Basanta used to come out to Islip frequently to talk philosophy with us. With him came Sam Harries, a young Balliol scholar, who soon became our closest friend. Metaphysics soon made psychology of secondary interest for me: it threatened almost to displace poetry. Basanta’s philosophy was a development of formal metaphysics, but with characteristically Indian insistence on ethics. He believed in no hierarchy of ultimate values or the possibility of any unifying religion or ideology. But at the same time he insisted on the necessity of strict self-discipline in the individual in meeting every possible demand made upon him from whatever quarter, and he recommended constant self-watchfulness against either dominating or being dominated by any other individual. This view of strict personal morality consistent with scepticism of social morality agreed very well with my practice. He returned to India in 1923 and considered taking an appointment in Nepal, but decided that to do so would put him in a position incompatible with his philosophy. He would have returned to Oxford but a friend had died, leaving him to support a typical large Hindu family of aunts and cousins remotely related. We missed Basanta’s visits, but Sam Harries used to come out regularly. Sam was a communist, an atheist, enthusiastic about professional football (Aston Villa was his favourite team) and experimental films, and most puritanical in matters of sex. Other friends were not numerous. Edith Sitwell was one of them. It was a surprise, after reading her poems, to find her gentle, domesticated, and even devout. When she came to stay with us she spent her time sitting on the sofa and hemming handkerchiefs. She used to write to Nancy and me frequently, but 1926 ended the friendship. 1926 was yesterday, when the autobiographical part of my life was fast approaching its end. I saw no more of any of my army friends, with the exception of Siegfried, and meetings with him were now only about once a year. Edmund Blunden had gone as professor of English Literature to Tokyo. Lawrence was now in the Royal Tank Corps. He had enlisted in the Royal Air Force when he came to the end of things after the Middle-Eastern settlement of 1921, but had been forced to leave it when a notice was given of a question in the House about his presence there under an assumed name. When Sir Walter Raleigh died I felt my connection with Oxford University was broken, and when Rivers died, and George Mallory on Everest, it seemed as though the death of my friends was following me in peace-time as relentlessly as in war. Basanta had spoken of getting an invitation from the Maharajah for us to visit Nepal with him but, when he found it impossible to resume his work there, the idea lapsed. Sam went to visit him in India in 1924; his reputation as a communist followed him there. He wrote that he was tagged by policemen wherever he went in Calcutta; but they need not have worried.