‘What was that, Daddy?’

‘You’ve just seen your first kingfisher, Johnny. The most special bird in the world.’

‘But where did it come from? Where did it go?’

‘It came from its secret nest and it’s gone to catch fish for its supper. Come on, let’s go home and tell Mummy about it.’

Wilde had spent most of the past three years in central London in a senior advisory role with the Office of Strategic Services – America’s wartime intelligence outfit. He had been given no title and he hadn’t wanted one, for he still thought of himself as a professor of history.

Yet it had been a fine time, starting small with a handful of enthusiastic but inexperienced amateurs, and ending up with a vibrant powerhouse of intellect and ideas. Some of them wore uniform, some dusty sports jackets and soup-stained ties, some wore smart skirts or flowery summer dresses. For the most part, rank didn’t count, nor did gender. After a shaky start in 1942, they had become an effective intelligence unit.

He would miss the clever, charming, oddball bunch of men and women at the top of the organisation. And he would never forget the courageous operatives who volunteered to be parachuted behind enemy lines, sometimes to their death. They had all been bold, innovative people – and his years with them had, in many ways, been the time of his life.

But that was then, and this was now. This was the peace and he wanted to put the war behind him. In college, the blackouts were gone, the static water tank had been removed from the old court and the civil servants who had taken up residence for the duration were moving back to Whitehall.

Wilde had quit the OSS and was preparing for the Michaelmas term. He still wasn’t entirely sure how many undergraduates he would have; he supposed most of them would be battle-hardened ex-servicemen who had postponed or interrupted their courses for the duration of the war. Some would have scars and medals for valour, some would have nightmares. They would include captains and majors who had grown accustomed to giving orders rather than receiving instruction. They would be very unlike the fresh-faced young men straight from school that had been his usual intake. Could be interesting. How would the disparate groups get on with each other?

He was also dusting down the book he had been writing on the Jesuit priests who risked their lives coming to England in the late sixteenth century. He was only a third of the way through the work, but he felt full of energy for the task ahead. It was a story well worth telling, a natural rounding-off to the successful books he had written on Walsingham and Cecil from the same period.

His publisher had been calling him these past two weeks. ‘The public are hungry for new works, Tom. They’ve had enough of Nazis and all that jazz. They want some solid English history. The Tudors are the thing. But keep it shortish – paper’s in extremely short supply.’ Well, that was all fine but it wasn’t going to be ready any time soon. He’d have to go through all his research again, so it would be eighteen months at the very least, but more like two years.