The piece had concluded, “They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but if you have a sweet tooth and a strong stomach, the best implement to deal with our Mr. Penn’s frothy confections might be a pudding spoon.” The following day Penn, lunching liquidly in a Leeds restaurant, had spotted the journalist across a crowded dessert trolley. Selecting a large portion of strawberry gateau liberally coated with whipped cream, he had approached her table, said, “This, madam, is a frothy confection,” and squashed the pudding on to her head. In court he had said, “It wasn’t personal. I did it not because of what she said about my books but because of her appalling style. English must be kept up,” before being fined fifty pounds and bound over to keep the peace.

Sam Johnson had immediately sought out Penn and said, “I believe you know more about Heine than anyone else in Yorkshire.”

“That wouldn’t be hard. They say you know more about Beddoes than anyone in The Dog and Duck at closing time.”

“I know he went to Gottingen University to study medicine in 1824 and Heine was there studying law.”

“Oh aye? And Hitler and Wittgenstein were in the same class at school. So what?”

“So why don’t we flaunt our knowledge in The Dog and Duck one night?”

“Well, it’s quiz night tonight. You never know. It might come up.”

Thus had armistice been signed before hostilities proper began. When talk finally turned to the writing course, Penn, after token haggling, accepted terms for making the occasional “old pro” appearance, and went on to suggest that if Johnson was interested in a contribution from some-one at the other end of the ladder, he might do worse than soon-to-be-published novelist Ellie Pascoe, an old acquaintance from her days on the university staff and a member of the threatened literary group.

This version of that first encounter was cobbled together from the slightly different accounts Ellie received from both participants. She and Johnson had hit it off straightaway. When she invited him home for a meal, the conversation had naturally centred on matters literary, and Pascoe, feeling rather sidelined, had leapt into the breach when Johnson had casually mentioned his difficulty in finding a squash partner among his generally unathletic colleagues.