Quentin Letts, parliamentary sketch writer - Canada

Quentin Letts

Parliamentary sketch writer

My maternal grandfather Col GDS Adami (b.1900) was a Canadian from Montreal. His own father, Prof John George Adami, was a British pathologist who worked with Pasteur and moved to Montreal to start the pathology school at McGill University.

As a Royal Engineer during WW2, GDS Adami was initially involved in organising defence for London – but he talked his way into D-Day and landed in Normandy six hours before the main invasion. His job was to repair bridges destroyed by the Germans, and to compensate French farmers whose crops were about to be destroyed by the advancing British troops.

The Commonwealth allows our country to broaden its horizons. That particularly at a time when we are so hemmed in by Covid, is liberating.