The ballad of Connie and Babs

A few weeks ago executives were endeavouring to bring home to Conrad Black the full horror of his personal and corporate predicament, when a sight met their eyes. His wife Barbara, clad only in a leotard and shades, had swept into the room. For a moment nobody spoke. ‘Oh Conrad,’ Barbara Black proclaimed: ‘Let’s just get out of here. They hate us.’

Barbara Amiel was born in Watford, and she enjoyed the kind of childhood that, if survived at all, instils resilience through life. She wrote her first autobiography — it is greatly to be hoped that another will follow — as early as 1980. Amiel was only 39, but there was already plenty of ground to cover. She chose the same title — Confessions — as the French romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and her story was every bit as moving. Her parents had separated when she was very young, and her mother moved to Canada, and remarried.