Portrait of the Spy as a Young Man

by Edward Wilson

Genres: Spy Thrillers; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

A thrilling spy novel by a former special forces officer who is 'poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré'

'The thinking person's John le Carré' Tribune

'Edward Wilson seems poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' Irish Independent

'More George Smiley than James Bond, Catesby will delight those readers looking for less blood and more intelligence in their spy thrillers' Publishers Weekly

1941: a teenage William Catesby leaves Cambridge to join the army and support the war effort. Parachuted into Occupied France as an SOE officer, he witnesses tragedies and remarkable feats of bravery during the French Resistance.

2014: now in his nineties, Catesby recounts his life to his granddaughter for the first time. Their interviews weave together the historical, the personal and the emotional, skipping across different decades and continents to reveal a complex and conflicted man.

Catesby's incredible story recounts a life of spying and the trauma of war, but also lost love, yearning, and hope for the future.

Praise for Edward Wilson:

'Stylistically sophisticated . . . Wilson knows how to hold the reader's attention' W.G. Sebald

'A reader is really privileged to come across something like this' Alan Sillitoe

'All too often, amid the glitzy gadgetry of the spy thriller, all the fast cars and sexual adventures, we lose sight of the essential seriousness of what is at stake. John le Carré reminds us, often, and so does Edward Wilson' Independent

Release date: October 15, 2020

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 265

Sample

It was turning into the worst of all nightmares. As soon as the flow of disembarked passengers ground to halt, William Catesby knew there was trouble ahead – and, when he saw the blue berets, he realised they were in serious danger. The milice française, despite their smart new uniforms – blue berets and jackets, brown shirts and boots with gaiters – were not the sharpest of cops, but they made up for stupidity with brutality. They were recruited from prisons and the ranks of unsuccessful petty criminals. Joining the milice meant you were exempt from being deported to work in Germany and had plenty of non-rationed food. The most frightening thing was that these ex-criminals had the power to arrest and torture.

Catesby and the new wireless operator, a Frenchwoman recently infiltrated by RAF Lysander, had excellent fake identity cards and supporting documents. He was worried, but hoped they could bluff their way past a milice cretin. Stay calm and you can do it. Then Catesby’s heart sank. Oh, shit! There were other uniforms at the end of the train platform – and they weren’t wearing gaiters and blue trousers, but polished jackboots and a black diamond patch emblazoned with SD on the lower left arm of their field grey tunics. Sicherheitsdienst. The radio transmitter that Catesby was carrying was disguised by a brown leather case to look like an ordinary piece of luggage. The problem was its weight. It was bloody heavy – more than twenty kilos, which made pretending it was an ordinary travel bag difficult. But that problem no longer mattered. Catesby and his radio operator were about to be arrested and tortured.

He wished he had put his cyanide pill in his jacket pocket. He feared that he would break under questioning. Many stronger agents did. Catesby made a quick mental inventory of those who would be arrested if he broke. If, however, he managed to resist for a day or two, they might be warned and have a chance to go into hiding. But what weighed on him most was the secret that had been entrusted to him during his brief visit to London. Why oh why had the major briefing him at SOE HQ confided such a sensitive and important secret? And to him, Catesby, a mere underling in the scheme of things? The major suggested he needed to know about it to better appreciate the role of the Resistance in the coming months. Or was the major just showing off? The fact that the allied invasion of Europe would take place between June and September 1943 at the Pas-de-Calais was a secret that Catesby would gladly excise from his brain if he had a drill and scalpel. If the Gestapo tortured it out of him, they would have extracted a crown jewel.

Catesby cursed himself for having volunteered for Special Operations Executive – an ordinary death on the battlefield would have been quicker for him and less costly for the allies. An SOE death meant horrific torture – followed by years in a concentration camp and eventual execution. He then made up his mind. It would be his last act of decency before breaking under torture. Catesby whispered to his companion without looking at her. ‘Pretend you don’t know me. Move forward now. I will lag behind. You must get out of the station before they search me.’

She ignored him and said, ‘Put the transmitter on top of your head.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t argue. Do as I say and do it now!’

The new radio operator, who looked about forty, was old enough to be Catesby’s mother – and radiated both sensuality and authority. She was stunningly beautiful with expensively coiffured blond hair. Something in Catesby instinctually obeyed and he hefted the radio on to his head. It was, actually, a lot easier carrying the heavy lump of coils, batteries and accessories this way than by his side. For a second he gave a grim smile at how silly he must look.

