Once I made a perfect journey, the only time I ever flew first class, with ample space, good service and food, comfortable temperature - everything just right, and the destination happening to be desirable in every way. This', I remember saying to myself, 'is luxury'. And only a few pages into Jeremy Treglown's book the sensation of that experience came floating back to me. A book so well written, so impeccably researched, filled with so much affection yet never losing its hold on honesty, about a person as interesting as he was lovable: what more could one want?

I suppose when Treglown say , 'If you mention Pritchett today, you have to be careful to distinguish him from V S Naipaul or Terry Pratchett', he is not exaggerating, but how strange that is. In all the fifty-years of my publishing career (which ended not so very long ago),