David Jones was staying in the Chelsea flat of the BBC's Assistant Director of Programme Planning, Harman Grisewood, as the bombs fell on London in the autumn of 1940. During one raid, a near miss blew a bus off course; it went through the window of Sainsbury's on the King's Road. 'I was going out to see if I could do anything,' Grisewood reported. 'When I got to the door, David called out: "Tell them they can't bring any of the wounded in here. This dugout is full up." And he went on reading aloud "The Hunting of the Snark" to my wife.' This isn't the most flattering anecdote, but the behaviour is in character. Jones's trench-hardened language belongs to another war and its way of coping with casualties, as does the peculiar choice of reading matter.

LRB 25 September 2003 | PDF Download