I would say to her, in that mixed river language we used, ‘One day, Beth, somebody will snatch your case. It isn’t safe to travel about with money li… - V. S. Naipaul

Small things can start us off in new ways of thinking, and I was started off by the postage stamps of our area.

But this is madness. I am going in the wrong direction. There can’t be a new life at the end of this.

He read political books. They gave him phrases which he could only speak to himself and use on Shama. They also revealed one region after another of misery and injustice and left him feeling more helpless and more isolated than ever. Then it was that he discovered the solace of Dickens. Without difficulty he transferred characters and settings to people and places he knew. In the grotesques of Dickens everything he feared and suffered from was ridiculed and diminished, so that his own anger, his own contempt became unnecessary, and he was given strength to bear the most difficult part of his day: dressing in the morning, that daily affirmation of faith in oneself, which at times for him was almost like an act of sacrifice.