The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.

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.