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had progressed and matured so well that he was made a prefect in a new house, Grafton. He had to prepare to re-sit his exams at the end of the next year, putting him a year behind almost everyone else.
    At the end of 1926 he spent another two weeks skiing in Switzerland, then began 1927 by joining the Debating Society. In February he played his first rugby match for Grafton House against Cobham House, and he learned to play tennis and squash. He also swam for Grafton, winning a 100-yard race and being awarded a medal in life saving. His fitness continued to improve and he grew into a very solid, strong young man who would remain physically active throughout his life.
    He was promoted to lance-corporal in the Officer Training Corps in May, and began to play in the school cricket team in which he excelled asa fast bowler. But at the end of July, before the summer holiday, he again failed the School Certificate exams. He was promoted to corporal in the Officer Training Corps but the next year he failed his exams a third time.
    He worked solidly through the next term, was promoted to sergeant, played cricket regularly, and won the senior backstroke in the school’s swimming sports. In June 1928 he passed the entrance exam for Sandhurst, but he still needed to pass his School Certificate exams, which he took for the fourth time in July – and passed.
    David was now on his way to becoming a professional soldier, a career that he said ‘wasn’t a passion for me but it was a job I could get immediately and be well paid for it’. It was also a profession he never really shook off even as an actor because, as an actor, he often had his greatest success as a gentleman and an officer. In fact he said, ‘The Army was the only formal training I had as an actor.’
    Laurence Olivier had RADA. David Niven had Sandhurst.

CHAPTER 4
    â€”
Sandhurst
    O n 31 August 1928 David Niven joined the Royal Military College at Sandhurst to begin 15 months of training as an officer in the British Army. ‘I was used to parading at the Officer Training Corps,’ he told me, ‘but the real thing came as a tremendous culture shock. The first 10 weeks were spent being drilled and paraded, shouted at, sworn at and being made to drill in full battle gear if you hadn’t polished your boots beyond perfection. It was absolute hell, I swear. But at the end of it I was as fit as I would ever be. It got better after that as I studied tactics, admin and management and even military law.
    â€˜We even had leisure time at last. We would go to the pub which was at Frimley Green, and to the cinema at Aldershot and to a lovely pair of prostitutes at Camberley.’ He still loved those tarts.
    At the end of his first 10 weeks at boot camp he was promoted to lance-corporal and was chosen to be one of the commandment’s two orderlies. One of his perks was to be excused from Saturday morning drill parades, allowing him to go to London for the day.
    He performed in the college theatre, sharing a duologue,
Searching for the Supernatural
, with a fellow recruit, and that sketch earned him his first rave review; ‘A valuable recruit, who deservedly made the hit of the evening, was David Niven,’ wrote the college’s
R.M.C. Magazine and Record
. ‘He is a great find, with the most exquisite meandering manner.’
    He also performed in his first full length play at Sandhurst,
The Creaking Chair
, playing a crime reporter which the college magazine described as ‘an irresistible hero’.
    Early in 1929 he appeared in the Sandhurst variety show in a sketch he wrote himself,
Why Every Married G. C. Should Have a Wife
, and a few weeks later he did another play,
It Pays to Advertise
, playing a charming layabout. He was developing a good light comedic touch.
    â€˜I was fortunate to get the chance to do a few plays at Sandhurst while I was struggling to make a soldier of myself,’ he told me, ‘and, I