visiting Corley Court to see Cecil's tomb which is installed in the chapel there. On their first date at Corley Court Peter finds Paul inexperienced and shy but decides to keep him as a potential boyfriend. He also muses on the idea of writing an updated biography of Cecil Valance, although by now he is considered a minor poet and has been eclipsed in reputation by his younger brother Dudley. Something of a Poet By 1980, Paul, now no longer with Peter, is working on a definitive biography of Cecil, hoping to explore his sexuality. He faces competition from Nigel Dupont, who is writing a book on Cecil's poetry at the same time. Paul reaches out to Dudley, George, and Daphne in an attempt to find out more information for his book. By now the surviving Sawles and Valances are elderly and unwilling to talk. Dudley refuses to collaborate with Paul and George gives a rambling interview in which he implies that Cecil was bisexual and also fathered Daphne's eldest child Corinna. Paul at last secures an interview with Daphne, but she too is unforthcoming and is deliberately evasive about Cecil. The Old Companions At a memorial service for Peter Rowe, who has died at the age of 62, antiquarian Rob Salter meets several of Peter's friends including his civil partner and Paul Bryant, now a semi-famous biographer. He is seated beside Daphne's granddaughter, Jennifer Ralph, descended from her marriage to Revel Ralph. Jennifer openly disapproves of Paul as his first biography England Trembles, on Cecil Valance, made numerous unsubstantiated claims concerning Cecil's life: that Corinna was in fact Cecil's daughter, that Dudley was himself gay, and that Jennifer's real father was the artist Mark Gibbons, a family friend. During the course of his work Rob is shown a series of hand-copied letters recovered from the home of Harry Hewitt, the Sawles' former neighbour and another gay character. The majority of the correspondence is from Hubert Sawle, George and Daphne's older brother, whom Hewitt has tried, unsuccessfully, to woo in the years before Hubert's death in WWI. Another five letters appear to be from Cecil Valance to Hewitt and hint at a sexual affair between the two of them. Rob goes to Harry Hewitt's former home before it is demolished to see if he can find any other evidence but learns that all the papers had been burned in a