However, he did interview Mickey Mouse at Disney World in Florida in a delightful piece of whimsy commissioned by the Daily Telegraph to mark the 50th birthday of the world’s most famous cartoon character in 1978. “In my time I have played polo, flown a plane, boxed and done card tricks and I have even been a sorcerer’s apprentice,” Mickey told him and claimed that he and Walt Disney “owed each other equal debts of gratitude”. His first adult novel, 1963’s Tourist Attraction, was inspired by a Buckingham Palace garden party he attended as a reporter, which set him wondering...