Peter and I travelled back to London by coach together that Easter. His first book of poems had just come out, published by Laurence and Wishart, and he had been invited to have his photograph taken by a West End photographer (free) in case he later became famous. I went with him to give him moral support. The slight smile on his lips is the result of their just having powdered his nose to reduce the shine.

On March 31st, his 22nd birthday, we went together to a Labour Party meeting at Ladywell Baths, Lewisham, and, as he couldn’t get home afterwards, he was to sleep on our very large sofa. Everyone else went to bed and we sat up talking. Eventually we made love, briefly. I guessed that he was feeling disloyal to Peggy, even though she still couldn’t decide if she wanted him.

Probably one of the reasons I fell in love with Peter, as well as his being tall, dark and handsome, and having a wonderful voice, was that he had spent several months in getting to know me without trying to get me into bed. Most young men, then as now, seemed to have nothing but sex on their minds.

Of course, when we got back to Oxford, our relationship had changed. I took to leaving St Hughs very early in time to cycle to The House to wake up Peter at 8 am before his scout (a personal male servant who looked after the undergraduates on one staircase) brought our breakfasts under silver covers, having already lit the coal fire and cleaned the room. Peter was chronically short of sleep as he was engaged in political work for most of each day, from the daily Executive Committee meeting of the Party at 9 am in his rooms until maybe a public meeting in the evening – his record was 37 meetings in one week. When his college gates finally shut at 12.20 he and Phillip Toynbee generally played a fast and furious game of table tennis – then wallowed in adjacent deep hot baths in the dungeons. Only then would they sit down to write their essays, already overdue.

Although I probably saw quite a lot of Phillip Toynbee all the two years I was at Oxford as he was a Communist Party member and a great friend of Peter’s, besides being in the same college, I didn’t like him.

One of my St Hugh’s friends, Joyce, a lovely gentle girl, and very beautiful, fell in love with Phillip and he soon became aware of this. He made an appointment to meet her in Peter’s rooms in Peck Quad; she could hardly believe her luck and was overjoyed. When she got there the door was open but the room was empty. On the table, open, was Phillip’s diary, in which he jeered at Joyce and sneered at her affection for him – left there on purpose for her