My old friend Arthur Stockwin, Professorial Fellow of St. Anthony's College, Oxford, visited me in Tokyo earlier this year. He told me an intriguing story, and this is it.

As a boy, he said that his mother Edith took him to Stratford-upon-Avon several times to visit an old lady friend. The young Arthur would generally go outside to play. But one time, in the living room, he noticed a black metal plaque issued by the War Office. Such plaques commemorated a World War I soldier whose life was lost in action.

The memory of these visits naturally paled over the decades, but it was given a jolt in 1990, a full seven years after his mother's death, when Arthur returned to the family home to deal with the many belongings left there. Among them was a large wooden chest. In it he found a packet of old letters bound with string. The letters were dated 1915 and 1916, and they were sent between his mother, who was then 17, and a 20-year-old soldier named Geoffrey Boothby. They were letters exchanged between a young man and woman who knew each other for a bare four days, but whose affection and love for each other grew with every letter.