Meanwhile, the wireless operator was shouting her head off in fluent German. ‘Schnell! We have a captured terrorist radio transmitter and need to get to Abwehr HQ immediately.’

Catesby had to run to keep up with her as she hurtled towards the German security police with an angry frown. The NCO in charge bore a confused look on his face. One of the milice, who obviously didn’t understand German, seemed to be asking what was going on. The German NCO gestured him away and addressed Catesby’s companion. ‘How can I help? My superiors told me nothing about this.’

‘They said there would be a car waiting. We’re already late – and this transmitter has an encryption device that urgently needs decoding. Where is that fucking car you promised?’

The NCO was clearly intimidated.

‘Who is your immediate superior?’ shouted the woman.

The NCO whispered the name of a Gestapo junior officer.

‘I know that name. Captain Barbie mentioned him to me when he said he was arranging a car.’

The NCO visibly shook at the mention of the name Barbie. ‘I think it best,’ he said, ‘that you take our car to avoid further delay.’

The woman nodded her head in exasperation. ‘Yes, that would be a good idea.’

The NCO summoned a tall languid soldier who wore ordinary Wehrmacht field grey without a Sicherheitsdienst badge. ‘Take these people to Abwehr HQ immediately. Drive as quickly as possible.’

Catesby and his companion followed the soldier out of Limoges station on to the forecourt. The car, a requisitioned Citroën Traction Avant – the wheeled booty most prized by the German occupiers – was gleaming in the drizzle. The driver opened a rear door and gave a perfunctory heel click as Catesby and the female wireless operator, who was still angry and demanding, settled themselves on to the back seat.

The driver seemed to know his way around Limoges and headed off to where, Catesby assumed, the Abwehr HQ was located. He wondered what they were going to do next and knew that his companion was thinking the same thing. She leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.

‘Can you turn left at the next street?’

‘But, gnädige Frau, that isn’t the way to the Abwehr.’

‘The cryptologist we are meeting works directly for the Sicherheitsdienst. He is not a member of the Abwehr – I am sure you realise there are issues…’

‘I have heard rumours.’

‘Then keep those rumours to yourself – as well as the location to which you are taking us.’

The driver nodded and Catesby smiled. The rivalry and bad blood between the Abwehr intelligence service and the German security services were well known – and played upon by SOE and the Resistance.

Even though the woman hardly knew Limoges, she gave the impression of being a born native as she guided the driver through a bewildering haze of backstreets. They finally arrived at a cul de sac which stank of drains and rotting rubbish.

‘We’re here,’ she said. ‘Will you need any help backing out?’

‘No.’

The woman leaned forward and put her left hand on the driver’s shoulder. ‘You’ve been magnificent. Thank you for your help – and remember this is our secret.’

The driver blushed. ‘At your service, gnädige Frau.’

‘You should call me madame. I am French.’ The woman leaned further forward as if she were going to give the German soldier a collaborator’s kiss. The soldier’s blushing smile turned into an agonised grimace as the downward thrust of the knife cut deep through his chest into the aorta. As soon as Catesby saw what was happening, he put his hand over the driver’s mouth to muffle his ear-splitting scream. They waited half a minute until the driver had stopped twitching.

‘That might have been a mistake,’ said the woman. ‘And he looked like such an innocent boy.’ She paused. ‘Oh god! Our hands are covered in blood.’

The women pulled up her skirt. ‘Here, wipe your hands on my slip.’

As Catesby wiped his hands on the thin white fabric and sensed her tense thighs beneath, he experienced a totally inappropriate frisson – and immediately felt ashamed. When the woman finished wiping her own hands, she pulled her skirt down again.

‘I didn’t want to ditch the radio,’ she said. ‘They are gold dust.’

‘Then we need to get to a safe house quickly.’

The woman shook her head. ‘I think our best chance of getting away with the transmitter is to use the car. Can you drive?’

‘Yeah, but I think it’s a bad idea.’

‘We haven’t time to argue,’ said the woman. ‘You worked with Guingouin’s Maquis, so you know the countryside around here. Find us a hiding place.’

‘Okay, I’ll find a place to ditch the car and hide the radio. You go to a safe house and, if I succeed, we’ll rendezvous later.’

