Primo Levi in London - Twenty years on

On 11 April 1987, a day of bright Easter sunshine, the Italian writer Primo Levi fell to his death down the stairwell of the apartment block where he lived in Turin. The authorities pronounced a verdict of suicide. His death deprived European literature of one of its most refined and civilised voices. If This is a Man (1948), Levi's first-person chronicle of survival in Auschwitz, remains one of the essential books of mankind; no other work interrogates our recent moral history so incisively, or with such restraint.

Yet the English translation of Levi's book made little impression when it appeared in 1959; only a few non-Jewish commentators (among them the actor Anthony Quayle, who starred in a BBC radio adaptation of the book) were enthusiastic. Understandably, Anglo-Jewry did not want to be reminded of the Hitler genocide, and for most of his life Levi remained largely unread in Britain.

All that changed in 1986, however, when Levi flew to London on a week-long book tour. The tour, organised by his British publishers, marked a turning point for him. Breaking into the English-speaking market helped to establish Levi as one of the best-loved authors of our time. When his scientific memoir, The Periodic Table (1975), appeared in English in 1984, it reached the bestseller lists along with Dick Francis. British readers were curious to meet the softly-spoken Italian who had survived Auschwitz.

London was to be a glorious spring interlude for Primo Levi, the last of his life. On Saturday 12 April 1986, accompanied by his wife Lucia, he checked into Durrants Hotel in the West End. Though Levi was low-voiced and gentle - in every way unobtrusive - the staff responded to his dignified presence. He looked more like a trustworthy family doctor, in his V-neck pullover and tweeds, than a cultural celebrity.

Photographs had not prepared Sheila Murphy, Levi's UK publicist, for such an extraordinarily fastidious and delicate-mannered man. Levi transcribed every detail of his appointments into a tiny notebook. Later she noted in her diary: "Levi is very neat, very small; both serious and amused by everything that goes on around him. He misses nothing, no nuance of expression or statement, and he responds with great thoughtfulness and patience to whoever addresses him."

At Bush House, the BBC Woman's Hour presenter Sue MacGregor paid Levi the compliment of personally welcoming him at reception. During the interview, Levi spoke of the role women had played in the Soviet anti-Nazi Resistance, a theme explored in his Jewish partisan novel, If Not Now, When? (1982), just published in Britain. Listening to the tape of the Woman's Hour broadcast today, Levi's voice is beautiful: the pause for a fraction of a second, the eloquent answer. He also gave interviews for the BBC World Service and Radio Two.

Time passed enjoyably. He visited Harrods, Buckingham Palace and the Wallace Collection, and on Tuesday evening he called on the north London poet and publisher Anthony Rudolf. Ten years earlier, in 1976, Rudolf had published Levi's poems in English and was among Levi's most loyal British supporters. Rudolf toasted Levi and his book tour, but the evening was overshadowed by talk of the US attack on Tripoli earlier that day, 15 April, when American bombers aiming for Gadaffi had accidentally blown up the French embassy. Levi could not see how shelling Tripoli would serve to combat world terrorism; he feared a calamitous outcome to Middle Eastern tensions, a clash between Islam and the West.

On a free morning he visited Gaia Servadio, the Italian writer and journalist, at her home in Belgravia. Philip Roth was a frequent visitor, and Gaia had arranged for Levi to meet the American novelist later that afternoon. Levi said he was intimidated by Roth's fabled wit and sarcasm. ("I've only read Portnoy's Complaint!" he protested to Gaia.) Yet Roth was another of Levi's devoted admirers and longed to meet him. In fact, Roth was to have an unexpected influence in helping Levi consolidate his reputation in America.

The two writers met at 39 Belgrave Square, the Italian Cultural Institute, where Levi was to talk later that evening. The contrast between the New Jersey-born Roth, tall and aristocratically thin, and the short and slight Levi, was striking. Levi was unprepared for what he found in Roth, who turned out to be an engagingly gentle man. Roth, for his part, found Levi surprisingly sociable. ("With some people you just unlock - and Levi was one of them," Roth told me in 1994.) Somehow Roth was able to break through Levi's customary reserve and, as they said goodbye, Levi told him: "You know, this has all come too late." Only with hindsight did Roth see a prophetic note in that remark.

Levi's talk at the Italian Cultural Institute, "From the Lab to the Writer's Desk", was packed. For want of chairs latecomers sat on each other's laps. The audience listened rapt as Levi, by profession a chemist, spoke of science and literature. There was no incompatibility between the Two Cultures, he argued, only "mutual attraction". As Levi finished he momentarily regarded the crowded room, and then gave a brilliant smile.

