One subject he did not write about was his mixed-race marriage, unusual in Britain in the 1940s, to Sibyl Allen.

As Sibyl Kane prepared for a 13-hour flight from Tokyo to Newark, she said the violence was heavy on her mind.

Virgil’s decorous Latin gets translated into a language which calls for eloquent Latinate polysyllables: the Sibyl flings the guard-dog Cerberus “a dumpling of soporific honey”.