‘No, I’m staying with you.’

‘Another bad idea.’ Catesby got out of the car and began to push the body of the dead soldier into the footwell of the passenger seat.

‘Let me help.’

‘Help me get his tunic off. In fact, I’d better wear it.’

‘Undressing dead bodies,’ she said, ‘is never easy.’

They finally got the tunic off and, although the sleeves were too long, it wasn’t a bad fit. Catesby buttoned it up to the neck.’

‘The bloodstain is awful.’

Catesby nodded at the dead man. ‘If anyone asks, I’ll say he vomited over me as we got him in the car. He’s not dead, he’s passed out drunk. You sit in the back and pretend you’re an important guest of the Sicherheitsdienst. Shit, this is dangerous. Maybe we should run for it on foot.’

‘It’s too late.’ The woman nodded at an urchin of ten who was staring at them from behind a dustbin.

Catesby got out of the car, went over to the boy and leaned down. ‘Are you a brave lad?’

The boy nodded.

‘Have you heard of the Resistance?’

‘Yes.’

‘We love France. Do you love France?’

‘Yes – very much!’

‘You are now a member of the Resistance too. You must swear that you will never tell anyone what you have just seen.’

‘I swear.’

The boy saluted and Catesby saluted back, ‘Adieu, mon brave partisan.’

The boy held his salute as they drove away.

‘I suppose,’ said Catesby, ‘you thought that was pretty corny.’

‘I’m only thinking about what to do next. It won’t be long before they discover they were tricked.’

‘We need to get out of Limoges as quickly as possible and then keep off the main roads. The most dangerous bit will be crossing the Vienne.’ Catesby leaned over the dead soldier’s body.

‘What are you doing?’

Catesby found a Wehrmacht half cap on the car floor and put it on his head. ‘I need to look the part.’

Motor vehicles were rare on the roads of Limoges. Traffic consisted of bicycles, pedestrians, handcarts, horse drawn carriages and a few gazogènes, petrol vehicles converted to run on gas. Catesby was impressed by how many rude gestures he attracted in his Wehrmacht uniform – as well as a few shouts of Ta soeur! – the short version of ‘your sister is a whore’. And once a teenage girl threw a stone at the rear window next to where Catesby’s companion was seated. The girl shouted putain, whore, assuming the wireless operator was someone sleeping with a German officer, before disappearing behind a crowd queuing for rations. Opinion was turning against the occupiers, but, as the public mood changed, the crackdowns became more severe.

Catesby’s original plan was to drive along the river looking for a bridge crossing that didn’t have a checkpoint. He soon realised that was a stupid idea – and began to panic when he saw the barbed wire barricades which forced traffic back into the town centre. A pair of gendarmes gave him a hard stare as he drove past. Perhaps, he thought, it was the custom of the Germans to stop and have a chat.

‘What’s happening?’

‘The bridges are too guarded. I think we need to follow the N141 towards Oradour-sur-Glane.’

Soon there were fewer and fewer buildings and they were in an open countryside of low hills. Catesby felt tenser than ever. He was going in the opposite direction from where the Maquis had a network of sympathetic villages and contacts.

‘Fuck,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘There’s a checkpoint up ahead.’

Catesby put one hand on the wheel so that he could reach over to the dead soldier. He nearly lost control and went off the road.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m trying to get his gun.’

‘Leave it – don’t stop and keep driving.’

‘Okay.’

As Catesby drove past, the gendarmes didn’t even look up. They were checking a pair of bicycles with heavily packed trailers.

‘It’s a black-market road check,’ said the woman.

‘Bastards.’ The gendarmes didn’t arrest the black marketers, they fleeced them instead. If anything, the occupiers and the collabos encouraged rather than restrained black market. The occupation stank of corruption.

A few minutes of calm followed before Catesby looked in the car’s rear-view mirror. They were being followed by a blue gendarmerie van.

‘What’s wrong now?’

‘Look behind us.’

‘Maybe it’s just a coincidence.’

‘We’ll see.’ Catesby abruptly turned the Citroën Avant off the main road. A moment later, the gendarmerie van followed.

‘I wish,’ said Catesby, ‘that we had a couple of Sten guns.’

‘This car’s a lot faster than their TUB van. Step on it.’

