(2 of 2)
Unlike some of his colleagues, Dunc Taylor does not line the walls of his office with the TIME cover portraits of his subjects. "I don't like to have them all staring at me, once I've had my say about them, "he says. Occasionally some underworld character whom Taylor knew back in his detective fiction story days drops by his office. He spends two and a half hours a day commuting to Maplewood, N.J., and whenever he can, gets back to Oxford for some sailing, carpentry ("a kind of hobby") and a renewal of his rearguard action against honeysuckle and other stubborn aspects of nature that infest his summer home.
A deceptively mild, small man with grey-blue eyes, a stubborn independence, and three daughters (including twins) all in college, whom he wishes he could see more often, Dunc Taylor often feels after a week of grappling with the news that it might have been better to have been a house carpenter. Says he: "If I had known what was going to happen to the world when I took that train out of Oxford ten years ago, I might have stayed there and tonged oysters. It's one crisis after another in National Affairs. The job never gets any easier."
Cordially yours,