A degree of celebrity was thrust upon my mother and it’s only now I appreciate that she was rather eligible. “Well, you could say that I suppose,” she told me with her usual modesty. “But it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time”, referring to the unrequited loves, an ill-advised brief engagement and other romantic incidents that fill her diary when she was in her twenties. “We all worked hard, but our lives were guided by the pleasure principle,” she explains. “Whatever terrible things were happening, there were parties every night.