Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.

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.