Good things happen in bars. Some bars, at least.

I was into my second marriage in 1967, and my wife was pregnant. So I had taken her off for a warm winter stay on the isle of Malta, sunning itself there in the Mediterranean.

We were sitting in the hotel bar one evening. Plenty of couples about. Soft music playing. When I spotted a man who entered the lounge in a hurry, and went to the bar wearing bright blue denim slacks.

I told my wife it was Anthony Burgess.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said,

So I went over and spoke to him. Anthony was glad of my company, of any company. So I took him to our table ‘to meet the wife’. That all went well. Anthony was merry and talkative, and luckily I had given his novel, The Wanting Seed, a review full of praise in the Oxford Mail, of which I was Literary Editor under W.Harford Thomas, an editor full of life and spirit.

Burgess was not afraid of science fiction, and dashed off some himself. I’m not being condescending; ‘dashing off’ was his mode, and he could talk as if pursuing you or as being pursued. You adored him – and I suppose there were those who hated him, hated his success.

Books seemed to tumble out of him. That never pleases the elite. Wait till you are seventy-five and female, and then in seclusion write a little memoir – being photographed while doing it – remembering daddy’s greatness. Then you’ll be read and praised in all the impoverished suburbs of our great cities.

But I joke. (If only…)

Anyhow, the result of that mild Maltese evening was that wife and I were invited to his palazzo the next day.

I went on my own. The palazzo was Burgessian, modestly fortified and tucked between exhausted semi-detacheds.

There Burgess was, in a huge shirt and tight slacks, with what I seem to recall was a new wife, very personable and pretty. We assembled ourselves on a balcony overlooking a courtyard admirably foreign. I revealed that, like Burgess, I had been in Malaya. One thing we had in common.

We talked about the hell and the entrancement of the tropics, and then, the wine not ceasing to be poured, Burgess told us how he had managed to get to Malta.

He had driven down from the UK through France, towing a caravan. He stopped near the Italian frontier, probably not far from Grenoble. He had then walked to the nearest town for something. When he returned, he found his caravan had been broken into. Everything had been stolen, including his passport. All that remained was a hardcover copy of his latest book. The ribbers were not readers.

So Burgess walked to the frontier post, He explained his predicament to the guards – and showed them his photograph on the back cover of his novel.

So the Italians let him through! With one breath, the three of us exclaimed, “The Brits would never have allowed that!”

More problems then in his getting across to Malta. We were roaring with laughter; so was Burgess. He was helped by Professor Richard Ellman, also a friend of mine, who lived in Broad Street, Oxford, and wrote the great definitive life of James Joyce. But that, I suppose, is another story.

Anyhow, after that enjoyable evening in Burgess’s palazzo, we never saw much of each other again. He continued to live in Malta, while I went off to Jugoslavia, Georgia and – where was that other place? – possibly Turkmenistan? – while writing my four-volume Squire Quartet. This I mention because later Burgess praised those novels. Praise always thirstily welcome.

You could say we remained friendly. And, indeed, why not? I have always admired his eclat – and his writing.