The only possible job that I could undertake was teaching. But I needed a degree, so I completed my thesis, which I published under the title of _Poetic Unreason_ and handed in, when in print, to the examining board. I was most surprized when they accepted it and I had my bachelor’s degree. But the problem of an appointment remained, I did not want a preparatory or secondary-school job which would keep me away from home all day. Nancy did not want anyone else but myself and her looking after the children, so there seemed no solution. And then the doctor told Nancy that if she wished to regain her health she must spend the winter in Egypt. In fact, the only appointment that would be at all suitable would be a teaching job in Egypt, at a very high salary, where there was little work to do. And a week or two later (for this is the way things have always happened to me in emergencies) I was asked to offer myself as a candidate for the post of professor of English Literature at the newly-founded Egyptian University at Cairo. I had been recommended, I found out later, by two or three influential friends, among them Arnold Bennett, who has always been a good friend to me, and Lawrence, who had served in the war with Lord Lloyd, the then High Commissioner of Egypt. The salary amounted, with the passage money, to fourteen hundred pounds a year. I fortified these recommendations with others, from my neighbour, Colonel John Buchan, and from the Earl of Oxford, who had taken a fatherly interest in me and often visited Islip. And so was given the appointment.