Just then the phone rang. Actually, I wasn't working as I had excruciating earache. It had rung a few minutes before with a request to write an article for a magazine. Now it was ringing again and Dick Douglas, director of Hodder & Stoughton's Religious Division, was on the phone asking if I'd go to London to see him . . . on such occasions it seems that initially only the briefest details of the project are given.