"My father's great passion was golf" would surely in the mouth of another have had some tinge of irony.
In Trenchard's mild blue eyes irony was an incredible element.

I could fancy what he would have to say to the very gentlest of cynics; some of the sympathy I had felt for him during the afternoon had left me.
"He's very little short of an idiot," I thought.

"He's going to be dreadfully in the way." "I was the only child, you see," he continued.

"Of course I was a great deal to my mother and she to me.

We were always together.