‘I got back to Cambridge, went to the common room, sank into an armchair and tried to gather my thoughts. There was a Musical Times lying on the table. In it, I read that Ginette Neveu was dead, had you heard? The plane taking her from Paris to a concert tour in America crashed in the Azores, killing all on board. Her brother, Jean, was among the dead, and her Stradivarius was incinerated. Ginette was thirty, a virgin by the look of her, and playing like an angel.

‘First Josef, now Ginette. It felt as if we Flesch pupils were under a curse – a punishment, perhaps. I may have given up religion but superstition is a different matter altogether. There is hardly an artist on earth who does not carry a lucky charm, get ready in a fixed routine and go “tfui, tfui, break a leg” before going on stage. We live in terror of black cats, and here I had one staring me in the eye.

‘I took myself off for a late-night walk around Great Court, and a couple of solitary drinks in my room. It occurred to me that, with Hassid sick and Neveu dead, the odds had shortened. It would be a good deal easier for a layabout like me to make a success. And I wouldn’t be doing it just for myself, but for Josef and Ginette and all the other unlucky ones who would never be heard again. So I sat down at my desk, wrote a note to my tutor claiming nervous exhaustion and caught the first train home next morning to start putting in the statutory six hours a day on the treadmill.’

He picked up the violin, retuned it automatically and knocked off a page of what I think was a solo sonata by Ysaÿe. ‘What do you think?’ he demanded, putting me back in my place.

What did I think? In order of anxieties: where does that leave me? where do I fit in his recast future? what next? For once, though, not even ignominious egotism could sour the joy I felt on hearing the music that flowed from his bow – flowing as if from a natural spring. Ysaÿe gave way to Brahms, and Brahms to astringent Bartók. Each piece was played as if he owned it, as if no other musician had a right to perform it. His authority had grown incontestable.

‘Have you spoken to my father?’ I asked.

‘We’re talking,’ said Dovidl.

That night Mortimer Simmonds outlined his brilliant plan to create a second Kreisler. The potential was proven, the strategy flawless. All family resources were to be harnessed to the project. Mother duly took Dovidl to be kitted out on Savile Row and had one of her refugee stylists redesign his hair in a Kreisler coiffure. A Medola cousin at St Mary’s Hospital took charge of his diet. Uncle Kenneth fixed his teeth, polishing them till they gleamed. The Chief Rabbi’s private secretary tutored him in press and public relations. James Agate dropped his name at a meeting of the Critics’ Circle; Cecil Beaton took his picture. Nothing was left to chance, no detail of presentation escaped our eager attention.