In the summer of 1955 1 was living with mY wife and two

children at St Jean-Cap Ferrat in a decaying old villa called

L Escapade . Up on the hill above us was Somerset

Maugham s Mauresque , which overlooked the deep, blue

bay of Villcfranche, and from which the old master could

see almost all the true Riviera as far west as Antibes. The

other neighbour above us was one of the Rothschilds,

whose villa had been turned into a sort of empty, marble

museum of nineteenth-century objets d art. At the foot of

our mutual hill was St Jean itself, still a village then,

although on one side of its bay was the huge Villa Singer

(Sinjay), and on the other side the rich old Bristol Hotel of

Beaulieu.

It was an exotic and ridiculous setting for the peculiar

drama that we played out on our verandahs and gardcns and

terraces that year. Drama is not a very good word any

more. It was more of a confrontation. What else could

you call a carefully prepared meeting between one of

Roosevelt s advisers on Chinese affairs whose life had been

devastated (like Alger Hiss s) by the condemnations of the

Un-American Activities Committee, and his former friend

who had actually denounced him to the committee and

ruined him?

The idea of bringing the two men together again was so

horrible and yet so fascinating that when it was first sug-

gested I was repulsed and enthusiastic at the same time,

because the events were still brutally flesh in 1955. Being