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results of the observations that the British expeditions to Africa and South America had made to test Einstein's theory: to see whether light was bent by gravity, whether space was curved, and whether it was this that we understood as gravity. My father came back from the university one evening carrying a file of papers under his arm and went straight to his study, and although I hung about outside to see if he would talk to me he did not come out or call me in. My mother, as usual, had to summon him to supper. I remember him

    in the dining-room at first not speaking; then turning to me and saying 'It's true, I've got the results. Light is affected by gravity.'
    My mother said 'I thought you might have some interesting news to tell us.'
    My father said 'Such as what?'
    My mother said 'Such as whether President Ebert has made a deal with General von Liittwitz.'
    My father said to me 'But there's still something not quite right. It's not in the measurements. It's in the language.'
    I said 'What is in the language?'
    My father said 'What is true, is usually in the form of a myth.'
    It is difficult now to imagine the interest that was in fact aroused by the publication of the results that seemed to confirm Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The earlier Special Theory had, as I have said, made little public impact; then for a time the General Theory had been no more than a conjecture. But there was something in the mood of the times, I suppose, that required a liberating vision - a longing in the aftermath of war for old patterns to be broken up - and it was felt that this had in some way been achieved by the confirmation of the General Theory. Also there was something romantic, I suppose, in the story of the conjectures of a comparatively obscure German physicist being confirmed at great trouble and expense by British expeditions to the tropics. Whatever the background, there were headlines in the papers the next day: 'Revolution in Science'; 'Ideas of Newton Overthrown'; 'New Theory of the Universe'. The evidence was, yes, that light from a distant star had been bent as it passed close to the sun; it was thus as if light had weight and mass; 'gravity' was a word for the curvature of the universe. The language used to describe all this might not exactly seem to make sense; the sense was in the mathematics. Language, it was suggested, was after all a second-rate way of trying to explain what in mathematics could be trusted.
    All the reports seemed to agree that something liberating had occurred; old systems in which minds had been trapped had been broken; thoughts were freed to wing this way or that round the universe. I remember kneeling on the floor of my father's study and trying to understand the newspaper reports spread out on the floor. I said to my father 'But I thought you said that, if the theory were proved, it would mean something quite different.'
    He said'Yes.'

    I said 4 - That everyone would see that they could never see anything much beyond the backs of their own heads.'
    My father said 'Something like that.'
    I said Then what has happened?'
    My father said 'I suppose it might be by seeing that they can't get out of their own vision, that people might get out.'
    I said 'And that was what you were saying?'
    He said 'Yes.' Then - 'You're brilliant!'
    I thought - What's brilliant? I said 'So they haven't got out.'
    He said 'Not if they don't see, they haven't.'
    I said 'That's difficult.'
    He said'Yes.'
    I remember my mother being somewhat grimly humorous during these days. She would move in and out of the apartment with baskets of groceries both for her own family and for others; she would walk with her shoulders slightly hunched like Rosa Luxemburg. It was as if she were battling against a world gone slightly mad: she even made jokes, which she did not often do. She said 'So it is light that has weight: perhaps it is that which explains the heaviness of these groceries!' My father would say 'Yes, my dear, you