RICHARD MAYNE, born in London, read History at Trinity College, Cambridge, and completed aPhD there. Among many vocations, he was a senior official of the European Union and apersonal assistant to its founder Jean Monnet and to the first President of the EECCommission, Walter Hallstein. He was for several years a co-editor of Encounter and iscurrently a film critic for the Economist. Since childhood he has messed about with boats,learning to sail on the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt towards the end of his war service, andsince then dinghy-sailing, racing and cruising in the Lake District, the Solent, the NorthSea, the Aegean, Chesapeake Bay, in a wide variety of vessels.