To have been a global household name since one’s early teens is an experience ordinarily confined to child stars and sporting protégés. The few who owe their fame to their parents’ jobs belong to an even smaller category; those whose celebrity endures to the age of 39 are fewer still. To owe it more to the work of one’s mother rather than one’s father places Chelsea Clinton in a category so vanishingly tiny, she may well be its only member.

I have interviewed Chelsea before, and also Hillary, but never met the two together. What has struck me most about both was how temperamentally ill-suited they seemed, in many ways, to the glare of media attention. They are two of the most guardedly private public