Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2009 | Page 27

INTERVIEW

War
and

life

peace

The epic story of one man’s journey from Sandown
schoolboy to the top of the ranks. Roz Whistance meets
the Lord Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight

Article by Roz Whistance
IT was a war unlike any we had previously
known. The first Gulf War, which we witnessed
in blow-by-blow detail on our television screens
depended more than any other on logistical
planning, and the man behind the logistics was
an Islander. That same man was responsible
for the fine-tuning of last month’s visit to the
Isle of Wight by the Prince of Wales and the
Duchess of Cornwall, and indeed all visits by
Royals and other social heavyweights. He is the
first to greet them and the last to say farewell.
So what is it that forges a path from Island
schoolboy to one of the highest ranking military
posts in the country?
It’s another of those cases when expectation
and reality are quite different. You expect,
when going to visit the Lord-Lieutenant of the
Isle of Wight to find an old buffer, throwing
clipped commands to a harassed secretary from
the corner of a mouth rigid from the upper lip
down. What you actually find is a man relaxed
in his shirt sleeves, engaging and interested,
thoughtful and reflective.
In truth of course old buffers couldn’t do the
job of Lord Lieutenant, at least not as Martin
White has shaped it. The role is not merely an
honorary shindig where he simply turns up and
shakes hands. He is instrumental, fundamental
in its organisation. And, incidentally, he doesn’t

once refer to his assistant, Gillian (Deputy Clerk
to the Lieutenancy), by her title, always by
name, a mark of the sensitivity which is key to
how he has arrived at his lofty position.
Martin White doesn’t come from a military
background. His father was a schoolmaster, his
grandfather a seafarer, and great grandfather a
pilot in the Solent. It was at Sandown Grammar
School that he first became interested in the
military.
“I think there are instances or people in
your life that influence you, and at Sandown
Grammar School there was a master who
taught woodwork, and ran the Army Cadet
Force, Dick Mabey, who was an inspirational
schoolmaster and leader. That’s what took me
into the army.”
He has to think when asked how his parents
felt about his 6