Victoria Four-Thirty: Cecil Roberts

Victoria Railway Station sees the going and coming of monarchs, men who have become famous and just men going or coming. Here are travellers from various walks in life - a famous but lonely violinist who succumbs to the temptation to adopt an infant born on the train; a once-famous actor not longer required, because of his Jewish blood, to impersonate the ideal German youth; a puzzled young King of nine years, puzzled because yesterday he was merely a boy at a school in England and today he is Your Majesty but has the greatest difficulty in obtaining permission to have his cherished rabbit with him; and a middle-aged bachelor who has come into a little money and has turned his back on brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews and for the first time in his life is going to live up to the "selfishness" which was attributed to him on the rare occasions when he was unable to satisfy their demands. These stories within a story give not only character sketches but an insight to the ramifications of European politics of the late 1930s and the effect on individuals.