The Kings And I
...An Old Git’s View ByHerbert Spencer
As it turned out, my involvement in the sport became much more. In 1971 I published the sport’s first coffee table book, Chakkar, Polo Around the World, with illustrations by the brilliant Swiss photographer Fred Mayer and essays by Prince Philip, Lord Mountbatten and other prominent exponents of the game. My international magazine Chakkar and my second book, A Century of Polo, followed. I have photographed and written many thousands of words on the sport for all of the polo periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic.
Herbert with Princess Grace at Royal Palace, Monte Carlo
At 85, Herbert Spencer is the doyen of polo communicators, having worked for 44 years with the international polo community. Here he explains how his long journalistic career was not always about polo.
As this mini-memoir is for a polo publication, I will write first about my professional life with the “game of kings”. And what a wonderful life it has been!
For more than four decades I have worked variously as a book and magazine publisher, author, photographer and PR consultant in the sport. This has taken me to scores of polo clubs and locations from India to Argentina, across the USA from Florida to California and through most of Europe.
Of all the clubs I have visited, large and small, Ham remains one of my favourites. Back in the Eighties, I chose Ham as the location for a polo picnic featured in my magazine Chakkar. In more recent years I have greatly enjoyed champagne luncheons on the clubhouse terrace as a guest of Ham’s chairman (Nicholas is my best friend in polo) and his dear wife Annie or an Argentine lunch at nearby Gaucho Richmond, hosted by Ham’s friend and mine Martin Williams.
I was introduced to polo in the early Sixties by two notorious Parisian playboys and players: Porfirio Rubirosa and Claude Terrail, owner of the Tour d’Argent restaurant. I met them at Chez Regine’s nightclub and they invited me to watch them in action at Polo de Paris and Deauville. I saw polo as a great sport -- magnificent horses, daring riders, glittering social scene – and worth my writing a feature article one day.
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I served for two years as Director of Communications of the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA) and worked as a media consultant with the Federation of International Polo (FIP) and the US Polo Association (USPA). In 2006 I received the USPA’s Image Award for promoting polo and in 2011 was made a Life Member of the HPA for services to the sport.
That was my polo career. What about “the kings and I”? That was a parallel career. In 1955 I left my job as a political writer on the Atlanta Constitution in Georgia and moved to Europe as a foreign correspondent for United Press. Based in London, Rome and Paris, I covered major news events in Europe, Africa and Asia. I then began specialising in in-depth, intimate profiles – words and photos – of prominent personalities, show business first, then royalty.
My royal contacts began with Crown Prince Constantine of Greece whom I met when I was covering the 1960 Rome Olympics where he won his sailing gold medal. He came to trust me as a friend and sometimes media advisor and I worked with him and the Greek royal family for 13 years. Constantine became King of the Hellenes in 1964 and that same year married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark.
In 1967 Constantine’s attempt to oust the dictatorial Greek colonels failed and the family flew into exile in Rome. With the cooperation of the Greek and Danish families, I produced my first royal biography, Anne-Marie, Princess of Denmark. Queen of the Hellenes. After the family moved to England, I helped with the king’s campaign in the Greek referendum that finally abolished the monarchy.
My work with the Greek and Danish royals helped to open other palace doors. I spent weeks in Jordan on several occasions producing exclusive magazine articles about King Hussein and his family. I visited Prince Ranier and Princess Grace at the palace in Monaco But the highlight of my work with royals came about in Spain.
HAM POLO CLUB
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