The Vengeance of Rome

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I have at last completed the final volume of Colonel Pyat’s memoir. His life began in 1900 and ended in 1977, a few years after he had commissioned me to help him write the book he originally intended to call variously ‘The Life of Mrs Cornelius’ or ‘My Adventures with Mrs Cornelius Between the Wars’. He believed that Mrs Cornelius, a well-known local Notting Hill figure during the 1950s and 60s, was world-famous and that the public would pay him handsomely for his reminiscences. Mrs Cornelius had died a year or two earlier, her career as a minor film actress and entertainer completely forgotten. After publication of the first volume, her children almost immediately began litigation to stop me publishing any further work about her. Only in recent years did we reach an understanding. That is one reason why this volume has taken so long to appear. Another reason was the death of my original editor, the extraordinary John Blackwell, who had helped me considerably, both with translations and interpretations and whose loss has been felt by many other authors and publishers.

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