It attracted little attention, but established Hugh’s command of waspish Aubreyesque pastiche. The following year, 1968, the widely reported radical student movement swept the Western world, including Oxford. The more seriously the radicals took themselves — and they took themselves very seriously indeed — the more absurd they became. I asked Hugh if he would do a piece on the goings-on at Oxford. He agreed, and sent me, in November of that year, the first of his brilliantly perceptive and irreverent “letters” from “Mercurius Oxoniensis”, written in the same style as the “Brief Life”, but more so, and better.

They continued to appear from time to time for the rest of my period as editor, and caused a considerable stir, and much speculation as to their authorship, which was never revealed during Hugh’s lifetime. Security was absolute. Apart from one occasion when I collected a “letter” from him in his Scottish home, they were posted to me personally, written in his neat and very legible hand, and returned to me for safe-keeping after publication.

The Letters of Mercurius are well worth reading today; and this is fortunately possible, as a collected edition was published by John Murray in 1970. It was then still owned and run by Hugh’s friend Jock Murray, an ageing and impish dandy, and an excellent publisher, who still believed in the old tradition of producing, for selected works, alongside the regular edition, a limited edition printed on special paper and with special boards and binding for the author to present to his friends.

One of my most treasured possessions is one of these, personally inscribed and signed (with a quill pen) by Mercurius Oxoniensis in his own authentic 17th?century hand.