On May 17th 1944 Ernest Hemingway arrived in London, assigned by Collier’s magazine to cover the Allied invasion of France, now less than three weeks away. He was 44 years old but seemed much older, and felt that the luck that had kept him alive through two wars would likely not continue through another. Hemingway V
‘Nothing is mine’, she [Mary Welsh] wrote. ‘The man is his own with various adjuncts: his writing, his children, his cats. The strip of bed where I lie is not mine’. But she stayed. ibid.
The Old Man and the Sea he wrote in just eight weeks. Hemingway VI
For many readers A Moveable Feast, a combination of what had really happened and what Hemingway wished had happened, would be his final masterpiece. ibid.