I was in Pratt’s Club one evening recently and sat next to Patrick Leigh Fermor. Talk came round to the subject of autobiographies, and I told him I had written a large part of mine some few years ago but then, self-doubting, had put it away in my safe pending further thought. Only four people had read it, and of those the only ‘ outsider’ was an old friend who had been the chief editor at a large London publishing firm. Her view was one of general approval of what I had written, with one proviso – she felt that my life, at least as I had depicted it, was a little too ‘exemplary’ to attract attention these days.

When I told him this, Paddy looked at me with a quizzical scrutiny. ‘Surely you must have committed some sins?’

‘ Of course,’ I replied, ‘but these are all ordinary sins, which only just come into that category now. No one is interested in reading about them. The trouble is, I have not committed any of the fashionable sins, such as murder, burglary, buggery, sodomy, child abuse, gang rape, necrophilia—’

He interrupted firmly: ‘Have you ever committed simony?’

‘ Um – er – what’s that?’ I asked.

He lowered his voice, his eyes globular with tidings. ‘Church bribery,’ he said.

This closed the conversation for a while, but after another glass of wine he returned to the subject.

‘ When I get back to Greece I’ll send you a letter listing all the sins I think you might have committed.’

‘ Fair enough,’ I said, ‘but put it in a brown envelope, won’t you.’

‘ Of course,’ he agreed. He finished his wine. ‘But I shall print SINS on the corner.’

I have waited hopefully, but so far have heard nothing. Perhaps he has forgotten. (Of course he is always the despair of his publisher for writing his books so slowly.) Or perhaps it was all the fantasy of a jolly evening.

Anyway, this tells the reader what to expect.
‘May it please Your Lordship …’