The success of the Transglobe Expedition was the making of Fiennes. Before 1982, he had led expeditions to Norway, traversed the length of the White Nile and crossed British Columbia by boat. He was known as “the bomber baronet” – the aristocratic tearaway who was kicked out of the SAS for attempting to blow up the set of a 20th Century Fox film with stolen explosives.
Since that ignominy, he’d fought communist guerrillas as a mercenary with the Sultan of Oman, and had begun to make a living as a freelance explorer. But the shame of losing his place in the British Army hung heavy. Most painfully, it meant that he couldn’t follow in the footsteps of his father, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, who commanded the Royal Scots Greys, and died a war hero from battle wounds in Naples in 1943.
The Transglobe Expedition redeemed those failures, laying the foundations for his future achievements. But it also cemented the 34-year marriage to his first wife, Virginia “Ginny” Fiennes, whose idea it was – and who was instrumental to its success.
In fact, Ginny was the fulcrum on which the expedition turned. She trained as a radio operator, overwintering with Fiennes in the Antarctic, and fighting -50C conditions to keep communications open between Fiennes, his expedition partner Charlie Burton and their base.
On October 23, 2024, London’s Royal Geographical Society (RGS) organised a tribute evening to celebrate the Transglobe Expedition, and to honour Fiennes and Ginny. She had died 20 years earlier of cancer, a blow that had devastated Fiennes. The heart of British exploration since the Victorian era, the grand, red-brick RGS is something of a shrine to Fiennes’ achievements. It is festooned with memorabilia from his expeditions – in the hallway hangs the sledge he dragged across the Antarctic plateau on his record-breaking unsupported crossing with Mike Stroud. There’s a replica of Ginny’s radio hut from the Transglobe Expedition on its grounds. It was inconceivable Fiennes would miss this occasion at the place he referred to in a letter as “the dear old RGS”.
But that night, the guest of honour never arrived. In the preceding years, Fiennes, now 82, had been open about his diagnosis of Parkinson’s. In public, he approached the disease with the same cussed truculence he’d always displayed. This was a man, after all, who had once sawed his own frost-bitten fingers off with a Black and Decker fret saw. But in private, it took its toll.
“I’d seen him a few times earlier that year, and it was quite clear that physically and mentally, he was struggling,” says Anton Bowring, one of his closest friends, who first met Fiennes when he was recruited as a deckhand on the Transglobe Expedition. “In September, I went to see him lecture in Norwich, and he did a couple more lectures after that… But then, the decision was made. He couldn’t continue. He had to go home. Even superheroes get old.”
Later in September, Fiennes had a car accident. He was forced to stop driving and returned to the West Midlands home he shared with his second wife, Louise Fiennes, nee Millington-Cotes.
That evening at the RGS in 2024, he appeared in a brief, pre-recorded video. In the film, which is available online, he sits on a sofa, glasses perched on his nose, and reads from a script out of shot. “Hello everybody, Ran here,” he says. “I’m sorry I’m not well enough to be with you there this evening. Thank you for being my No 1 team. I do hope we’ll be together for many more adventures to come.”
Fiennes hasn’t been seen in public since.
‘He’s still out there’
In March this year, members of his inner circle made contact with the Telegraph. They were wary and discreet. Fiennes is a private man with a well-documented distrust of the press. He also hails from one of the most storied families in England. The Fiennes can trace their ancestry back to the Norman Conquest. Their family seat is Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire, and Fiennes’ relations include the actors Joseph and Ralph.
Yet his friends and family felt they had to speak out. Their love for – and loyalty towards – the man they knew as “Ran” was unshakeable. Fiennes, one told me, was “the kindest, gentlest man” they had ever met. But they were at their wits’ end as they were unable to see him and all other avenues had been exhausted. Publicity, now, was perhaps the only thing that might effect some change.
Fiennes is no stranger to outlandish escapades. But the story I was told seemed implausible, even for him. “It’s absurd,” says Arabella McIntyre-Brown, Ginny’s younger sister and a writer who now lives in Romania. “It’s like we’d stumbled into a John le Carré novel.”
Bowring agrees. “It’s the extraordinary final chapter in a remarkable life. I know he’s still out there, alive. But I’ve grieved for him. I’ve said goodbye.”
