Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.

He translated works by Ivan Turgenev from Russian into English and during the war worked for the British Diplomatic Service. He was appointed a CBE in 1946 knighted in 1957 and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1971. He excelled as an essayist conversationalist and raconteur; and as a brilliant lecturer who improvised rapidly and spontaneously richly allusive and coherently structured material.