 Walpole 's taste for adventure did not diminish in his last years . In 1939 he was commissioned to report for William Randolph Hearst 's newspapers on the funeral in Rome of Pope Pius XI , the conclave to elect his successor , and the subsequent coronation . A fellow correspondent was Tom Driberg , whose memoirs tell of a lunch à deux at which Walpole arrived flushed with excitement from a sexual encounter that morning with an attendant in the Borghese Palace . In the weeks between the funeral and Pius XII 's election Walpole , with his customary fluency , wrote much of his book Roman Fountain , a mixture of fact and fiction about the city . This was his last overseas visit . 
