'An old family name,' he told his wife, though this was not true at all, his uncle's being thus christened having been an isolated instance of the use of Hilbert. There had been a fashion in the late nineteenth century for Germanic names and his uncle, born in 1902, had caught the tail end of it.

'I don't like that at all,' his wife had said. 'People will think it's really Gilbert or Albert. I don't want him teased, poor baby.'