Plagiarism

In September 1961, a few weeks after the Berlin Wall was beginning to be constructed, I looked out of the window of our little office in East Berlin’s Schoenhauser Allee about 400 yards from the border and, to my astonishment, saw a bespectacled young policeman on his knees peering down a manhole. I went down and asked him what he was doing. He looked a bit embarrassed and replied: “Looking out for escapees”. I thought it was an amusing story and filed a few light-hearted paragraphs to London via the Bonn office. My story ran word for word in the next day’s Sunday Express headed “From Our Staff Correspondent, Berlin.” ■