CAPTAIN HAL RANDOLPH
Aviator and businessman
Hal was named for his uncle Harry Randolph, and they remained close for many years. His branch of the family own Randolph North American Aviation and from a young age Hal was obsessed with flying, designing and building aircraft – famously completing a solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927.
In 1938 he married Rose Jacobs, the widow of old J Jeremiah Jacobs. As the war started in Europe Hal was engaged in switching production at RNAA from commercial to military and the company now supplies munitions and parts for bombers to the UK. As soon as America joined the war, Hal enlisted in the USAAF, and although he has not generally been on active combat service, he has been on two bombing runs over Germany.
He currently splits his time between various American air bases and liaison duties in Whitehall.
ROSE JACOBS RANDOLPH
From nurse to wealthy wife
Rose was originally employed as a nurse for the elderly J Jeremiah Jacobs in his declining years. Many of the shareholders will remember her accompanying him to previous Shareholder Meetings and the tender care she provided. Rose and JJ married in December 1936, in a private ceremony, much to the surprise of the family given the substantial age gap.
When he died the following year JJ left Rose his entire fortune, cutting closer family members out of his will. This was quite the scandal, but it was soon eclipsed by her marriage in 1938 to Hal Randolph, aviator, and another family shareholder.
As well as carrying out her duties as a wife and shareholder, Rose owns a jazz club in London, the Rose Garden, at which she also sometimes performs. The club is part of the spiritualist scene and hosts gatherings for the open-minded once a month – a touching tribute to old JJ's love of a good séance.
LADY CICLEY JACOBS-BLANDING
Patron of the Arts
Cicely Jacobs (Aunty Lee or Sissy to her intimate friends) was rebellious in her youth. She ran off to Europe and scandalised the family by associating with artists in Paris, Vienna and Berlin. In her thirties she made peace by marrying Lord Edmund Blanding, a man some twenty years her senior, of noble title but little money. She made improvements to his country pile, bought an up-to-the-minute town house in Kensington and provided him with the requisite two male heirs.
After Edmund's death from Spanish Flu she continued to make improvements to the Jacobs-Blanding homes as well as jaunting around Europe with a series of younger men, before becoming involved with an archaeologist and vanishing in South America during the early thirties. After some concern from the family she returned to Europe, via Mexico and resumed her activities as a wealthy patron of the arts.
Immediately before the War broke out she was in Paris championing the fascist art of Futurism and had an infamous row with Frida Kahlo. Since the opening of hostilities she has publicly distanced herself from the Vorticists and Futurists – even opening Blandings Manor to some government department or other and, according to her, helping the war effort in some unspecified way (though it's possible Aunty Lee has just been enjoying the presence of fit young men in uniform around her home.
BERTRAM HORATIO CADWALLADER-JACOBS
Spiritual Explorer
After graduating from Oxford, Bertram travelled the Empire – exploring the Indian subcontinent and the Himalayas where he wholeheartedly embraced the practices of various teachers, gurus and other spiritual leaders, even spending time as a monk in a Buddhist temple.
He is a common if somewhat irregular attendee at shareholder meetings and when not travelling can usually be found on his estate in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where he has continued to develop his spiritual practice to the bemused tolerance of his friends and family.
Shortly after the outbreak of war, he took a position within the War Office, advising on German interests in Tibet. His detailed explanations of the methods by which transcendental meditation will allow the foretelling of German air-raids are tolerated but not usually put into practice. His calls for the nation to adopt vegetarianism have been more successful, and have lead to a series of letters in the Times.
JOHN 'FLUFFY' FINDLAY-REYNOLDS, 9TH VISCOUNT HARBURY
Film Producer and Dilettante
To most of London society, 'Fluffy' Findlay-Reynolds is a familiar figure – an affable aristocrat, film producer, and inveterate conversationalist whose name is as likely to appear in The Tatler as in the trade papers. To the shareholders of Randolph Jacobs, however, he is a newcomer. Until recently, it was always his elder twin, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Findlay-Reynolds, who represented the family’s interests: decorated, disciplined, and a man much admired by Rex Jacobs himself.
Fluffy meanwhile turned instead to art, study, and pleasure, drifting through the cultural circles of 1920s Europe. In Athens he discovered both a fascination with Greek tragedy and a new medium to explore it – film. By the 1930s, under the banner of JFR Productions, he had produced a handful of striking and ambitious pictures, culminating in The Golden Judgment (1938), a lavish mythic allegory that won critical praise but financial ruin.
The war changed everything. Edward was killed at Dunkirk, remaining behind with his men during the rearguard action, and John overnight became 9th Viscount Harbury. With his inheritance came responsibility, and an unexpected connection: Rex Jacobs, who had long been close to Edward, extended his friendship to the surviving brother.
Before war broke out Fluffy had made several trips to Hollywood, hoping for the backing of Harry Randolph for a transatlantic film venture – The Light Upon the Sea – a production now suspended following Randolph’s untimely death. Since the outbreak of JFR Productions has found an unlikely second life producing suprisingly moving short wartime informational and morale films.
