At her most disarming

I must declare an interest at the outset. Thirty or so years ago I went out, or walked out (or whatever the phrase is), with the author, until, that is, the night when, for reasons I have never been able to establish, she hit me over the head with a stainless-steel electric kettle. You may not have read a book review starting quite like that.

At the time all she said was, ‘You were being even more irritating than usual’, so, reading her memoir, I turned nervously to the chapter entitled ‘Men, Love and Sex’ but found no reference to me or the kettle. As a friend said of his time with an eminent woman writer, ‘Chap before me, he got a short story. I didn’t even get a sonnet.’ Reading Halfway to Venus, an inspired title, I find I now sympathise with the way he said it, part miffed, part relieved.