To Oxford, to talk about memoir writing. It’s the week after the publication of Spare and all the newspapers and social media have been full of it. I am resolved not mention Prince Harry, that the words ‘Prince Harry’ will not pass my lips. I’m interested in ordinary folk and struggling writers. My 45-minute lecture, which I deliver from a lectern in the polished-wood auditorium at Wolfson College, a banner advertising the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing to my right and a massive screen on which is projected ‘The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Writing about Living People’ behind me, begins with William Godwin, whose Memoirs of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman appeared in 1798.

It’s a keen audience. Many are at work on memoirs, worrying about secrecy and truth and the egotism associated with the genre, asking themselves: What’s so special about my story? Who owns the family story? Will I be sued? Will I be hated? Can you trust memory and can you guess what will upset people? (No and no.) In 1798 a distraught Godwin wanted to put on record how much he had loved Mary Wollstonecraft, what a soulmate he’d found, how