"Many of my contemporaries have vivid memories of visits to our home in Iver. There my father presided over idyllic Sunday lunches, improvising quizzes for us children and entertaining the Worsthornes, Frasers, Howards, Stoppards, Amises, Gales and countless others with conversation and jokes that flowed and gurgled like a bubbling stream. When the talk turned to politics, he could be combative. We children didn’t like that. Aged about six, I tackled him: "Daddy, why do you go on and on about Mr Wilson?" "Why do you go on about the Daleks?" he replied. "The Daleks are important," I said. After lunch there were walks in Langley Park, culminating in the hunt for sixpences, hidden in a giant hollow tree where (he claimed) the Great Train Robbers had stashed their loot. My recollection of him taking me to London on my seventh birthday is a joy: riding in a taxi, visiting the New Statesman office as the editor's son, and then to Bertorelli’s for lunch, where he introduced me to Vicky, the great cartoonist, who was not much taller than I was. He seemed to know everyone. When I was puzzled by my part in a school play by J.B. Priestley, he suddenly said: "Let’s ring old Jack up and ask him." Next minute, I heard an aged voice with a Yorkshire accent saying: "Oh yes, Time and the Conways. Damn good play, that. What’s the problem?""