Behind a black and shiny door in west London, but one with no number on it, there lives the man with a chequered past as a prime minister of the United Kingdom. Whatever he achieved, he will be remembered for taking us out of the European Union, in the same way that Anthony Eden is judged on one big failure – Suez.

A week before we meet at this terraced house, I spend ten hours quartered in an opaquely windowed room at his publisher’s office reading the secret proofs of David Cameron’s hugely anticipated memoir, For the Record. On every page, I hear his good-humoured, pragmatic, occasionally exasperated voice. This afternoon, it is, nevertheless, faintly surprising to see Cameron in the flesh three years