Somehow I fell in love with Russian because there was a teacher at the school - that was something that I did get from one of the teachers - a man called Leslie Russon who was primarily a French teacher, but he happened also to have a Russian wife and he knew Russian pretty well, so he gave Russian classes as part of the school curriculum, which only a few boys took. So I got interested in that and then I got... just really I fell in love with the language, and met a lady who had grown up in St. Petersburg, and so she gave me private conversation classes in Russian, which I found just fascinating and she told endless stories about St. Petersburg. Of course at that time St. Petersburg - we considered it as something very remote and historic, never dreamed that we would hear that name spoken again as attached to a living city.

[Q] And... you actually sit down and translate Vinogradov. Am I right?

That's right. Vinogradov was a Russian number theorist who wrote a book on number theory which I translated into English just for my own amusement - I still have it somewhere here on the shelf - and with loving care I went through the whole book. So I was always delighted to have not too demanding tasks to do. Just as today I love to fold pages for the Running Club newsletter, which is what I was doing this morning - it was the same with translating Vinogradov. I'd never imagined that I would publish it: it was just for fun.

[Q] But, the fact that you're now, what, 14, 15 years old, studying Vinogradov by yourself.

That was a little later. I think the Vinogradov was probably when I was 16.