ABSTRACT
My address during the fellowship period, from July until the end of December 1962, was 541, Avenue Louise, in Brussels, where I had lived the previous summer as well. It was a romantic spot in several respects. My apartment was located on the ground floor of an elegant townhouse, amidst a number of private, urban manors, on a gated, cul de sac street, at the end of a fashionable shopping avenue; and it was adjacent to a three-hundred-acre park, the Bois de la Cambre/Ter Kamerenbos, named after a twelfth-century Benedictine abbey, which opened onto the Forest of Soignes. One of the previous tenants of my apartment had been Group Captain Peter Townsend of the British Royal Air Force, a notable pilot in the Battle of Britain during World War II, who subsequently served as Equerry to King George VI, and later to Queen Elizabeth II. He and Princess Margaret Rose had had an ill-fated, highly publicized romance, because, despite his distinguished career and his service to the British royal family, Townsend’s status as a divorced man precluded his being granted permission to marry the princess.
