AustLit

'Maybe it was because I'd just been discussing Bram Stoker's Dracula, but when I was introduced to Murray Bramwell — he was a postgraduate student just arrived from New Zealand, I was a lecturer in English — I said, 'Welcome Bram'. Not a disastrous gaffe and Murray quickly and amiably helped me to make the adjustment but it looked for an instant as if I was cheekily but clumsily trying to invert his entire name (Welbram?) and this was enough to cause me a severe attack of the blushes to which my doggedly tan-resistant pallor succumbed in those youthful days with embarrassing alacrity.' (Introduction)