MG: Well, it’s a language you’re able to learn. I mean, I didn’t learn Finnish, I didn’t even try, because it’s not an Indo-European language, not anything I could cope with. I did speak English there, but I didn’t live there. I rented a car, was just travelling along. But I didn’t feel frustrated. It was their country, their language. But Mordecai resented having to speak French. He said, ‘Anyway, what can you do in a country that’s old and rotten and falling down?’ Those were his words. Well at that time, it was burgeoning with writers, French writers. It was really the great period of the twentieth century. Colette was still alive, all these people were still alive, writing, producing. Gide had only just died that year. You breathed the air, the same air as these people I so admired. One day I was sitting reading in a cafe. And Mordecai came drifting over and he sat down and he grabbed the book out of my hand that I was reading. It was The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen’s great novel.

JL: Which I just read.

MG: Oh it’s wonderful. And he read some in a mocking voice. A mocking English voice which he didn’t do very well. And he said, ‘You know, if you go on reading this crap you’re never going to get anywhere.’ So I just took the book back.