Profession: writer

Andersen met his lifelong friend the physicist Ørsted while still a student. Thorvaldsen was one of his closest friends, as was Hartmann, a collaborator on several works. He met Bjørnson in Rome, and Balzac, Dumas, Heine and Hugo in Paris. Schumann and he fascinated each other (Schumann setting his words to music), but an attraction to Liszt was tempered by the composer’s showmanship. Wagner deeply impressed him; Brahms he found rather repellant. He and Gade visited regularly. Dickens invited him to stay, but the ‘bony bore’ overstayed his welcome, supposedly inspiring the character Uriah Heep.

Boswell attended Smith’s lectures in Glasgow, and discussed ‘The Wealth of Nations’ with him. In London, he met Sterne, was given a permanent invitation to breakfast by Garrick, and was with Reynolds and Franklin a member of the Turk’s Head Club (which he was only admitted to with the support of his hero and literary subject, Johnson; Goldsmith, who’d first met him in a bookshop, chaired the election). He met Voltaire and Rousseau on a trip to Europe, was mightily impressed by Boulton in Birmingham, and described Gibbon’s uncleanliness as “disgusting.” Hume described him as “very agreeable and very mad.”

Fuentes, Rushdie and Eco were friends and admirers of Calvino. He met Barthes, Lévi-Strauss and Queneau in Paris, translating Queneau’s work and enjoying a 13-year friendship with him. Perec was a good friend and fellow-Oulipian, while he knew Ginzburg and Pavese as colleagues at the publisher Einaudi, and wrote two libretti for Berio. He went to interview his hero Hemingway with Ginzburg, while Vidal and he were neighbours, living on the same street in Rome.

He met Harris while working in his father’s tailor’s shop. Durrell was part of the literary scene that Miller attached himself to in Paris, where Nin became his lover and Brassaï was a fellow-denizen of the night. Orwell met him en route to the Spanish Civil War, and rated his writing highly. He met Katsimbalis and Seferis in Greece, Eliot and Thomas in London, and Dos Passos, Anderson, Léger, Marin and Steiglitz on returning to the U.S. Huxley, Williams and Patchen were all friends. Bose visited him in California, where Steinbeck was a neighbour.

T. H. Huxley taught and inspired him. The Webbs involved him in socialist activities. Though he quarrelled with Shaw, they stayed lifelong friends, writing and sending each other copies of their new books. West and Richardson were among his lovers; Buchan, Bennett, Conrad, Jung, Stein and Gissing (a valued friend) among his correspondents. Tagore met him in Switzerland, while Henry James was a neighbour in Sussex (whom he rather cruelly parodied). In love with Gellhorn, he pocketed the fee for an article of hers. He disapproved of Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast, and fell out with Russell over pacifism.