Flat, 11

1/5 Hornton St.

London W. 8

16 March 1969

Dear Mamma,

I apologize for my not writing. I have not written anyone which is very bad. I have moved to a new flat as above. It is much nicer, in a pleasant and interesting part of town. It is another College flat, on the 3rd floor with these rooms: a sitting room, 18’*15’ with three windows looking east over Kensinton Church; a bedroom 12’ * 16’ with two windows looking the same way; a small bedroom 14’ * 14’, a kitchen and bath. It is quite nice and I am settling in slowly. I do a lot of work there. The only furniture I have is a desk, a heater and Dictaphone. A lot of shelves should come the end of this month and there I can move all the papers off the floor. It is about 20 minutes from the lab.

I am not sure I mentioned that the Neverne Square flat was robbed before I moved and rather a lot of things I rather liked were taken: a pot Linda had made and most of my jewelry and a lot of clothes. It was too bad. Also I am afraid your old Kodak 35mm camera which I had borrowed from you and I fear you will not get it back. I would like to ask if you could come visit me for a while in the near future, at Easter or during the Summer term, April, May or June? I would like very much to see you and it would be great fun to have you here. My flat is big enough and will soon be organized. You could see the children which would be good for them. You can have the big bedroom and I will use the little one. The flat is in Kensington which is quite convenient for most things. There are lots of things to do in London. I would like to introduce you to my friends, including a girl I am rather fond of. She is 39 and a director of a publishing firm, a self-made woman. She handles the foreign rights. If you can possibly arrange it please come.

Work is going well. We have done more in the last year than I did in the previous 15. I am afraid I have not yet leased however; I have just bought a computer for $10,000 (half price) to provide an instrument for my best assistant and do not yet have the money. Things are likely to be dicey for a while. I am busy writing papers, making electronics for our instruments and am even writing a little book. I would like to write another book. The papers are the most important.

I think Linus had a good time here, though I did not see an awful lot of him. He seemed to keep himself amused. I hope he comes back.

I have a secretary now and that is a great help. She is officially a Data Processing Assistant and we are teaching her computing, but mostly she is a secretary for me. [...] I hope your driving switch arrived safely. I am sorry about the other stuff. Please come if you can. I would love to see you here.

Much love,

Peter