Diana Athill, who has died aged 101, was one of publishing’s most remarkable editors, but in the latter part of her life, it was her own writing that brought her much-enjoyed literary success. In all her work, observations were clear-sighted and seemed truthful, even when they exposed her emotional frailties. She rose to the challenge, as Ian Jack wrote in the introduction to Life Class, of Jean Rhys’s phrase to ‘get it as it was, as it really was’. In an interview on the Web of Stories – Life Stories of Remarkable People, she talked about her best and worst moments