Yet that grief was shot through with anger. “This is Ranulph Fiennes we’re talking about,” Bowring says. “If he’s not a national treasure, then he’s pretty damn close. Surely at some point, someone’s got to ask: ‘Where’s Ran?’”
The woman behind the legend
To answer the question, it’s important to go back to the genesis of the Transglobe Expedition – and Fiennes’ relationship with Ginny. They met when they were teenagers. Fiennes, his sisters and his mother had moved to Lodsworth in West Sussex, and Ginny and her family were neighbours. Fiennes fell in with her brothers, but Ginny soon caught his eye, too. “When she smiled, the whole world danced,” he wrote later. And so, as he shuttled through Eton and an academic crammer, and into the British Army, he began to court the teenage daughter of a local businessman.
“When he met Ginny, I hadn’t been born yet – so he’s been part of my family my whole life,” McIntyre-Brown says. “He was more of an older brother to me than either of my brothers.” Fiennes was a glamorous presence in their lives, rumbling up on a motorbike or a sports car and sneaking Ginny away. “He turned up once at my school,” McIntyre-Brown says. “He’d just done the expedition down the White Nile, and all the girls were making googly eyes at him. He was so handsome.”
Though Fiennes fought a headwind of parental disapproval to win Ginny’s hand, the early years of their marriage were stormy. “There was plenty of crashing and shouting in their first cottage,” McIntyre-Brown chuckles. “They’d be furniture flying everywhere… At one point, even the poor cat got hurled!”
The problem lay in a lack of direction to bind them. As he wrote, Fiennes returned to England from his service with the Sultan of Oman “aged 27… my chosen career ended [with a] startling lack of qualifications”. Ginny provided the answer. Without his knowledge, she arranged a meeting between Fiennes and George Greenfield, a top literary agent, who sold Fiennes’ debut book, A Talent for Trouble. The advance dug the young couple out of a financial hole, and set Fiennes on the career that would define his life – that of a freelance explorer, expedition leader and writer.
“She interpreted Ran for life,” says Bowring, who, with his wife, Jill, spent decades in the couple’s company. “He never quite knew what he was supposed to do, or how he was supposed to do it. She provided encouragement, advice and direction – even if that meant stomping across the South Pole.”
In the years after the Transglobe Expedition, Ginny retired from frontline positions in Fiennes’ expeditions. “I think she just said: ‘Enough is enough – it’s my turn to have a life now’,” McIntyre-Brown says. But she continued to play a role behind the scenes. The couple moved to Greenlands, a farm high up on Exmoor, where Fiennes trained for his expeditions with long runs, and helped his wife breed dogs and cattle.
Alongside their animals, the couple had a brood of godchildren. But they were unable to have children themselves. “It was the huge sadness [of their lives],” says Kay, one of those many godchildren.
Still, as they reached their mid-50s, they settled into life at Greenlands. Fiennes planned to retire from expeditions and help Ginny with her prize-winning animals. But in early 2003, he suffered a heart attack in a plane on the runway at Bristol Airport. He was close to dying – only the quick reactions of his fellow passengers saved his life. He underwent double bypass surgery and was warned to be careful about raising his heart rate too much.
Unquelled, he threw himself into training for an unprecedented record – to run seven marathons, on seven continents, in seven days. Four months after surgery, Fiennes completed the challenge with Stroud, raising money for the British Heart Foundation. Stroud carried a defibrillator in case he needed to jolt life back into his friend on the tarmac, but both crossed the line at the New York City Marathon on November 2 alive and well.
Yet a few days later, Fiennes arrived back on Exmoor to a shadowed homecoming. Ginny had been diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Her decline was sudden and shocking. “It’s a terrible thing to watch someone you love die by inches,” McIntyre-Brown remembers. The two sisters reconnected. Alongside Bowring and his family, McIntyre-Brown tried to look out for Fiennes as he threw himself into caring for his dying wife with the same determination with which he approached any of his physical challenges. They shuttled between Greenlands, the hospital and eventually, in February 2004, a hospice in Exeter. Fiennes would be turning 60 that year, and McIntyre-Brown and Ginny had planned to write a book about him to give as a gift. The book never got written.
The end came fast. “My wife and I had just been down to see them,” Bowring says. “We had got back home, and the phone rang.” It was Fiennes. “‘Ginny’s dead,’ he said. ‘And she’s still here in my arms.’” The memory stops him short. He shakes his head. “Awful, just awful.”
