 Well, we go back a long way. Pearl Harbor in December 1941, when the Japanese also invaded Malaya, I was a schoolboy aged 16, up in Scotland. But my parents were in Malaya. They were actually in the state of Traganu on which the Japanese invaded. And sometime early in 1942, a lot of schools, all schools in England and Scotland, in fact the United Kingdom, were told of a scholarship that the government were offering for young men, virtually boys, because they all had to be about 17, to learn Japanese, Chinese, Turkish and Persian. This was all prompted by the fact that they discovered that although we were now at war with Japan, there were very few people who could speak Japanese. And it was vitally important to have people who could. Now my parents became prisoners of war in February 1942. But it was around then that I went, I put in for this scholarship exam, partly because of my parents, but partly because I wanted to get away from school a year earlier than I otherwise would have done. And so I took this scholarship examination in Edinburgh in February 1942. It was a very interesting operation and they don't know how common it is. But it was designed to discover how good you might be at speaking various languages. And we were given a text to translate. I suspect that the text was in Swahili and we were required to translate it. Having been given on the right hand side enough details about the grammar and the vocabulary. And then we were also asked to pronounce and speak various sounds. I remember particularly words beginning with NG, Gumbay. A lot of people can't do that. Anyway, the result was that I won a scholarship. I don't know how many of them were. I had in my mind that there were 300, but I don't think that can be true. I think it must have been nearer 100. So in March 42, at the age of 17, I lived school and having been awarded a scholarship. Now, there were four groups of us learning Japanese, Chinese, Turkish and Persian. And because we were only 17 or 18, we were treated as a kind of upper sixth form. And we were all billeted at Dolly's College in South London. The Chinese and Japanese students in the Headmaster's House, I mean we were the only occupants of the Headmaster's House and the Turkish and Persians in one other Master's House. So in May 42, we started our course. The first thing was a reception at the Senate House and presided over by Sir Anthony Eden, who was then Foreign Secretary, who had been responsible for organizing this scholarship thing. And I remember Leo Amery was there, quite well known nowadays because he had a traitor as a son, but he was then Colonial Secretary, I think. Anyway, and surprisingly to me in 1942, the head of SOAS was a woman, Professor Edwards. I can't remember anything more about her, like a vague memory of her face. And I'm not sure that I ever met her again. But anyway, we started and we did two terms in 42 and three terms in 43. At SOAS, learning our languages in Japanese was fairly complicated because we learned to read and write and speak. So we had to know all our ideograms, the kanji as they're called. And this was a full-time and hard job, although we did have our holidays when I went home to stay with my widowed aunt who looked after me. In fact, in 1942, I was for a brief time in the Dad's Army, the home guard. I was the private pike of Dad's Army. But anyway, we went on, we had lots of interesting people, but we were, as I say, at Dullidge College. But every day we took a train from Dullidge, West Dullidge Station to Victoria, and by bus to SOAS to do our courses. We had a Japanese professor called Yoshitake, who must have found it very difficult being Japanese when we were at war with Japan. And we had another teacher who spoke fluent Japanese, who came from Formosa, which is what in those days we called what is now Taiwan. And a little bit later, we had another professor who had been exchanged on the exchange of internees with Japan, Professor Daniels, and his wife, who was Japanese, she was called Otomi. So that's really it. That's all I have to say about SOAS, because we left in December 1943 just before Christmas, and I then joined the Army. It all led to me having a very interesting war. I served in Burma and the front line against the Japanese. Not my job to kill people, but to listen to them, listen to Japanese regimental radio. We had a wonderful set. I don't know whether I can't remember now, but it was called UHF or VHF. But every time we got to the new front line, one of us had to climb a teak tree and put the air in as high up as we could, hoping to be able to receive Japanese regimental radio. Unfortunately, although we tried for over two months, we were never successful. I think in a teak forest, it just wasn't possible. You had to have your aerial in direct line of sight with a transmitter, and that never happened. But it was interesting. And I also had a period later on in India when interrogating Japanese prisoners of war. And then finally, in 1945, after the atomic bombs had been dropped, I went to Singapore, the liberation of Singapore, and I was in fact the first British soldier for sure, a lieutenant aged 20, as interpreter, Japanese interpreter, learned to sell us for one of the 5th Indian division regiments, battalions. That was a very interesting experience, particularly interesting for me, because two days later, I met again my parents, who were prisoners of war, and I hadn't seen them since I'd been a schoolboy of 14, which is quite a gap to go from 14 to 20 without seeing your parents. And I hadn't seen much of them before that, because I'd been sent back to Europe at the age of five, and so I only saw them every three years. They had home leave in Britain, and I saw them then. Well, I mean, I hardly knew them, so it was an emotional meeting, but after all, you changed a lot from 14 to 20, and I really didn't know them at all. It was extremely emotional for my mother. She gave an interview to The Straits Times, the great Singapore newspaper, which had probably been only published for three days after being suppressed during the Japanese occupation for three and a half years. But anyway, I've had a very interesting life. Languages have been a great part of it, so sell us was an early start. I was talking to somebody, a friend the other day, talking about languages, and she said, why did we all end up having lots of different languages? Why didn't human beings from Adam and Eve just have one language? And I said, well, the Tower of Babel, but of course that's a mythical story, but it is strange to think that there are so many languages. I saw an article by Boris Johnson the other day who said that there are 300 languages spoken in London, which I find quite astonishing. I can't believe there can be 300 languages, but clearly if we're ever going to understand other people, we've got to be able to talk to them in their own language, and sell us obviously does a brilliant job at helping with that.