 This episode he later described with candour in "Shadows on the Grass".At almost 30 years of age he had no career or prospects, but from his studies of the classics he had developed a lucid writing style, derived, as he said, from the Army's admirable instruction to be "brief, neat and plain".This, allied to his ready and disrespectful wit, was allowing him to survive precariously in journalism when, in 1958, he was employed by publisher Anthony Blond