I was intrigued to find Paul Almond described as “quiet” and “suave”. An ice hockey blue at Oxford, he brought a rumbustious enthusiasm direct from the rink to the newsroom when he edited Isis and, as a new chairman, to formerly staid meetings of the Poetry Society. TS Eliot’s eyebrows were certainly raised when, as a guest speaker, he was introduced by Paul as “Tom”.
In 1951, in a battered open-top lorry, Paul drove the Festival Shakespeare Players to the Edinburgh Fringe where, sitting beside him, I was instructed to keep talking in case he fell asleep and crashed. We made it; Paul, as ever, doing most of the talking and then, apparently tirelessly, pacing the pavement outside the Royal High school to drum up an audience for the next two weeks.