Afterwards he and his wife were invited to dine at the Garrick. This grandiose London club was not to Levi's modest taste, but even more unfortunate was the company. Lady Powell, the flamboyant Italian wife of Margaret Thatcher's private secretary Charles Powell, was there. Another surprise guest was the newspaper La Repubblica's gossipy London correspondent Paolo Filo Della Torre. (La Repubblica, with its pro-Arab slant and suspect anti-Semitism, was hardly Levi's favourite newspaper.) These shiny Italians were exemplary of the 1980s Italy that Levi had come to dislike. In spite of the company, however, he was "quite confident at the dinner table", recalled Sheila Murphy, "and even dominated the conversation from time to time."

On 18 April - day five of the tour - Levi was interviewed by the Channel Four editor Michael Kustow. In a cramped room upstairs at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the audience was appreciative, and Levi amusing company. Kustow's impression was of a "slightly effeminate, catlike" man, with something angelic about his appearance. Kustow admired, but did not like, If Not Now, When? Nevertheless, Levi spoke engagingly of the novel; the conversation ranged over his other preoccupations, including his friendship with the Italian writer Italo Calvino, who had just died. What emerged was a fascinating dialogue, easily the most impressive of Levi's London dates. Primo Levi was talking to a man who himself talked a good deal - and this record comes as near as anything to the way Levi talked with friends:

Kustow: Your books grow out of the Jewish European experience of being the underdog.

Levi: I was never an underdog.

Kustow: But you were in Auschwitz...

Levi: The ones below me were the underdogs. I kept my human abilities. I never sank that far. Underdogs lost the capacity to speak, to articulate. An underdog would never be likely to write anything.

Kustow: But you have the knowledge of what being an underdog means. Other writers don't.

Levi: Perhaps...

Philip Roth was unable to attend the ICA talk. Instead his partner, the actress Claire Bloom, turned up. Afterwards, she handed Levi a long letter from Roth, which astounded and delighted him: having met Levi, Roth now said he wanted to interview him for the New York Times. Claire Bloom, who had not then read Levi's books, recalled that Levi radiated "considerable charm" in the ICA. During an interview for my 2002 biography of Primo Levi, she told me: "Most of all I remember Levi's expressive and unforgettably beautiful eyes. Oddly, they reminded me of Charlie Chaplin's. Chaplin also had these incredibly beautiful childlike eyes. Levi's eyes were clear and full of curiosity and life. Jean Rhys also had eyes like that - they're childlike, I say, and they remain with you until you die."

Primo Levi's travels that spring were not quite over. On 20 April he and Lucia left London for Stockholm. Their flight was delayed and, in the Heathrow departure lounge, Sheila Murphy craved a cigarette (previously she had refrained from smoking in case the Levis disapproved, but she could stand it no more). As she lit up, the Levis chorused "Finalmente!" before taking out their own menthol brand. Amid laughter, the Levis presented Murphy with a bottle of perfume, their parting gift to the warm-hearted publicist.

It had been an extraordinary week; Levi's schedule, though taxing, was unhurried and serene: he enjoyed the publicity. London, he later reported to Sheila Murphy, was "endowed with all the gifts of an illustrious past combined with modern efficiency". He had liked the red pillar boxes, the red buses and black cabs; the city's anonymity and reserve reminded him a little of his native Turin. "We have found ourselves surrounded by sympathetic, intelligent, discreet people: starting of course with yourself," he wrote to Sheila Murphy. "Many, many thanks."

The critical acclaim that had eluded Primo Levi for years in Britain was now his, and it overwhelmed and delighted him. If there had been any misunderstandings, it was because Levi represented an unfamiliar figure in the literature of the Nazi camps: a Mediterranean, rather than an East European, survivor. Still, he had been a welcome guest and people had generally liked him. His international reputation was greatly enhanced by this London trip; and now that Primo Levi was an unforgettable name in Britain, he decided to write all his future books with an eye to their translation into English. His London publisher was sure he would be back within the year.

But one year later, Primo Levi stepped out unseen on to the landing of the apartment block in Turin, and pitched himself over the railings three floors down. Death was instantaneous. Within hours, well-wishers, friends and relatives had gathered where Levi had fallen; they brought orchids and forget-me-nots; the floral tributes overflowed into the porter's lodge. Levi, a national monument in Italy, had died at the age of 68.

His suicide that Easter weekend of 1987 was provoked by a clinical depression, which was compounded by a number of factors (among them, fear of memory loss and guilt at having survived Auschwitz). Yet, however accommodating it is to see the concentration camp, or mental illness, as the explanation, the real causes for Primo Levi's death remain fugitive, because the suffering of those who kill themselves is private and inaccessible. Primo Levi's books remain, however, and they are a marvel.

Ian Thomson's biography of Primo Levi (Vintage) won the Royal Society of Literature W H Heinemann Award 2003