'None of this altered in any way his (IMO) genius'

Indeed not, Jim: as, you will note, I have been at pains to say regarding my own "IMO" throughout all my animadversions against some of his attitudes and actions. Re your remark about how one could eventually get him to climb down, at least implicitly & up to a point, by sticking to one's guns: note again, in that lamentable John Brunner incident which I have described in such detail, how he refused to hear John out, but walked off with the conversation unfinished; which I always think an unforgivably rude thing to do — I have btw noticed it as a characteristic habit of Oxford men of my generation (I, needless to add, was at Cambridge!).