ABSTRACT
I outlined my first experiences of overseas meanderings in Chapter 10 with my attendances at the International Congresses of Radiology in Zurich (1934) and Chicago (1937). There was only one more foreign adventure before the war and this must be recorded from memory as all the paperwork has disappeared. Some time around 1938, I received a most surprising invitation to spend a few days at the Curie Institute in Paris, to discuss with the staff there the acute problems of the dosimetry of radium gamma rays. To suggest that the invitation was a complete surprise was indeed a gross understatement; for me to be asked to go to the fountain-head of radium studies and talk about radium dosimetry seemed quite beyond my imagination. In the end, I suppose vanity overcame modesty and the invitation was accepted. Here I made a very serious mistake indeed. The letter of invitation was, of course, written in French and, in a further fit of vanity, I asked the Department secretary, who spoke fluent French, to translate my reply before typing it. The end result can be imagined. I duly took the through train from Waterloo to Paris (no Channel Tunnel but trains then crossed the Channel uninterrupted, by ferry), and presented myself at the Curie Institute. My welcome there was tremendous and most friendly, from the girl on reception to the Directeur himself, the great Antoine Lacassagne, everyone naturally speaking in fluent colloquial French. In modern terms, my own French may have been described as rather poor GCSE level. The technical part of the visit was quite a success, with a series of meetings and discussions with the Institute staff, all convinced I was fluent in French. In fact, I managed quite well with the cooperation of a Spanish visitor who spoke some English and German. I tell only one clearly remembered story which older radiologists who knew Antoine will appreciate. I stayed for the weekend in Lacassagne’s 132apartment in Montparnasse, a delightful experience in itself. When I was leaving, he called a taxi to take me to the Gare du Nord and I quite clearly heard him whispering to the driver that I was running late. This was not entirely true but it was Lacassagne at work. Anyone who has driven in Paris will appreciate the reactions of a French taxi driver and the subsequent 20 minutes of terror which followed.
