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ON the morning of New Year's Day, when I entered the Minister's office, he was writing letters. The office was not very grand; it was a cubby hole with a coal fire, the windows looking out over Whitehall. The Minister was not, at a first glance, very grand either. Elderly, slight, he made a profession of being unassuming. When he left the office he passed more unnoticed even than his Civil Servants, except in a few places: but the few places happened to be the only ones where he wanted notice, and included the Carlton Club and the rooms of the party manager.
His name was Thomas Bevill, and he was a cunning, tenacious, happy old man; but mixed with his cunning was a streak of simplicity that puzzled one more the closer one came. That morning of 1 January 1942, for instance, he was writing in his own round schoolboyish hand to everyone he knew whose name was in the Honours List.