She was reading and I asked her what she was doing. After a moment’s hesitation she asked if I would like to hear the story. Of course I said yes, so she turned back to the first page and began. I have seen the book so often since that I must be careful not to invent a memory of how it looked on that first occasion. But it was Professor E. V. Rieu’s translation of the Odyssey, the first volume of the Penguin Classics of which he was General Editor, bound in the all-over brown which was the initial livery of the series.