"The Crawshay's death shocked—in the sense of surprised—us all. Most of us knew that it was the way they had intended to die, but somehow we hadn't realized that it was imminent."

Edith thinks that Susan Russell (John's ex-wife) wrote "The Lasting Impressions of Bertie Russell". "She was a poet and Bertie did try to encourage her and was fond of her as she says. The piece seems to me a brilliant and sensitive and astonishingly penetrating analysis, almost wholly intuition, not reasoned at all." Michael Burn also thinks she wrote it. There are only two points that they don't agree with. "I do not think that she knows much about Islam. But I think what she says of Bertie himself on page 7 is both perceptive and accurate." "In spite of the fact that it is well-written, as the author says, and so slap-dash, it seems to me [and to Burn] one of the best short descriptions and characterizations that I know of Bertie. What a pity that Clark has none of Susan's sensitiveness or understanding."

Bertie was well aware of the "elements warring within him" but he "could not manage to bring them together in peace. We used to talk about it. A few years later, in the latter half of the fifties, he felt that at last he had succeeded and was at peace and happy." "'Diddy' was Conrad's pronunciation of 'daddy'. It was adopted by all the family and by many of their friends."

"Norah Purcell, an ex-wife of Victor Purcell, was Bertie's secretary in 1950-51."