Lt. Romilly Ernest Maundrel Lunge
Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve HMS Osprey
from:London
Romilly Lunge was my great uncle. When we were growing up in the 60’s my self and my two brothers and parents spent time during school holidays down on the farm. Easter morning spent in the hen coop looking for hidden Easter eggs. My father and his two brothers worked on the farm from around 1947 to around 1957 earning about 2/6d a week as farmhands.
He entered the war and joined the Royal Navy and ended up in Ceylon (Shri Lanka) in the day working and with fine tuning sonar to better detect the German U-Boats. He told me the future Prince Phillip visited the Naval base under a shroud of secrecy once and he showed the Greek prince the highly secret research and development they were doing in anti submarine warfare. Also he told me he’d been invited to secret cocktail soirées up the hill from Columbo to the famous celebrity staying on the island, no other than theatre and cinemas playwright Noèl Coward.
But Ernest Romilly Maundrel Lunge was quite an interesting but sometimes private person. During the 70’s after he’d moved to Ashby de la Zouch he allowed me to chat with him many times about his former pre war life acting on stage then in the movies and learning to sing opera in the La Scala theatre in Milan Italy. My site hosting some of his movies.
He acted in films and on stage with quite a selection of well known actors and actresses before the war like Vivian Leigh, Lilli Palmer, Rex Harrison, Bruce Cabot, Enid Stamp Taylor and became a character witness in the sad demise of Taylor. He became a romantic interest to Margarita Scott with skiing trips to the Swiss Alps in the 30’s and summers in North Devon at Woolercombe Bay. He spent a year living in Milan in latter half of 1929 and was voice trained briefly by the famous singer Caruso then later with younger Beniamino Gigli. Hitchcock once interviewed him for the movie Secret Agent and he made a film with the Sir Gerald du Maurier studios.
Well that’s a brief synopsis of this interesting private person who settled in Warton back in 1947 to run a 100 acre farm in the tranquil country of Warwickshire.
