As I look back now I see that, although I knew a good deal about sex, I had retained an unusual innocence for my age, and I suppose it was my father’s money, and the sense of isolation it brought, that made my innocence possible.

I told you what Netty had said about “Anglican guff.” She was scornful of what she called “Pancake Christianity” because we ate pancakes at Shrove; she used to snort when my parents had lobster salad on Fridays in Lent and always demanded that meat be sent up to the nursery for herself. She never, I think, quite forgave my parents for leaving the wholesome bosom of evangelistic Protestantism. Church matters—I won’t call it religion—played a big part in my growing up. We were attached to St Simon Zelotes, which had the reputation of being a rich people’s church. It wasn’t the most fashionable Anglican church in the city, but it had a special cachet. The fashionable one, I suppose, was St Paul’s, but it was Broad Church. I suppose you are familiar with these distinctions? And the High Church was St Mary Magdalene, but it was poor. St Simon Zelotes was neither so High as Mary Mag, nor so rich as Paul’s. The vicar was Canon Woodiwiss—he later became an Archdeacon and finally Bishop—and he was a gifted apostle to the well-to-do. I don’t say that sneeringly. There always seems to be a notion that the rich can’t be devout and that God doesn’t like them as much as He likes the poor. There are lots of Christians who are all pity and charity for the miserable and the outcast, but who think it a spiritual duty to give the rich a good snubbing whenever they can. So Woodiwiss was a real find for a church like Simon Zelotes.

He soaked the rich for money, which was fair enough. At least once a year he preached his famous sermon about “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” He would explain that the Needle’s Eye was the name of a gate to Jerusalem which was so narrow that a heavily laden camel had to be relieved of some of its burden to get through, and that custom demanded that whatever was taken from the camel became the property of the Temple. So the obvious course for a rich man was to divest himself of some of his wealth for the church and thereby take a step toward salvation. I believe that in terms of history and theology this is all moonshine and Woodiwiss may even have invented it himself, but it worked like a charm. Because, as he said, following on from his text, “with God all things are possible.” So he persuaded his rich camels to strip off a few bales of this world’s goods and leave the negotiation of the needle’s eye in his capable hands.