Lunch with Reginald Tarbrucke, Amalgamated Vision, at the White Tower.

Bill: £6 15s 7d.

Dressing for lunch I was thinking of how Molly would enjoy this - playing some role or other. Decided I’d look like a ‘lady writer’. I had a skirt, rather too long, and a badly fitting blouse. I put them on and some arty beads. And some long coral earrings. Looked the part. But felt enormously uncomfortable - as if I were inside the wrong skin. Irritated. No use thinking of Molly. At the last moment changed into myself. Took a lot of trouble. Mr Tarbrucke (call me Reggie) was surprised: he had expected the lady writer. A soft-faced, good-looking, middle-aged Englishman. Well, Miss Wulf - may I call you Anna - what are you writing now? ‘I am living off the royalties from Frontiers of War.’ Look of slight shock - my tone was one of being only interested in money.

‘It must have been very successful?’ ‘Twenty-five languages,’ I said, throwing it away. Humorous grimace - envy. I switch my tone to one of dedicated artist and say: ‘Of course, I don’t want to rush the second. The second novel is so important, don’t you think?’ He is delighted and set at ease. ‘Not all of us achieve the first,’ he says with a sigh. ‘You write of course?’ ‘How clever of you to guess it!’ Again the now automatic humorous grimace, the whimsical gleam. ‘I’ve got a novel half-written in my drawer - but this racket doesn’t give one much time for writing.’ This theme takes us through scampi and the main course. I wait until he says, inevitably: ‘And of course, one fights and fights to get anything halfway decent through the meshes. Of course they haven’t a clue, the boys at the top.’ (He being half a rung from the top.) ‘Not a sausage. Bone-stupid. Sometimes one wonders what one does it for?’ Halva and Turkish coffee. He lights a cigar, buys me some cigarettes. We haven’t mentioned my charming novel yet. ‘Tell me, Reggie, do you propose to take the team out to Central Africa to make Frontiers of War?’ His face, for one second, freezes; then sets into charm. ‘Well, I’m glad you asked me that, because of course, that is the problem.’ ‘The landscape plays quite a part in that novel?’ ‘Oh, essential, I agree. Marvellous. What a feeling for landscape you have. Really, I could smell the place, quite marvellous.’ ‘Would you do it inside the studio?’ ‘Well, that is of course, rather the point, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you about it. Tell me, Anna, what would you say, if you were asked, what is the central theme of your lovely book? Simply, of course, because television is essentially a simple medium?’ ‘It is simply, about the colour bar.’ ‘Oh, I do so agree, a terrible thing, of course I’ve never experienced it myself, but when I read your book - terrifying! But I wonder if you’ll see my point - I do hope you will. It would be impossible to do Frontiers of War on the …’ (whimsical grimace) ‘… magic box, as it is written. It would have to be simplified, leaving its marvellous core intact.