He had been living in Paris for many years. Longer, he used to say, than he cared to remember.

When my first wife died, he would explain, there no longer seemed to be any reason to stay in England. So he moved to Paris and earned his living by translating.

The beauty of a translator’s job, he would say, is that you can do it anywhere and you don’t ever need to see your employer. When a book is done you send it off and in due course you receive the remainder of your fee. Meanwhile, you have started on the next one.

He was an old-fashioned person, still put on a jacket and tie to sit down to work, and a coat and hat when he went out. Even at the height of the Parisian summer he never ventured out without his hat. At my age, he would say, it’s too late to change. Besides, I’m a creature of habit, always was.

He lived in a small apartment at the top of a peeling building in the rue Lucrèce, behind the Panthéon. To get to it you went through the dark,narrow rue Saint-Julien and climbed the steep flight of steps which brought you out directly opposite the building. There were, of course, other ways of getting there, but this was the one he regularly used. It was how, in his mind, his little flat was linked to the outside world.

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