In the second volume of his memoirs, Messengers of Day (1978), Anthony Powell records a 1930s dinner party conversation with Dame Rose Macaulay. No, this lady remarked of some recently published novel (possibly Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust), she hadn’t read it yet: besides, adultery in Mayfair wasn’t a very interesting subject. ‘Why shouldn’t you think that an interesting subject?’ Powell wondered. Quite right, she hastily corrected herself. ‘Subjects are entirely a matter of how they are treated by the writer.’

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