Marcia Falkender never told her own story. She almost never gave interviews. She never even made a speech, despite spending more than forty years in the House of Lords. She did write two books about her time as Harold Wilson’s political secretary, a job she did from 1956 until well after his dramatic resignation as prime minister in 1976, yet almost all we know about her has been supplied by her critics, who are legion.

From Falkender’s own books, we know that she adored Wilson and hated almost without exception the civil servants whom she felt stood between him and her. But the closest we come to intimacy here is to learn that she resented being unable to follow her boss into the gents, a