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pretended to blow a trumpet. “That’s the bugle,” he said, “of the Bugle .” Percy was a cheerful boy.
    In the following week Harry took the 48 bus to Fleet Street. He had passed through it before, but he had never stopped here. He had never been here in earnest. Now he was struck by the pace, and the intensity, of this narrow valley between tall buildings. He found the offices of the Morning Chronicle easily enough; they were based in what seemed to be a new building of plate glass and Portland stone. In the lobby there was a constant stream of people coming in or going out. Harry announced himself to a woman standing behind a large desk and was directed to the office of the deputy editor on the fifth floor. Harry could sense the beating of his heart as he entered the lift. He felt faint. He made his way along a corridor. He glimpsed a large room where several middle-aged men were sitting hunched over their typewriters. Telephones were ringing. A small man in a brown suit was standing by the open door, his hands on his hips. “Where,” Harry asked him, “can I find the deputy editor?”
    “You have found him.” His glance was very sharp. “And who are you?”
    “Hanway, sir. Harry Hanway. I won the competition.”
    “Oh did you?” He was very carefully dressed, with a white handkerchief discreetly visible in the upper pocket of his jacket. His tie was tightly knotted, his cuffs crisp. He was short but he seemed to Harry to be plumped up and perky; he looked like a pigeon about to mate. “Well, young man, I havea cheque somewhere about me.” He was scrutinising him very carefully. “Where do you work?”
    “At the Camden Bugle .”
    “No! And how’s George?”
    “Sir?”
    “I started on the Bugle ! With George.”
    So the connection was made. The deputy editor, John Askew, was immediately impressed by this coincidence. What a tight little world, and a tight little city, this was! He asked Harry if he carried a union card. Harry did. George Bradwell had arranged the matter as soon as Harry had joined the staff of the Bugle . “What a chance this is,” Askew said, almost to himself. “It is too good.” He went into his office and telephoned Bradwell. Bradwell was of course reluctant to part with Harry, but he gladly acknowledged his skills as a reporter. He wanted Harry to succeed where he had failed.
    “Arranged, arranged,” Askew said as he joined Harry in the corridor. “Just a word with the editor.” He came back, twenty minutes later, singing “Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.” “You are in,” he said, almost casually. “Now where’s that cheque?”
    So in the spring of 1965, at the age of eighteen, Harry Hanway became a reporter for the Morning Chronicle .

III
    My life begins
    “ A T REGINA gravi iamdudum saucia cura .” In his small bedroom, Daniel Hanway was reading the opening of the fourth book of the Aeneid to himself. He repeated the words out loud, savouring the rhythm of the Virgilian dactylic hexameter. Dactylic hexameter. He was pleased that he knew the phrase. No one else in the street would know it. He assimilated his school books easily and readily. He was a natural scholar, and translated Latin with such rapidity that his companions looked at him with suspicion.
    Daniel preferred to stay in his room, despite the emptiness of the house. He did not enjoy the emptiness, and preferred the clutter of his books and papers. He kept the curtains closed. He did not like the view of the shabby street, in rain or in sunshine. In sunshine it seemed angular and obdurate, unyielding; it smelled of hot dust and dirt. In rain it seemed mournful and desolate, absorbent, encompassing. When he walked down this street, and the other streets of the council estate, he felt contempt and betrayal.
    He kept a diary in which he disclosed the feelings he could not otherwise have expressed. “Today I walked five miles. The further away I got from this place the happier I became. I could