In the months that followed, Fiennes stared into the abyss. A man of quiet but fierce religious faith – he and Burton had kept morale up on the ice by singing Sunday hymns – he confessed to someone I spoke to that he had considered ending his own life. “Losing Ginny broke him,” they said. “He became utterly unstuck.” As he later wrote, “the hardest path I’ve ever had to follow – long and terrifyingly lonely – was trying to find a way through the grief of Ginny’s illness and early death”.
Two separate worlds
In March 2005, a little over a year after Ginny’s death, Fiennes remarried. His new wife, Louise Millington-Cotes, a horse trainer from Cheshire, was 23 years younger than him. She had a son, Alexander, from a previous relationship, who was then in his early teens. The two met at an RGS event in 2004. Louise, an RGS volunteer, said she didn’t know who Fiennes was when she met him before the lecture, but they started chatting. The couple announced the birth of a daughter, Elizabeth, in April 2006.
Even with his young family, Fiennes continued to lecture and plan expeditions, pushing his body ever further. He climbed the North Face of the Eiger aged 62, despite a lifelong terror of heights. He mounted three expeditions to Everest, eventually becoming the oldest Briton to stand at the summit aged 65 in 2009, but not before a heart attack on one of those expeditions forced him to turn around 300m from the top. In 2015, he ran 159 miles in the Sahara Desert, finishing the Marathon des Sables aged 71. Throughout these challenges, he raised money for Marie Curie Cancer Research, eventually raising £8.3 million for the charity.
There was a brief flare of interest in his new wife. The Mail on Sunday reported that long-term staff at Greenlands had been let go, causing upset and consternation in the tight-knit Exmoor community. Louise gave a small handful of interviews, including to the Daily Telegraph in 2007. The Telegraph’s reporter found her quiet and withdrawn, only becoming animated when discussing horses. By the end of the interview, she had warmed up enough to crack a joke at those gossiping about the age gap between her and Fiennes, and the speed of his remarriage. “[Yes], I’m an evil, evil woman,” she said.
Soon after they were married, Louise phoned McIntyre-Brown. It was shortly before Christmas. “She was distraught,” McIntyre-Brown says. “Ran was up another bloody mountain somewhere – I think it was one of his Everest expeditions – and she’d been left with Alexander [her son] and a young baby.
“Part of me didn’t have that much sympathy. I’d just lost my sister, and Louise knew what sort of man Ran was before she married him. You can’t expect someone to change in their 60s. But I felt for her as a woman, so I drove down and cooked Christmas lunch. It was the longest we’d spent in each other’s company, and we got on well.”
But Fiennes’ circle noticed a steady bifurcation of his personal and professional lives. During the week, he would be on the road, living out of his car, lecturing and touring. (Though comfortably well-off, through his books and speaking engagements, he never shook off the frugality of expedition life.) On the weekends, he would go back to Greenlands or the farm in the West Midlands. Friends organised a yearly “Ran walk”, where dozens of people who knew him would meet for a stroll and a pub lunch. Sometimes, the man himself appeared – other times, he would say he was unable to join, blaming commitments at home. I was shown a picture of his 70th birthday celebrations at a glamorous venue in central London, organised by his friends. Fiennes looks hawkishly handsome in black-tie. But his new family is nowhere to be seen.
“His life was very much in two parts – there was the work life, and there was the home life,” one friend told me. “And he treated that home life as sacred. But there was always a barrier between the two. [His family] had the weekend. And during the week, he was ‘Ran the lecturer’ and ‘Ran the explorer’, and his friends could access him then.”
Some also noticed other changes. One of Fiennes’ Everest expeditions was nearly derailed because, at the last moment, he couldn’t find his passport – it had been misplaced or, one source speculated, hidden. Fortunately, the expedition was able to continue as he was granted special dispensation to travel under temporary documentation.
The strange, somewhat uneasy equilibrium of Fiennes’ private and professional lives continued as he grew older. Friends assumed this situation would be maintained, until that night at the RGS in late 2024 when Fiennes appeared briefly by video – and then seemed to vanish off the face of the earth.
