I met Peter O'Toole in a night-school class at the Leeds College of Commerce in the early 1950s, where we were both doing an English literature O-level as part of the young journalists' training scheme.

One of the set books that year was a volume of Tennyson and Browning, and Peter asked if he could borrow my edition until he could buy one of his own. But that was the last I saw of either him or the book, until, that is, I was commissioned in 1959 to write a profile of Willis Hall, whose The Long and the Short and the Tall was running in the West End with O'Toole in one of the starring roles.

I mentioned the lost volume to Willis and there followed an invitation to join them both at a London theatre pub where, in spite of the alcoholic haze, I seem to remember the book being gracefully returned.