Gubby Under Pressure

Test match: ‘All here sympathise your disappointment result of rubber but success of tour fully recognised.’ The last letter Allen wrote from California was while staying in the house of a film director in Palm Springs, ‘the show place of these parts’. He admits that he has stayed away much longer than he had intended and will not arrive at Southampton on the Empress of Britain until 22 May. The importance of cricket is once more beginning to occupy his thoughts: ‘The North and South match is on that day, so I probably will go straight up to Lord’s.’ The rest of the letter is filled with news of ‘hundreds of parties’ in the company of many of the rich and famous stars of Hollywood and concludes: ‘It is a gloriously hot afternoon and I am now going to bathe and lie in the sun.’ Who can say that, after all his troubles and travails, he had not deserved his place in the sun? The assessment 69