Alas there must be ten sentences in Ronald Conway’s autobiography which begins with ‘Alas’. Yes, it is a buoyant, if absurd book, not a dirge, and the most interesting lass in it is 'a lady named Audrey’ (no surname), a reputed psychic and palmiste (excuse me, ladies!), who gave Conway a ‘reading’ in 1958 (he was then over 30) and told him that he ‘wore ... a sinister aura of mental disturbance’. However, not to worry', this aura was not his but belonged to a person he had previously been with. Fortunately this was not Archbishop Mannix but a former student whom Conway was counselling and who subsequently killed his mother. Lady Audrey Whatshername told Conway ‘crisply’ that he would ‘become very well known ... a doctor of the mind who will help a great many people. You will be an instrument in the hands of God’. Conway, who is almost Dickensian about his ‘humility’, says ‘the reader can decide’ whether Audrey was just guessing or not (p. 70).

At that time Conway was a Catholic secondary school teacher where he ‘used corporal punishment … usually sparingly but without apology’, although he says he had ‘a knack for telling repartee’ and could make his students ‘look dolts if I chose’ (pp. 60-1). He believes himself to have been a superb teacher of History' and English, so much so that he lights up his chapter, ‘Not Quite Mr. Chips’, with this epigraph from Schiller: