Fangio and my father

The Platinum Jubilee may be dominating the headlines and the life of the nation as we publish this, but another anniversary is being more quietly marked. The weekend just gone saw the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Goose Green, which raged across East Falkland’s central isthmus. It was the first major land engagement of the Falklands War, and others will have more significant and sadder reasons to recall it than I.

But it was also the anniversary of a photograph which sits on my desk as I write this, and the minor family mystery that accompanies it. My father met arguably the greatest driver who ever held a wheel in his native Argentina on the day before the land war between their two countries began in earnest. But he didn’t think this event was sufficiently significant ever to mention it to me and the evidence of it, which is now among my most prized possessions, nearly went unseen to the charity shop.