This shareholders’ meeting marks John’s first attendance in his own right.
FILMOGRAPHY:
The Maiden’s Hour (1930)
Reynolds’s debut feature told the story of a nurse awaiting her lover’s return from the trenches, unaware that he’s been executed for desertion. Praised for its emotional restraint and striking cinematography, it established John as a serious new voice in British cinema.
The Blue Pavilion (1934)
A thinly veiled critique of London high society, depicting a circle of aristocrats whose lives unravel during a weekend at a country estate. The film’s wit and scandalous realism made it both celebrated and despised among its subjects.
The Golden Judgment (1938)
Reynolds’s most ambitious project, a wartime epic retelling the myth of King Midas, transposed to a fictional ancient kingdom facing collapse. The film portrayed a ruler whose lust for power and permanence brings ruin to his people and himself. Lavish and symbolically rich, it was too sombre for pre-war audiences and proved a box-office disaster.
LADY ISABEL MORAN-JACOBS
Troubled heiress
An Anglo-Irish heiress, Isabel grew up between the elegance of Kensington and the draughty halls of her family’s crumbling estate in Ireland. She inherited both fortune and responsibility from her father, whose shares in the company now provide her with a life of comfort. Lady Isabel has always been conscious of her duty to kin, quietly supporting the upkeep of the old manor and the relatives who remain there.
The Moran line has long been marked by brilliance and eccentricity. Isabel’s grandmother was a figure of some renown in her day – celebrated by some as a visionary touched by mystical powers, dismissed by others as unstable. Her mother’s decline was less easily romanticised; her scandalous death when Isabel was still a girl is still talked about in hushed tones in society. Whispers of “madness in the blood” cling to Isabel, though she wears her composure with pride and denies any such weakness.
When war came, Isabel set aside her easy life to volunteer as a nurse with the Red Cross. The reality of her service has left her visibly tired and older in spirit than her years. Those who know her remark upon her grace and determination, but also on the way shadows seem to follow her, and how tightly she holds herself against something unspoken. Whether the strains she carries are simply the scars of war, or something deeper in her family legacy, remains uncertain.
WINIFRED NORTON-RANDOLPH
Writer
Winifred (Freddie to her friends and family) Norton-Randolph was born in Berkshire, the second child of Viscount Norton. Always a fan of speed, be it horse riding or motor cars, during the Great War she signed up to be a driver, much to her family’s disappointment as her father had hoped she would finally marry and settle down. She spent several happy years driving parliamentary VIPs to various engagements and meetings, making many connections along the way.
After the war she travelled and wrote articles for ladies' magazines and occasionally national newspapers. In 1920, after a whirlwind romance in Egypt, she married her husband Chester Waldon Randolph, a Professor of Classical Archaeology at Harvard.
They had two children, Chester James Randolph and Frances Elizabeth Randolph, who are both currently at college in Cambridge.
Bored being a mother and housewife she started writing again and has had much success as an author, although she is always published under a pseudonym.
She inherited her shares in the Randolph Jacobs company from her husband in February 1941 when he died in a car crash near their home. She returned to England last year and has been seen around Whitehall in the company of various MPs and members of the War Cabinet. This is the first time she will be attending the shareholders meeting.
LADY CONSTANCE
ASHDOWN-JACOBS
Agricultural Innovator
Lady Constance Ashdown-Jacobs, now in her fifties, married into the Jacobs family many years ago. Though her late husband’s passing left her a widow, her place among the shareholders has never been in question.
Unlike some of her peers, Constance has never been content to live idly upon inherited wealth. A trained and genuinely respected botanist, she has devoted her energies to experimental agriculture on her estate in the Welsh borders. Long before the war, her estate was known as a curious patchwork of trial plots – odd grains, exotic legumes, and hothouse curiosities. Since hostilities began, her work has taken on a patriotic cast: strains of high-yield crops, rapid-growth vegetables, and soil treatments developed under her eye are said to be of direct value to the war effort.
Her enthusiasms are wide-ranging and occasionally eccentric. She is known to discourse at length on the chemistry of bioluminescent fungi or the breeding of luminous plants, a subject that has raised more than a few eyebrows at society dinners. Yet she is never dismissed outright: her knowledge is deep, her research well regarded in scientific circles, and she has the confidence of those who matter in Whitehall.
Among fellow shareholders she is courteous, if occasionally distracted by her latest inspiration, and far more likely to be found sketching a flower in the margins of a ledger than discussing dividends. Nevertheless, Lady Constance is a figure of genuine distinction, combining old family ties, scientific achievement, and a quietly determined sense of duty.
