When, in February 1944, the Luftwaffe staged some minor raids on London, he had a room on the fourth or fifth floor of a house in Queen’s Gate. This was struck by a bomb and most of the house destroyed. He was in bed at the time and, fortunately, the bed remained perched, as it were, on a shelf formed by the surviving fragment of the floor. He felt all round his bed in the dark and found that most of the floor was missing but, deciding that he was at least safe where he was, went to sleep again, and awoke to find a crowd in Queen’s Gate pointing to the spectacle he presented.
