So I wondered what you would feel about changing the locale to England - no wait. I don’t think you’d object if I can make you see what I see - television is a question of vision, isn’t it? Can one see it? That is always the point and I do feel some of our writers do tend to forget that. Now, let me tell you what I see. It’s an air-training base in wartime. In England, I was in the airforce myself - oh, not one of the boys in blue, I was just a pen-pusher. But perhaps that’s why your book got me the way it did. You got the atmosphere so perfectly …’ ‘What atmosphere?’ ‘Oh, my dear, you are so marvellous, real artists are so really marvellous, half the time you don’t know what you’ve written …’ I said, suddenly, not meaning to: ‘And perhaps we do, and don’t like it.’ He frowned, decided to ignore it, and went on: ‘It’s the wonderful rightness - the desperation of it all - the excitement - I’ve never been so alive as I was then … Well, what I want to suggest is this. We’ll keep the core of your book, because that’s so important, I agree. The airforce base. A young pilot. He falls in love with a local girl from the village. His parents object - the class thing, you know, alas it still does exist in this country. The two lovers must separate. And at the end we have this marvellous scene on the railway station - he is going off, and we know he will be killed. No, do think about it, just for a moment - what do you say?’

‘You want me to write an original script?’

‘Well yes and no. Your story is basically a simple love story. Yes it is. The colour thing is really - yes I know it’s desperately important, and I couldn’t agree with you more, how utterly beastly the whole thing is, but your story is really a simple moving love story. It’s all there, trust me, it is - like another Brief Encounter, I do hope you see that as clearly as I do - you must remember the telly is just a question of seeing.’ ‘Very clearly, but surely one can throw away the novel Frontiers of War and begin again?’ ‘WeH not entirely, because the book is so well known and so marvellous, and I would like to keep the title, because the Frontier is surely not geographical? Not in essence? I don’t see it like that. It is the frontier of experience.’ ‘Well, perhaps you’d better write me a letter setting out your terms for an original television script?’ ‘But not altogether original.’ (Whimsical twinkle.) ‘Don’t you think the people who had read the book would be surprised to see it turn into a sort of Brief Encounter with Wings?’(Whimsical grimace.)