This arrangement gave him a great deal of independence during the months that he worked for his final examinations. He hung the walls with green cloth for quietness, and preferred to study or read far into the night. A letter to his mother written just after Finals convey something of the atmosphere he created for himself in the bungalow: 'You know, I think, the joy of getting into a strange country in a book: at home when I have shut my door and the town is in bed - and I know that nothing, not even the dawn - can disturb me in my curtains: only the slow crumbing of the coals in the fire: they get so red, and throw such splendid glimmerings on the Hypnos and the brass-work. And it is lovely too, after you have been wandering for hours in the forest with Percivale or Sagramors le desirous, to open the door, and from over the Cherwell to look at the sun glowering through the valley mists. Why does one not like things if there are other people about? Why cannot one make one’s books live except in the night, after hours of straining? . . . if you can get the right book at the right time you taste joys - not only bodily, physical, but spiritual also, which pass one out above and beyond one's miserable self, as it were through a huge air, following the light of another man’s thought. And you can never be quite the old self again.' ¹

* Replaces a more recent monochrome photograph by Michael R. Dudley in the printed catalogue.