‘It felt like he was saying goodbye’
One of the last people to see Fiennes in person before then was his stepson, Alexander. Now in his early 30s, he has his stepfather’s commanding physical presence, mingled with a sombre watchfulness. Growing up, he told me, Fiennes had seemed more a grandfather than a father. He wasn’t hugely affectionate, but he was kind and encouraging, especially when Alexander showed a similar relish for feats of physical derring-do, such as yomping up mountains. There was a reflected glamour to being in Fiennes’ orbit. His globe-trotting expeditions meant exotic holidays, and Alexander, an aspiring astronaut, was introduced to Tim Peake and given a tour of Nasa.
Yet the relationship between Alexander and his mother was difficult. In fact, they have been estranged since 2018. As Alexander tells it, the break began when he was offered a job in Sweden, working with the European Space Agency. His mother was against the move and became angry that Alexander was considering it against her wishes. A few years later, the bad blood between them grew so poisoned that she took away his gate key to the family home and, he claims, discouraged Elizabeth from speaking to her half-brother. “I was shell-shocked,” he says. “It was so much to process.”
In September 2024, Alexander visited their West Midlands home. As he was coming up the drive, he was met by Fiennes. His stepfather was on crutches and winded by the journey down the driveway. However, supported by Alexander, Fiennes insisted that they keep walking back towards Alexander’s car. “He wanted to get me out of earshot of the house,” Alexander says.
Fiennes turned to his stepson and hugged him. “He was wearing the Berghaus fleece I’d brought him for his birthday,” says Alexander, still rattled by the memory. “It felt like he was saying goodbye. He told me: ‘I’m proud of you’.”
Alexander helped Fiennes walk back up the driveway, but turned around at the front door when he saw his mother appear. He watched as his mother and a farmhand helped Fiennes, who was exhausted and almost on his knees, climb the stairs to his bedroom.
It was the last time Alexander saw his stepfather. He has not returned to the farm. “It’s got bad memories for me. I won’t go back,” he says. “Every time I think about it, I get a storm of butterflies in my stomach.”
Devising a plan
Meanwhile, with no new information, Fiennes’ friends began to worry. “When Ran first stepped back in autumn 2024, Louise and I had long, revealing conversations,” one told me. “She was worried, and I tried to support her. But then, nothing.” Letters wishing him well were sent back, and Christmas cards were returned, unopened. As the Northern Hemisphere spring of 2025 arrived, email chains and WhatsApp groups of concerned friends started to buzz. How was Ran doing? Where was he? Could he be reached?
Bowring decided to make King Charles aware of the situation surrounding his old friend. On February 27, 2025, Bowring was phoned by one of His Majesty’s staff, who suggested the King was concerned for Fiennes and wished to write to him. Bowring informed the equerry that all contact would have to be through Louise, and handed over her number.
“I know with absolute certainty that Ran would have been thrilled to have received the King’s letter,” Bowring says. “It would have been a wonderful boost to his morale.” Later that day, though, Bowring received a stream of texts from Louise. The final one read: “I’m contacting a solicitor and the police if you continue this! That was utterly inappropriate… You are causing [Ran] immense distress! Back off !!!” Those were the final messages Bowring received from her. He has not seen one of his oldest friends since late 2024.
Just before mid-2025, Fiennes’ circle had a breakthrough. One of his friends had taken to phoning London hospitals in the hope they might have admitted someone matching his description. A receptionist at one confirmed he had recently been a patient, and had been staying at a succession of London care homes under a false name. Now, they had an alias and a rough location. Members of the Fiennes family immediately began searching.
It turned out that Fiennes was staying at a care home called KYN Hurlingham in Fulham. Housed in a Grade II-listed building, it sits opposite the Hurlingham Club. It is one of a small chain of boutique care homes in Southeast England – the most basic package of care it advertises is more than £4000 ($9300) a week. Plans were set in motion to try to contact Fiennes. One of his friends went to KYN Hurlingham on an open day and spotted him there, confirming his location. Several of his old SAS muckers were more hot-headed, and they plotted to bust him out under the cover of night. But the plan was abandoned when the feasibility of kidnapping an octogenarian safely – not to mention legally – was considered.
Bowring was informed of Fiennes’ location when an anonymous envelope was posted through his door. Inside the envelope was a photo page torn from one of Fiennes’ books about the Transglobe Expedition. On the page was written a message: “Try around SW6 2FE Fulham area”, which is the address of the Sands End Health clinic. KYN Hurlingham is nearby.
