‘You make us all so happy. . .’

‘Thank you for sending the books so efficiently and in such good condition. Bit by bit I intend to order them all and then subscribe. It is a marvelous journal which I have been reading both at the London Library and Brooks’s. I have also just had the library at Westminster School, where I work, order them and apparently they were hand-delivered. Really wonderful business you have!’

‘True story: I was rattling in on Thames Link from Luton airport and my Easyjet flight from Inverness when a woman of a certain age – OK my age, maybe a year or two older – got in at somewhere like Harpenden. Greying, lightly tanned (the garden in France, I expect), sensible shoes, firm step and firm jaw . . . 50 years ago she would have been the vicar’s wife, now of course of ‘someone in the City.’ Only at Finchley Road did I notice she was reading the Autumn issue. And very engrossed too. At King’s Cross, she closed it (the pieces are an excellent length for such journeys), gazed with firm (again) satisfaction at the cover and then put it away in her (sensible) handbag. There you go!’