Unfortunately, I am tone deaf, as near as makes no difference, so had to resist Arthur’s coaxing for me to join the group. They must have thought me very stuck up – but I wasn’t – just astonished and inarticulate.

During the Easter term 1936, I got more involved in the Student Communist Party so saw more of Peter Hewett. The Communist group in St Hughs was growing. The Labour Club and the October Club merged and membership rose to 1000 of the 4000 Oxford students.

I was invited to tea by Harold Wilson, whose mother knew my aunt, and we took a walk together – neither of us much impressed by the other but doing our duty. He told me that he planned to be the next Liberal Prime MInister.

One of Peter’s friends at that time was Francois Laffitte, the son of Havelock Ellis’ partner. Havelock Ellis was then a famous psychiatrist who wrote widely, from a Freudian point of view I believe, on sex.

Peter was invited back for the weekend. Havelock Ellis was white haired and seemed very old, but impressive. His lady, Madame Lafitte, was much younger, foreign and glamorous – so Peter thought. When they had all retired for the night she came into Peter’s bedroom in her negligée and, taking his hand in hers, explained in a seductive voice that she knew he desired her, but although she found him very attractive, she felt that it wouldn’t perhaps be fair to Havelock were she to make love to such a young man.

After she had kissed him and left Peter was unable to sleep, so spent the night reading all Havelock’s works, on bookshelves in his room.

This adventure had a formative effect on Peter. Thereafter he yearned for attractive women to to offer themselves freely for sex without his having to overcome his shyness to make the running. Sadly for him, most females believed then that men didn’t like “forward” women.

This made life very difficult for him in later life. He felt that if offered sex without strings he must respond – yet as he grew older and women less inhibited and he was propositioned it was frequently by women he didn’t find attractive. In theory he should have been willing and gratified, in practice he was just embarrassed.

I didn’t particularly like Francois. He seemed to me to be very young for his age: he reported with great glee that he had sat next to a girl in the cinema who was wearing a transparent blouse!