The next ten minutes were as exhilarating as they were frightening. They finally shook off the van somewhere around Les Conces, but their cover was blown. Catesby drove as fast as he could. He wanted to get to a farm near Cussac where he hoped they could stash the car. He eventually found the rough track that rose steeply up a wooded ravine. He stopped to remove a pile of brush which concealed the track leading to the abandoned farm. The woman helped. As soon as the brush was back in position, Catesby laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘I’d better take this off. I don’t want to be shot by a Maquisard.’ Catesby removed the Wehrmacht tunic and draped it over the dead German.

They drove another four hundred yards to a ramshackle stone building which looked as if it had been long abandoned. Catesby got out of the car and walked over to the barn door. He tried the latch, but it wouldn’t budge. The door was locked.

‘Get a tool from the car,’ said the woman, ‘and break it open. Once we’ve hidden the car, we can find the Maquis on foot.’

Just then someone whistled from the wood line.

‘They’ve followed us,’ said Catesby. ‘The gendarmes must have radioed for help.’

‘Let’s go.’ The woman took off her shoes and started running across the damp grass. But it was too late. A figure in uniform carrying a submachine gun emerged from the trees – followed by another also carrying a gun.

Catesby realised they were well and truly fucked. But if they were lucky, the body of the dead German might provoke a summary execution without torture. As Catesby raised his hands he realised that the uniforms – leather jackets, green trousers and boots – were not those of any Vichy militia, but those of Georges Guingouin’s Limousin Maquis. They were carrying British Stens.

‘Don’t move,’ shouted the Maquisard in front, ‘or you die.’

‘I’m on your side,’ said Catesby. ‘I was with Lo Grand in Saint-Gilles-les-Forêts.’

There was a silence as the two Maquisards conferred in whispers.

‘If you want more proof,’ said Catesby, ‘you can find a dead German in the car.’

The two fighters came forward. The lead one said, ‘What’s your name?’

Catesby answered with his codename, ‘Jacques Dubois.’

The other Maquisard said to his mate, ‘He’s one of the Englishmen who parachuted in just before we blew up the viaduct.’

The first one glanced at the woman and turned to Catesby, ‘And who’s your friend?’

‘I have my own tongue,’ said the woman. ‘My name is Marie and I am a wireless operator. You can find my radio in the car with a German soldier I killed earlier today.’

The second Maquisard went over to the car and opened the front passenger door. ‘Look. They really have brought a dead boche with them.’

The other Maquis shouldered his Sten and said, ‘There isn’t any room in the barn to hide the car. It’s packed with explosives and food. There have been a lot of parachute drops recently.’

The two Maquisards conferred in Lemosin dialect. Catesby only picked up a few words.

The first Maquisard shifted back into standard French. ‘We’ll take over now and my comrade will do the driving.’

Three of them crammed into the back seat. There was little conversation as they set off. The convention was to be tight-lipped, not out of unfriendliness, but for security reasons. They addressed each other by codenames and never provided clues about places or operations. If someone was captured and broke under torture, they could only provide codenames and nothing that would connect to other people or places. No one wanted to know Catesby’s job or where the woman was from or how she ended up killing a German and stealing a Sicherheitsdienst car – but there was a body that needed to be disposed of. The car finally stopped near a steep gully. They dragged the young German out of the car and heaved him to his final resting place where he would be food for carrion, flies, beetles and mites. The Maquisards drove on and dropped Catesby and Marie off at a safe house in Sussac.

The safe house was a grocery shop. The owners were part of a vast army of légaux, legals. The légaux helped the Resistance, but lived openly in the community and didn’t take a direct part in fighting or sabotage. Being a ‘legal’ could be more dangerous than being a guerrilla fighter. You hadn’t a place to hide; you were out in the open waiting to be rounded up.

After a late supper of bread, cheese and wine, Catesby wrapped himself in a blanket and curled up in a storeroom amid tins of beans, tomatoes and fish paste as there was only one spare bed. Just as he began to doze off, he felt a hand on his thigh. Catesby would never know her exact age or much else about her. She normally kept herself a mystery, but there were no secrets about what she wanted in the bedroom. For decades afterwards Catesby would remember that evening as the most erotic experience he had ever had. The image of the woman’s bloodstained slip – as she peeled it off and revealed her legs – haunted and excited him for the rest of his days.

