Killing Rommel Read Online Free PDF Page B

grounds covered seven hundred acres. Stein was related to the Rothschilds on his father’s side; his mother was descended from Benjamin Disraeli’s niece. The family fortune came from wool. The Lederers, Stein’s mother’s family, owned mills at Bradford, Leeds and Bingley. Stein’s great-grandfather Hyman had pioneered the concept of the factory village. He provided housing, education, and medical care for his workers, of a standard surpassing anything of the time. His essay “On the Perfectibility of Human Nature” was required reading in my Natural Sciences course.
    In those days at Oxford, the social roost was ruled by an elect spawned of the wealthiest and most ancient families, who possessed or affected the following constellation of virtues: athletic prowess, especially if acquired without apparent effort; capacity for alcohol; reckless physical daring, particularly involving horses, heights or motor cars; contempt for all affairs of religion, politics or commerce; and a withering disdain for academia and academic achievement. The scions of this elite by no means despised Hitler; many applauded the Munich Pact of 1938. They viewed with scorn the “red” opponents of appeasement. In their eyes, Churchill was little better—an arch-conservative jingoist and warmonger.
    I hated these bastards. So did Stein. At Winchester he had been famous for abhorring the twentieth century. He refused to learn to drive. He believed in reincarnation. Asked what religion he followed, he answered, “Hindu.” He spoke and read French, German and Italian and could translate classical Greek and Latin as fast as he could read them. The more anti-Semitism he observed in government and in the press, however, the more he identified with his co-religionists and the more outspoken he became on their behalf. He penned letters to the editor; he wrote cheques to all sorts of causes. By the time I reached Oxford, Stein was reading six newspapers a day. I know because he sent me down to the newsagent to pick them up. Stein demonstrated with the Communists outside Parliament. He was arrested. In the late thirties, as I said, there was tremendous pro-German and pro–National Socialist feeling in England. Stein’s hair was too long, his dress too unkempt. He was “not the right sort.” Rumours began. Stein laughed them off, declaring that such calumnies were the same as those levelled against Socrates—inventing new gods and corrupting the young.
    Stein’s downfall came about because of an undergraduate I shall call B. (B., a fine rugby wing, became a Royal Marine and was killed piloting an assault craft at Gold Beach on D-Day, 6 June 1944.) B. fell in love with Stein. But he never told him. He confined his passion to entries in his private diary, no doubt terrified of the consequences should he dare act upon his impulses. Somehow B.’s father, a prominent solicitor, learnt of this. The next thing anyone knew, two police inspectors appeared at Stein’s door. Stein assumed that his offence was connected to his activities on behalf of refugee Jews.
    â€œIt’s the Amendment Act,” said the officers.
    This was a charge of “gross indecencies” and “solicitation of unnatural vice.” Stein was arrested for having seduced a boy he had never met. In the end, the charges were dropped for want of evidence. Not, however, before Stein had become notorious. In those days such a scandal might have been weathered by a tenured don; for a tutor it was fatal.
    Worse were the consequences for Stein’s novel. B.’s father, it seems, was not content with running Stein out of Oxford; he made it his business to finish him in the world of letters as well. At that time, there were only a handful of houses with the intrepidity to publish the type of novel Stein was writing; it was no chore for B.’s father to persuade them of the inadvisability of such a course.