1946. From the War Office in central London, where I had been based for a year or so (on secondment from the Parachute Regiment), it was a ten-minute walk. Up St Martin's Lane and on to Long Acre, to the offices of the two national Labour papers, the Daily Herald and its Sunday companion, the People. I was to be interviewed by the editor of the latter, Harry Ainsworth, about a job when I was demobilised in July. We agreed on a starting date, but meanwhile he took me on as a Saturday casual, as all the Sundays did then to cover their busiest day of the week. The pay was two guineas.

For these weekly stints I went there in uniform (against King's Regulations), and found an American major, Bill Richardson, also in uniform, doing the same thing. He told a lot of stories based on his remarkable resemblance to Orson Welles. Within an hour of our arrival on the first day we were listening to a monologue by Hannen Swaffer, a popular show business and political columnist. He and the editor seemed to be down-to-earth Labourites, and it was a surprise to find they were spiritualists and attended seances together (perhaps in search of scoops, the American suggested). Swaffer's only book at that time, My Greatest Story, explained that he set out to expose fake mediums and became a believer...

I started at the People as a fulltime reporter on 12 guineas a week, and for months was almost intoxicated, after those years of what seemed to be wasted time (1939-46), by the new, heady atmosphere of London journalism. It was a pleasure to meet some of the people I had been reading about during those boring years: James Cameron, and through him Tom Hopkinson, Eric Blair (George Orwell), Ted Castle and others - mainly on the political left. Listening to them, occasionally bold enough to put in my pennyworth and even pay for a round, was always a stimulating experience.

One of my first jobs was to cover the first London meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations. I was approached there by a man who said he had, like me, just left "the Services" and was making contacts as a freelance journalist. I saw him again at other meetings of important bodies. He also turned up at the wellknown pub near the BBC where James Cameron introduced me to Orwell. Jim told me later: "He still works for the government, in either MI5 or 6 - undercover as a journalist, genuine NUJ card. Guard your tongue, laddie." I saw him again, but more of that when I find more of my old diaries.

Jim Cameron did a lot of travelling and writing, and became a star of documentary television. He also had poor health, and recently I came across a letter I had tucked away inside one of his books on my shelves. In my quarterly journal, The Media Reporter, I had given a plug to the reissue of one of his, and sent him a note. He was between hospitals, and replied from his London home......................

Fifty years on, after also working on the Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, and provincial papers, I was freelancing. It was while working in Beijing that, having lots of time, I began a novel, Towards the Dark, and decided to do a Dickens - selling it by instalments as I went along. The idea was to be free of the freelance chores which, though plentiful for a time, rarely brought in enough to compare with a decent staff job.

I gave up the attempt to do a Dickens. I had failed in my aim of writing my way out of freelance hackery, and sent embarrassed thanks and apologies to those two friendly people. I certainly should have remembered at the outset that journalists are used to getting their reading matter for nothing... But I could, perhaps, do something in publishing, on a small scale, as a one-man publisher and editor...