The following week, the Royal Handel Society (patron, HM the King) produced what its chairman, Professor Sir Harold Brooke, said was a long-lost Concerto Grosso, dated 1724, that – according to a letter from Handel to the composer Georg Philipp Telemann in Hamburg – contained the germ of what might now be recognised as the first genuine violin concerto, some years ahead of Bach’s. The solo violin part in the concerto was not fully realised but, with the kind sponsorship of Simmonds Ltd, Sir Harold was preparing a performing version that would be premièred shortly on a six-nation European tour by that exciting young prodigy, Mr Eli Rapoport.

To launch a new artist with two new works, one purporting to be a major historical discovery, was wholly without precedent and verged on bad taste. But so confident was my father of Dovidl’s genius, so emotionally committed to his success, that discretion went out of the window and excess took its place. The press played its part to perfection. Eli Rapoport’s first feature interview, in the Daily Telegraph, described him as the lone survivor of a family of Polish Jews murdered under the Nazi occupation; he had been raised from boyhood in the family of Mr Simmonds, the musical impresario and publisher.

‘I owe my life to the Simmonds family and the British people,’ Dovidl was quoted as saying. ‘I can never repay that debt. But if I have been blessed with any talent, I will devote it to furthering the values that this country has taught me – freedom, tolerance, and the dignity of the individual.’ On a lighter note, the young violinist was reported to enjoy ‘the company of pretty girls, the twang of bluegrass jazz and the taste of strong coffee at three a.m. in the Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market’. Journalists in those prudish times refrained from probing any deeper into their subjects’ nocturnal proclivities.

The publicity onslaught called for extra hands at Simmonds HQ. In my Easter vac from Cambridge, while revising for my finals, I was conscripted to man a reception desk and cope with callers of many kinds. There were time-wasters, termagants and ticket touts; Swiss news-agency correspondents, paperclip salesmen and Zionist fund-raisers; unpaid orchestral musicians, threadbare composers and an Edinburgh scholar offering to supply syndicated programme notes for every work of music ever written – ‘Stimulating essays sell concert seats,’ he assured me hopefully.

The musical importuners I dealt with courteously but firmly. None got past my desk, or took more than three minutes of my attention away from Isaac Deutscher’s biography of Stalin, which was required reading for anyone working towards a degree in modern history in the early Cold War spring of 1951.