It is hard to believe so restless and powerful a man is dead. He visited me the Friday before he died, his bulk filling the living room of our flat in Old Marston. He had just returned from Malta, He talked briefly of retirement – a retirement for further work. On an earlier occasion I had urged him to put some notes together for an autobiography. Now he said he had no time for that, He had not kept elaborate notes or files, Also the idea struck him as presumptuous.
It was of course characteristic, Andrew was a man of power and conviction, But it was his sense of virtue which gave him strength and not some narrow parochial pride. In this special sense, he was probably the most self-centred man I have ever known. He was restless always, searching for the best way to put his enormous talents to use, But he was also supremely modest, even a bit embarrassed with the role he had cast for himself in history. Without such modesty he could never have remained what he was all his life, a civil servant.
