My Uncle Oswald

Our second important donor in Berlin was Mr Thomas Mann. Yasmin reported that he was pleasant but uninspiring.

'Like his books,' I said.

'Then why did you choose him?'

'He's done some fine work. I think his name is going to live.'

My travelling liquid nitrogen suitcase now contained Puccini, Rachmaninov, Strauss, Freud, Einstein and Mann. So once again we went back to Cambridge with our precious cargo.

A. R. Woresley was ecstatic. He knew damn well we were on to something big now. All three of us were ecstatic, but I was in no mood to waste time yet with celebrations. 'While we're here,' I said, 'we'll polish off some of the English lads. We'll start tomorrow.'

Joseph Conrad was possibly the most important of these, so we took him first. Capel House, Orlestone, Kent was his address and we drove down there in mid-November. To be precise, it was November 16th, 1919. I have already said that I am not keen to give a detailed description of too many of our visits for fear of becoming repetitious. I will not break this rule again unless something juicy or amusing comes along. Our visit to Mr Conrad was neither juicy nor amusing. It was routine, although Yasmin did comment afterwards that he was one of the nicest men she had met so far.

From Kent we drove to Crowborough in Sussex where we nobbled Mr H. G. Wells. 'Not a bad sort of egg,' Yasmin said when she came out. 'Rather portly and pontificating but quite pleasant. It's an odd thing about great writers,' she added. 'They look so ordinary. There's nothing about them that gives you the slightest clue to their greatness, as there is with painters. A great painter somehow looks like a great painter. But the great writer usually looks like the wages clerk in a cheese factory.'

From Crowborough we drove on to Rottingdean, also in Sussex, to call on Mr Rudyard Kipling. 'Bristly little bugger,' was Yasmin's only comment on that one. Fifty straws from Kipling.

We were very much in the rhythm now and the next day in the same county of Sussex we picked off Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as easily as picking a cherry. Yasmin simply rang the doorbell and told the maid who answered it that she was from his publishers and had important papers to deliver to him. She was at once shown into his study.

'What did you think of Mr Sherlock Holmes?' I asked her.

'Nothing special,' she said. 'Just another writer with a thin pencil.'

'Wait,' I said. 'The next on the list is also a writer, but I doubt you'll find this one boring.'

'Who is he?'

'Mr Bernard Shaw.'

We had to drive through London to get to Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire where Shaw lived, and on the way I told Yasmin something about this smug literary clown. 'First of all,' I said, 'he's a rabid vegetarian. He eats only raw vegetables and fruit and cereal. So I doubt he'll accept the chocolate.'

'What do we do, give it to him in a carrot?'

'What about a radish?' I suggested.

'Will he eat it?'

'Probably not,' I said. 'So it had better be a grape. We'll get a good bunch of grapes in London and doctor one of them with the powder.'

'That'll work,' Yasmin said.

'It's got to work,' I said. 'This lad won't do it without the Beetle.'

'What's wrong with him?'

'Nobody quite knows.'

'Doesn't he practise the noble art?'

'No,' I said. 'He's not interested in sex. He appears to be a sort of capon.'

'Oh hell.'

'He's a lanky garrulous old capon with an overwhelming conceit.'

'Are you suggesting his machinery is out of order?' Yasmin asked.

'I'm not sure. He's sixty-three. He married at forty-two, a marriage of companionship and convenience. No sex.'