Theirs happened late and lasted till his father died; his – to the Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones – was precipitate and briefer.

You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly.We meet the grotesque teachers at his first boarding school and then the dons of Oxford, one of whom he marries when he is just twenty years old. The princesses, dons, paedophiles and journos who cross the pages are as sharply drawn as figures in Wilson’s early comic fiction. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy.

At every turn of this reminiscence, Wilson is baffled by his earlier self – whether he is flirting with unsuitable lovers or with the idea of the priesthood. We meet his father, the Managing Director of Wedgwood, the grotesque teachers at his first boarding school, and the dons of Oxford - one of whom, at the age of just 20, he married, the renowned Shakespearean scholar, the late Katherine Duncan-Jones. The book begins with his heart-torn present-day visits to Katherine, now for decades his ex-wife, who has slithered into the torments of dementia.

He’s respectful about Katherine and about his mother, to whom he grew close in her old age and widowhood. When he learned that his wife Jean had arranged for baby Andrew (sick in hospital) to be baptised, he was furious. N. Wilson's exquisite memoir tells the story of the wife he fell for as a student then betrayed - and the lifetime of lust and longing that led to a deeply poignant ending. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. As for joie de vivre, she had, her son reports, “a greater capacity than anyone I ever met to squeeze discontent from the happiest of circumstances”.