Dear Mary, from Matt Hancock: after an eventful year, how should I get in touch with old friends?

From Lady Antonia Fraser

Q. I enjoy getting readers’ letters, but there is one category I am at a loss how to deal with. These are from readers who inform me that in another life, another incarnation, they were one of my historical characters, their present lives being generally very different. Most striking was the vicar’s wife who wrote to me after reading my King Charles II: ‘I am now the hard-working wife of a clergyman but in another life I was that naughty minx Nell Gwyn.’ Occasionally there has been aggression: ‘How dare you write about my wife, Mary Queen of Scots?’ signed ‘formerly Lord Darnley’. A great many people seem to have once been Marie Antoinette. Should I answer them as they were — or as they are? For instance, ‘How was the guillotine for you?’ vs ‘Did you enjoy my book?’

A. You might reply that it must be tiresome for them to read inaccurate representations of their own past lives and that it would be sensible for them to commit to paper their own recollections before they find themselves in another incarnation.