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Hello all

I'm hoping you can help identify the where and why of the attached group photo, which includes Rudyard Kipling, his wife Carrie, daughter Elsie, and future son-in-law George Bambridge. It also includes (third from left, front row) the Duke of Connaught (Queen Victoria's son), next to him General Horace Smith-Dorrien, and William Taft (boater hat, back row, second from right), former US president 1909-13. The latter helps identify the date: he visited the UK for three weeks in 1922 to study our justice system (by then he was Chief Justice of the US - only other visit to UK was in the 1880s). He had a very full itinerary for the visit, has just one free period, starting Saturday 1st July 1922, this was reported in the US press as "spending the weekend at Fritwell Manor". And BTW the Duke is wearing a black armband: that week has seen the funeral of Field-Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, shot by the IRA, and the Duke had accompanied the coffin.

Taft was known to be friends with, and spent a lot of his UK time with, Sir John Simon, who is also in the photo (middle row, 3rd from left, wearing what looks like a vicar's dog-collar but he favoured very high collars). He was Home Secretary, twice, and the leading barrister of the time. He owned Fritwell Manor, near Banbury.

There seem to be lots of top brass there, for an event of some kind: several people are wearing dangly circles from their breast pockets, and the soldier extreme left is wearing a white armband (just out of the scanned area) which MIGHT signify a competitor in an equestrian event. They seem to be gathered outside a clubhouse, there is a waitress clearing glasses on the terrace behind.

Phew, still with me?  Can anyone here identify the location and the reason for the get-together? was it recorded in RKs diary perhaps? We have a relative in the photo: he was a captain in the RASC, had been responsible for Horse Transport supplies in the Boer and Great Wars, and the only reason we can think of for him being there is that he may have put the event together at the request of one or other of the Good and Great present.

Can you help in any way? Eternally grateful if you can, would like to start sleeping at nights again instead of seeing Sgt Pepper faces from 1922...

Paddy