He took to haunting the home, sitting for hours in his car, hoping to spot Fiennes. They had spent decades together organising expeditions, on lecture tours and on family holidays. Fiennes’ absence was like a bereavement. “I got very angry one time,” he says, his voice shaking with emotion at the memory. “I’m not proud of it, but I marched up to the front desk, and I shouted at them: ‘I know you’re hiding him, you b******s’.”
With Bowring and Louise at loggerheads, members of the Fiennes family got in touch with her to see under what circumstances she would permit a visit to Fiennes. At her behest, they devised a plan – a solicitor would draw up a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which all those who wished to visit Fiennes would have to sign. It states that those who signed agreed not to reveal Fiennes’ location, his “physical and mental wellbeing” or details of his healthcare. No justification was given for the necessity of the NDA. A fixation on privacy had been a feature of his marriage to Louise, I was told. This went as far as keeping the location of their home private. Greenlands, by contrast, had even featured in TV programmes.
One person who signed it, and had known Fiennes since he was a schoolboy, told me they thought that such secrecy was “crazy”. The NDA, they said, “[was] extremely unnecessary and very sad for all his friends. That someone who has given happiness to so many people should find themselves like that – it’s not fair”.
Behind the action-man image, they said: “Somehow, [Fiennes is] very vulnerable… He’s inspired people to protect and look after him as much as we can.”
One person who refused to sign, though, was McIntyre-Brown. “I thought: ‘Why the f*** should I sign an NDA, anyway? I’m his bloody sister-in-law. I’m not going to sign an NDA,” she told me.
Instead, she came up with another idea. She would travel from Eastern Europe and check herself into the home in the hope of making contact with Fiennes. On her first morning, July 4, 2025, just after breakfast, she managed to do just that.
“He was lucid – personality intact, memory clear, sense of humour there,” she recalls of their conversation. “His self-awareness was keen. He knew he was fine in the mornings, but increasingly foggy in the afternoons and evenings.” Fiennes, she says, also told her that he wanted to see his friends, with Bowring being his first priority.
But McIntyre-Brown wasn’t to see Fiennes again. Later that day, she had a meeting with KYN Hurlingham’s then-manager and safeguarding lead.
“He came to my room to say that they knew I had been talking to Ran and knew my relationship with him. ‘I have a duty to inform Louise,’ [he said],” she recalls. The following day, when McIntyre-Brown asked to see Fiennes, she was told by the receptionist that he was no longer a resident. A few days later, she was asked to leave the home, as she says they claimed there was a shortage of beds. In total, McIntyre-Brown stayed at KYN Hurlingham for more than a week.
Shortly after McIntyre-Brown’s visit, one of Fiennes’ friends sent a letter to KYN’s management team, questioning the strict conditions of his stay. “To separate a person from their closest friends is a harsh punishment,” it stated. “I don’t begin to know how you might navigate this problematic issue, but I hope something can be done so that Ran can be allowed to see his dearest friends soon, while he still has the capacity.”
For several weeks, the letter received no response. But on August 27, KYN’s managing director wrote back. “It would not be appropriate for a care home to respond to a member of the public regarding whether an individual has been, or is currently, in residence,” their reply ran. “We are committed to delivering the highest standards of care in accordance with CQC [Care Quality Commission] regulations… The happiness and dignity of those in our care remains our utmost priority.”
One afternoon recently, I visited KYN Hurlingham with Alexander. It was a hot, bright day and the plane trees lining the street cast shoaling shadows on the pavements. Peacocks from the nearby park were crying occasionally. We passed under the crenellated entranceway into the cool, calmly lit lobby. The carpet was thick and soft, muting the rumble of cars outside.
Alexander told the receptionist that we were here to see Ranulph Fiennes, but he used the alias, while holding up a recent photo of him. She stiffened: “There’s no one here of that name,” she replied almost instantly. “Hold on. I’ll get the manager.” We were offered a glass of water and told to take a seat. A few minutes later, the manager arrived. “I’d like to see Ran Fiennes, my stepfather. I haven’t seen him for a while, and I want to check he’s okay,” Alexander said.
“There isn’t anyone living here under those names right now,” the manager replied. “And unfortunately, I can’t tell you whether they have or haven’t been living here – patient confidentiality.”
When challenged that Fiennes was known to have been at KYN Hurlingham last year, he answered that he was new to the home and we should contact the previous manager, but he was unable to provide contact details. If we had concerns about a resident’s wellbeing, we should contact social services, he said. The conversation continued in this vein – polite, circular, fruitless – until, defeated, Alexander turned and left. Afterwards, in a nearby cafe, he crumpled. He was no closer to finding out the whereabouts of his stepfather.
