I would like to apologise unreservedly to the estate of Barbara Cartland for spelling her name incorrectly. Barbara Cartland was a quite remarkable woman – by turns deb, aviatrix, playwright, campaigner for Gypsy rights, local politician, writer of Mills and Boon romances by the yard (23 different books of hers were published in 1983), and inventor of a style of make up that has only ever been surpassed by Tammy Faye Bakker.

You may have heard of her step granddaughter, Princess Diana. Cartland once remarked, “The only books Diana ever read were mine, and they weren’t awfully good for her.”