Catesby picked up the cat, who preferred lying on his keyboard to the softest and warmest cushion, and put him on the floor. The cat then jumped on to Catesby’s lap. The purring translated as: We’re playing a game, aren’t we? And isn’t it fun? The cat leapt back on to the keyboard, churning the opening paragraph of Catesby’s war memoir into chaos. Fair enough. War was chaos.

Catesby didn’t want to write about his war experiences. He was only trying to do so because his granddaughter, a history lecturer at a London university, had asked him to – but it was a story so full of contradictions, stupid risk-taking and unbelievable situations that no one would understand it. Except those who had been there – and only a few were left. Catesby was vain enough to be flattered by attention, but hated it when anyone called him a hero. He had known real heroes – and he wasn’t one of them. The bravest, of course, had been the women. The faces of the dead ones had never withered and were still alive and young in his mind’s eye. F Section SOE had sent thirty-nine women into occupied France. Fourteen of them had died. Twelve had been tortured and executed.

The cat finally tired of the keyboard game. He jumped on to the floor and a second later Catesby heard the noise of the cat flap. ‘Leave the birds alone, you murdering bastard.’ Catesby shoved the keyboard aside and picked up a copy of a French magazine that he had delivered once a week. After reading less than a page, he went back to his favourite daytime activity: drinking tea and staring out of the studio window at the garden. No birds, just dappled sunlight and mole hills, for the cat was walking hunch-shouldered across the lawn like an enforcer thug on the docks of Marseille. Then, suddenly, he took off running towards the hedge. Basic fieldcraft – like pigeons leaving their roosts or cows mooing – a stranger was approaching. And silently too, for lawns always muffle footfall. He heard the door opening and then her voice: ‘Hello, Granddad.’

It was Leanna, the only daughter of his stepson Peter and his late African wife. Leanna was six feet tall and had given up a career as a professional athlete to become an academic. She had also turned down offers to be a model.

‘The best thing,’ said Catesby without turning around, ‘was the ambush.’

‘You began to mention it before, but then you stopped.’

‘Killing them is always better than them killing us. Does that sound harsh?’

‘Not at all.’

‘It all happened so quickly. On reflection, we should have stayed in place and waited for the relief column – and then machine-gunned them too, and the survivors of the ambush who had crawled beneath their vehicles. We had just had a big supply drop of Brens to blast them with – so much more lethal than the Stens. Then we could have disappeared into the hills. If the Bushell girl had been with us, that’s what she would have demanded.’

‘Who was she?’

‘Don’t you know? Violette. She had been married to a Foreign Legionnaire named Szabo who got killed in North Africa. She was a fantastic shot, the best in SOE, but spoke French with a South London accent that stood out and…’ Catesby stared out the window and went silent.

‘Yes.’

‘Nothing.’ He turned to face his granddaughter and smiled. ‘Why are you so good and so beautiful?’

‘I’m pleased that you think so, but not everyone shares your opinion.’

‘Where was I?’ said Catesby. ‘My mind is turning into a butterfly.’

‘You were telling me about an ambush and Bren guns – and how you disappeared into the hills. You also mentioned Violette Szabo. I didn’t realise that you had known her. She’s famous. Haven’t you seen the film?’

‘I’ve never seen the film – or any film about the Resistance. And I’ve never read a book about it either.’

‘I can understand why.’

‘But there was passion, excitement and fun too. Nothing like the repetitive humdrum of ordinary life – and losing that exhilaration, losing it forever, is just as bad, maybe worse, than friends dying.’ Catesby shook his head. ‘I’m talking bullshit nonsense again. There was also boredom – long endless periods of soul-destroying boredom.’

‘Perhaps, Granddad, it would be better if you just talked to me. I could record or take shorthand notes. Your brain is a repository of unrecorded history. We mustn’t lose it.’

‘The things I remember most vividly are the personal – the historical facts can go hang.’

‘Can I make you another cup of tea?’

‘Don’t treat me like an invalid.’

‘How about if I put some brandy in it?’

‘You know how to twist my arm. Make sure it’s not the good stuff, but the cooking brandy. And make one for yourself too.’

‘You once told me that Henry Bone only used twenty-five-year-old VSOP.’

‘You should have interviewed him. Henry knew where all the bodies were buried and put many of them there himself.’

