Contents
Prologue: ‘Always wanted never to have anything known about me’
PART I BERLIN, LONDON AND DEVON 1922–39
1 ‘I love German poetry but I loathe the German language’
2 ‘Very much a slightly artistic place’
3 ‘My mother started worshipping it so I smashed it’
PART II THE PHONEY WAR AND THE REAL WAR 1939–45
7 ‘I used to always put secrets in. I still do’
11 ‘Living in a dump and going out to somewhere palatial’
PART III FRANCE, GREECE, FIRST MARRIAGE 1945–9
16 ‘Fed sweets by nuns on the coach to Galway’
PART IV FIRST RECOGNITION 1949–58
17 ‘My large room in Paddington!’
19 ‘Being able to see under the carpet’
21 ‘Lady Dashwood, sorry to have kicked you’
22 ‘A marvellous chase feeling’
23 ‘My ardour in the long pursuit’
24 ‘Idyllic, in a slightly maddening way’
25 ‘Mad on heat and running round, pissing all the time’
PART V AT THE MARLBOROUGH 1958–68
26 ‘Do you think I’m made of wood?’
28 ‘Actually it’s all I can do’
29 ‘People being monogamous seems to me an extraordinary and imaginative situation’
30 ‘He was rather nice and repulsive’
32 ‘The absolute cheek of making art’
33 ‘I can’t be pressed really’