after the First World War, he bought a farm there, founded the Southern Rhodesia Tobacco Growers' Association, and became an MP and war correspondent for the BBC. For the first two years of his life, Stephen lived with his parents on the farm; then he and his younger sister were sent home to England, where they were brought up by their doting and affluent maternal grandmother in Berkshire. Hastings was proud of his Scottish ancestry, among whose relations were the MacDonalds of Sleat. He had an abiding affection for his cousin the historian and journalist, Max Hastings. He learned to ride in Windsor Great Park, becoming an accomplished horseman. He attended Durnford School in Dorset (1929–34) and Eton College (1934–39). At Eton he managed to combine an undistinguished academic career, and with the clandestine help of his grandmother and her chauffeur, to engage in racing as an amateur jockey and, more importantly for his future, Hastings began a lifelong love for steeplechasing and fox hunting. Military career On leaving school, his grandmother offered to pull strings to enable him to pursue a career either as a racehorse trainer or in the Scots Guards. He chose the latter. Commissioned in the Scots Guards from Royal Military College, Sandhurst in January 1940, with the service number of 112983, Hastings saw action against the Italians and Germans in the Western Desert, taking part in Operation Crusader, which relieved Tobruk and threw Rommel out of Cyrenaica. After disagreements with his company commander he joined the SAS, and before El Alamein participated in a successful operation against an airfield, and a disastrous one against Benghazi, earning a Mention in Dispatches. Then, after being diagnosed with chronic bronchitis, he landed a job in Cairo as ADC to the Minister of State, Richard Casey. By mid-1943 Hastings was pronounced fit again, and joined SOE. His first assignment was to accompany the Franco-American landing in the south of France. He arrived in the newly liberated Paris in August 1944, then was dropped with a wireless operator and interpreter behind enemy lines in the Apennines as chief liaison officer to the Italian partisans. He found them demoralised and largely non-existent, but successfully trained and armed them, despite internal conflicts and frequent enemy attempts to capture him. By early April he had organised three divisions of about 4,000 partisans, which seized Piacenza and held a bridgehead over the River Po