The most poignant of Dirk’s books tells of the ‘dissolving of the fort’ that he had constructed with such care. ‘I learned very early on in my life that nothing was for ever; so I should have been aware of disillusion in early middle age: but, somehow, we try to obliterate early warnings and go cantering along hopefully, idiotically... ’ In this penultimate volume of autobiography he records the sadness with which he and Anthony Forwood left their beloved Clermont for an uncertain future in London.