I’ve just finished The Go Between, by L.P. Hartley, which begins with the timeless: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ It’s a line that has been endlessly appropriated, reworked and plagiarised over the years, and the perfect start to a book, so perfect that it carries the book for another 180 pages of a rather turgid study in English manners.

I have this theory that if you start strong and finish strong, you can get away with almost anything. The world forgets Tom Buchannan but will never forget Gatsby’s green light. With ‘Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul, Lo-Leeta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps…’ Nabokov launches us into the dismal soul of Humbert Humbert, and by ‘I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita,’ you almost feel sorry for the horny old ghost.