RUBY RIDLEY (NÉE CUNARD)
Socialite and heiress
Born in 1900, Ruby is the younger daughter of Maud 'Emerald' Cunard and the late Sir Bache Cunard, Bt., and the younger sister of the formidable Nancy Cunard. Ruby’s debutante year was 1917, though her season was overshadowed by the war. The following year she became engaged to one of Nancy’s Coterie friends, a promising young officer, but his death at the front left her bereft.
For many years she remained in mourning, her life shaped by loss and her presence in society a pale reflection of her sister’s brilliance. It was not until 1929, at the age of twenty-nine, that she emerged again into the world with some vitality. In a London jazz club she encountered a medical student six years her junior – the vivacious Harold Ridley – and against expectation, the two formed an attachment.
Their marriage in 1932 raised eyebrows in some circles, but has proved a remarkably steady and affectionate match. Ruby inherited her Randolph Jacobs shares directly from her father, and though she is no businesswoman, she takes a quiet pride in her place among the shareholders. More often she is remembered for her charm, her occasional sharpness of wit, and her determination to live on her own terms – never wholly in her sister’s shadow, nor in her husband’s.
HAROLD RIDLEY
Surgeon
Educated at Cambridge and trained at St Thomas’s Hospital, Harold Ridley built a career of distinction in ophthalmology, rising to consultant surgeon at Moorfields Hospital. He is admired in medical circles for his skill and innovation, with a particular interest in restoring sight where others have despaired.
In 1932 he married Ruby Cunard, whose family connections and fortune helped to launch his private practice in Harley Street in 1939. The Ridleys’ union, though unconventional in its day is regarded by those who know them as affectionate and supportive.
Harold’s shares in Randolph Jacobs came not through marriage, but by an unusual gift: the grateful father of an RAF pilot, whose sight Harold saved against all odds, presented him with a block of shares in the company as a token of esteem.
Though not a natural financier, Harold takes a conscientious interest in the firm’s affairs, applying the same meticulous, thoughtful manner that marks his surgical work. Among shareholders he cuts the figure of a serious, earnest professional, devoted to his patients, his wife, and the responsibilities he has been handed.
VALERY DE HASTINGS
/ VAL HART
Pastor and businessman
Val Hart has crossed the Atlantic for this shareholders’ gathering, as well as to attend to some family matters of his own. In America he is rather well known: a celebrated preacher at the head of Radiant Assembly of God, a thriving Los Angeles church whose services fill vast halls and spill over onto the airwaves.
The church has fingers in radio, publishing, and even film – so it’s hard to say where ministry ends and business begins.
Val comes from the de Hastings family, an aristocratic line tracing back to 1066, though the family itself is now utterly impoverished. His marriage to Circe Randolph, daughter of the late Senator Edmund Randolph, was therefore as advantageous as it was fortuitous, granting him wealth, influence, and a shareholding in Randolph Jacobs. Circe herself has not been seen in society for some time, her health being too fragile, but by all accounts Val is devoted to her care. He was very close to both Harry and Nella Randolph, and you’ve heard he was one of the last people to speak with Harry before his death.
Val’s accent tends to veer from British to American depending on who he is speaking to, reflecting both his upbringing and his transatlantic life. Those who have spoken with him remark on his warmth, his courtesy, and his gift for conversation – the sort of man who makes you feel he has all the time in the world for you. Val is also known to recite scripture with ease when the situation calls for it. Yet whispers follow him: that his church’s financial affairs are intricate and ambitious, that his own fortune is heavily leveraged and that he may be more dependent on the performance of his investments than appearances suggest.
Some of the more idle shareholders find his 'occupation' as a pastor and media owner slightly unsettling, as if the business of faith is somehow too earnest, too public, or too vigorous to mingle comfortably with genteel leisure. Whatever the truth of his faith, his money, or his personal concerns, Val presents himself as a genial gentleman of good manners – genuinely keen to make common cause with his fellow shareholders.
DIRK VLERKSNOET
South African businessman
Dirk introduces himself as a man of industry from Cape Town, though quite which industry depends on the day and who is asking. He has at various times claimed interests in gold, diamonds, ostrich feathers, marmalade, and – more recently – a promising new line in patent leather shoe polish. He insists that his fortune was made in 'the mines,' though the exact details remain curiously vague, and no one has ever quite pinned down whether he actually owned a mine, visited one, or merely read about them in The Illustrated London News.
Nevertheless, through a bewildering sequence of business deals, Mr Vlerksnoet is the proud holder of shares in Randolph Jacobs. Known for his booming laugh, brightly checked suits, and tendency to recount long and improbable anecdotes about lion hunting and railway building, he is regarded with a mixture of amusement and mild bewilderment. Some suspect that his ledger books are more imagination than arithmetic, but his good humour and bottomless supply of cigars make him difficult to dislike.
Whether he is a shrewd operator playing the fool, or a fool who has stumbled into good fortune, is a question no one has yet managed to answer. For now, Dirk seems content simply to enjoy the company of his fellow shareholders, the quality of the catering, and the chance to remind everyone at least once an hour that “South African business is booming, old fella – simply booming!”