Henry Bone was an enigma that no one ever solved. He was a typical English gentleman in looks and speech – but one who had been a close confidant of Blunt, Philby and the rest of the Moscow gang. No one would ever know the truth about Henry. Had he protected the traitors, or had he exposed them? Henry Bone wore his supercilious smile like a coat of armour.

‘Did you ever meet him during the war?’

‘Oddly enough, I did. The first time was at the Café Royal in 1942. Henry was with Anthony Blunt. They were sitting at a marble-topped table drinking absinthe – the Café Royal was the only place in London where you could get absinthe during the war. Absinthe is quite a palaver. I remember an elaborate silver device in the shape of a nude woman dripping ice-cold water through a block of French sugar on to a perforated absinthe spoon balanced over the glass of absinthe itself. Years later, Henry showed me his collection of absinthe spoons – an excellent birthday present for someone who has everything. The slow drip of ice water causes the absinthe to “bloom” thus releasing its aromas and flavours. The process is called “louching” – from where we get the word louche. As those who indulged in too much absinthe inevitably became.’

‘I love your attention to detail.’

‘It’s part of the art of spycraft, my career, you know. Why are you looking at me in that tone of voice?’

‘Granddad, how did you, a working-class boy from the docks of Lowestoft, end up in the Café Royal when you were barely out of your teens?’

‘I was still in my teens – just. The war was the best thing for social mobility that ever happened to England. I was still in training with the Suffolk Regiment when I met a fellow soldier called Ewan Phillips. He was a few years older than me and had already made a name for himself in the art world as a curator. Ewan was extremely nice and generous – and curious to know how a rough kid from Lowestoft spoke French and had been to Cambridge. Two suggestions for social mobility: get in a war and have a Belgian mother. The Bushell girl, Violette, was another example. Her mother was a French seamstress. Ewan and I both had Christmas leave and he invited me to spend a few days at his family home in North London, Crediton Hill. It was a large flat full of art and antiques. They didn’t have much money, but lots of style. There were bronze busts of Ewan’s parents by Jacob Epstein. The family exuded civilised values. They were the sort of people the Nazis wanted to destroy – and, yes, I would have given my life to defeat that monstrosity. I digress. During the visit, Ewan took me to the Royal because, as he said, “You ought to see this place at least once.” But he was pretty dismissive of it. He said it began to lose its magic in the mid-thirties and never recovered. But, I suppose, if you want to sip absinthe…’

‘Thanks for that tip, Granddad. I must never go there again. Oh god, I’ve forgotten the tea!’

Catesby stared out the window. The sweet memories could be as painful as the horrible ones.

There was a clink of cups and saucers as Leanna came back into the studio.

‘Oh dear, you’ve used the bone china, no problem – but I hope you didn’t use the good brandy.’

‘Nothing is too good for you, Granddad.’

‘There are those who would argue that.’

As she put the tea down, his granddaughter noted something Catesby had written on the French magazine. She read it out. “Et tout d’un coup… And all at once, the memory appears before me.” Are you getting back into Proust, Granddad?’

‘How clever you are for recognising the quote. No, Proust is getting back into me.’

‘Were you thinking of Violette Szabo?’

‘No, I was thinking of another woman. Her face and everything about her suddenly appeared.’

‘Did you love her?’

‘That’s a difficult question.’ Catesby smiled. ‘But don’t worry Granny about her. She was a lot older than me and would no longer be alive. Time and memory are funny things. People die, but passion never dies.’

It didn’t feel right being a student at Cambridge University with a war going on and other young men dying. When Catesby told his mother that he was going to turn down the offer of a place and volunteer for military service, she flew into a rage. Which made him even more determined to volunteer. But somehow Mr Bennett, who had been his form tutor at Denes Grammar, got wind of the rumour that Catesby was considering turning down his Cambridge place. The teacher turned up, unannounced, at the family home on a warm summer’s afternoon.

Catesby was surprised and embarrassed to see Mr Bennett standing in the doorway. It was unusual to see him not wearing his academic gown – which hid the fact that one of his arms was missing. Bennett had lost his arm at the end of the Great War – the same day, in fact, that Wilfrid Owen was killed. Bennett joked that it was a lucky escape. The lost limb not only saved his life, but spared the world his own posthumous poetry.

‘As it’s so warm,’ said Mr Bennett, ‘I’m in shirtsleeve.’

Catesby gave a half-smile to Bennett’s joke. Not all the stude. . .