“…upon an earlier piece of pink blotting-paper there is the drawing of a heart, pierced by an arrow, and the words ‘I love Basil’ scribbled upon it. This, I know very well, refers to the actor Basil Rathbone, who had performed as the hero in the adaptation of Grandpapa’s novel PETER IBBETSON, staged some months before. It was time, I must have told myself, that I too found an idol or ‘crush’ … and Basil Rathbone, dark and handsome, made a fine candidate, especially when he helped us at the hoopla stall … Passion withered when he appeared – I think at a garden party D and M gave at Cannon Hall – wearing a straw boater, and though I tried hard to flog the dying embers … I didn’t succeed. I wonder what I should have said had I known that over twenty years later he would act the part of wicked Lord Rockingham in the film adaptation of one of my own novels, FRENCHMAN’S CREEK, and in pursuit of the heroine, Dona, crash …