The trail goes cold
In early September 2026, the search for Fiennes took another turn. During the time I’d been speaking to Fiennes’ friends and family about his situation, I had been introduced to a man named Michael Kobold. He is a German watch entrepreneur, based in Switzerland. He and Fiennes were close in the early 2000s; Kobold collaborated on several of Fiennes’ books, and he accompanied Fiennes on a number of his climbing expeditions.
Kobold is a divisive figure among Fiennes’ inner circle. “Mike’s a maverick… I like him, but he can be a loose cannon,” I’d been told.
When he heard about Fiennes’ situation in April 2025, Kobold began pushing for action. He wrote a letter to the King, which he attempted to have delivered via a mutual contact. He also wrote to the Office of the Public Guardian, a government body set up to protect those who lack the mental capacity to make their own decisions and which investigates reports of abuse and coercive control by those granted lasting power of attorney (LPA).
“We cannot investigate the matters you raised,” their reply of May 23 ran. The office informed him it could not take further action because Louise Fiennes had been granted LPAs on November 15 and 18, 2024 – before Fiennes was checked into KYN Hurlingham.
On September 1, Kobold messaged me a screenshot from his social media. It showed Fiennes holding an elephant foot. The image came from an anti-poaching campaign Fiennes had fronted. “The elephant in the room… Why have I gone missing for the past 2 years?” a speech bubble emerging from Fiennes’ mouth asked.
In the hours afterwards, he followed it up with a post on his website that concluded: “The chances of success are very slim… My friend of almost 30 years has gone missing, and nobody besides a tiny handful of individuals seems to want to do anything about it.” The post was captioned: “Where in the world is Ranulph Fiennes?”
It is almost certain he is no longer at KYN Hurlingham. A short while after I visited with Alexander, I went back to the home alone. I sat outside, watching the elaborate choreography of ambulances, branded taxis and expensive cars entering and leaving the estate. Several residents came and went. Hats and dark glasses were the order of the day – privacy, clearly, was taken seriously. Still, I managed to speak to several nurses as they left at the end of their shifts. I showed them a recent photo of Fiennes so there could be no mistake.
The first two were wary and spoke only briefly. “Nah, he’s not here,” one told me. “I can’t remember that face… We get quite a few gentlemen who live here like that,” the other said.
After a few hours, though, I managed to speak to another member of staff. She confirmed Fiennes had been a resident. She also said all communications had been routed via his wife and, since late last year, his only visitors had been his wife and daughter, Elizabeth. Finally, she told me: “He’s not here any more. He left over two months ago. His wife gave no indication where he was being taken.”
The Telegraph has tried several times to approach Louise Fiennes for comment, both directly and via intermediary sources. To date, there has been no reply.
‘He’s a survivor’
What does Fiennes feel about this? Some told me they hoped he was unaware of his circumstances, unable to grieve the apparent loss of his closest friends. “The most awful thing would be if he felt that we’d all abandoned him,” one said. “That he’d been betrayed.”
In interviews throughout the years, Fiennes has liked to play the unfeeling He-Man. Asked why he pushed himself to such extremes, he would growl some variation that expeditions were his job – he was just in it for the money, and pain was the currency of his livelihood.
“I always thought he was somewhat of a thwarted warrior,” says his cousin, artist Susannah Fiennes. “People like Churchill, Wellington, they become leaders when the right war comes along. Ran didn’t have that. His life, therefore, has been about finding other ways to test himself. In some ways, he’s the opposite of Hamlet. ‘To be or not to be.’ It’s all about introspection, reflection and emotion. You can’t have that when you have to make a split-second decision whether to jump over an ice floe or not.”
But true endurance requires deep emotional subtlety, too. It takes an enormous effort of self-understanding – a discipline of will – to push through suffering again and again. Reading Fiennes’ work, and talking to those who love him, it’s clear that he is a man of sharp emotional acuity.
“Ran’s a survivor,” Bowring told me one of the last times we met. “I often think of his SAS training – his ability to hunker down into himself, to retreat inwards. I just hope the old boy is safe, and he’s happy.”
He didn’t need to add: “Wherever in the world my friend may be.”
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