sergeant in the police. He was the same size, and you were supposed to be six-foot to join the police… I wasn’t sure about a three-foot Copper’s helmet though, just didn’t seem right, but there you go?

In real terms, Percy was in the Grenadier Guards; however, romancing his exploits became so enhanced they made Errol Flynn’s screen achievements inconsequential. He is honest, sincere and driven by the strength of an astute woman, his wife Sarah, who guides all commercial movement in his world diligently and with adoration.