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writer, or person, but I had to face the fact that when a busy biographer has asked for three lines of fact he is unlikely to be pleased with a dozen or more pages of fiction.
    In the end I simply told him that his request had stimulated me to write a novel about my time at St Aidan’s; that I had always found it fatal to anticipate, either in talk or writing, scenes which I was planning to use in a book; and I added by way of bait, or sweetener to his tolerance, that this was the reason why I would prefer not to tell him about my regular Sunday teas with Molly until I’d got them down in their fictional form. I was a quick writer; as far as I knew nothing had been said in my hearing that could have any bearing on the relationship with Steen; and if it had, I was more likely to be able to recover it from the sediments of memory by letting it float to the surface as I wrote the novel than by deliberate attempts to dredge for it. Finally, to save him time I had put a double red line down the margin by the passage at the end which actually answered his question. This, I said, was an eye-witness account of an event that had really occurred.
    So I made my excuses, all reasonably true, but disingenuous. I could perfectly well have sent him an extra carbon of the last couple of pages. But I wanted to know that Dobbs had read with attention and enjoyment something that I had written. That mattered absurdly. So I was disappointed to get a brief note from his secretary saying that he was away for a couple of weeks and would respond on his return, as soon as pressure of work permitted. Equally I was astonished two days later to receive a long hand-written letter from Dobbs himself. He had a very precise hand in the italic style.
    Dear Rogers,
    Thank you very much for your screed. I wish there had been more of it. It would exactly have suited my need for light hospital reading which I can pretend is work. I am in here for some extremely disagreeable and please God unnecessary tests, which should take about a fortnight. This does not quite put paid to my hopes of getting the Steen book out for the centenary, but takes up precious slack.
    To get the so-called work out of the way first: my inclination is to quote in a slightly abbreviated form your description of MB pushing the girls back into the pond. As you say, it is true to at least two of her personae. But it all depends on what other material I find I have to fit in. There may even be something among her papers more suitable. If I decide to use your piece I will of course approach you formally for permission.
    I am now going to amuse myself by reciprocating in kind. You presented me with material I may or may not want for my book, insinuating your fantastic and imaginative world into my world of plodding facts. I am in a position to fling a few facts about St Aidan’s back at you. I hope they do not prove disruptive to the creative process.
    If they do, you may put it down to jealousy on my part. Do you realise that it would, on average, take me at least a month merely to gather and organise the material necessary to produce an equivalent amount of words to what you have sent me? You seem to have taken six days in all, about what I would spend in the process of getting the words on to the paper. So the gathering and organising took you no time at all. It wasn’t necessary. The stuff was there. Forgive me: almost all my work has been concerned with fundamentally intuitive artists, writers mutatis mutandis of your kind; and yet I know I can never hope to get fully ‘inside their skins’, or comprehend what it can be like to enjoy (or suffer) the processes by which their art is produced. Though I try not to let it show in my work I find this a matter of almost obsessional interest.
    Well, facts: in 1947 I taught for two terms at St Aidan’s. The school had by then, as you presumably know, moved back to the South East; not to Brighton but to a large Edwardian