Woody Allen may be past his creative peak but he continues to display a phenomenal amount of creative energy. Over a career spanning eight decades he has won or been nominated for major awards as a stand-up comedian, actor, screenwriter, playwright and film director, and has published well-received volumes of humour and memoir. Now, just shy of his ninetieth birthday, he’s publishing his first novel.

His reputation as a serious artist rests largely on a handful of distinctly personal romantic comedies made in his forties and fifties, in which he often starred opposite women (Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow) with whom he had an off-screen romantic connection. The series began with Annie Hall (1977) and came to a screeching, seemingly permanent halt with Husbands and Wives (1992). That movie was released in the wake of news that Allen had been having an affair with Farrow’s 21-year-old daughter, and the claim that he had sexually abused her seven-year-old one. It was an unusually high-minded audience member who was able to consider Husbands and Wives – with its portrayal of infidelity, marital breakdown and the appeal of younger women to middle-aged men – primarily in light of its artistic qualities.

Since then, Allen has largely steered clear of making films that might be viewed as autobiographical, but that hasn’t been enough to spare him further reputational damage. In 2018 his son Ronan Farrow – fresh from exposing the crimes of Harvey Weinstein in a series of New Yorker pieces that