It is possible that my interest in this book was heightened by the fact that, in as much as I am anything, I am an aunt. I have 14 nephews and nieces, a step-nephew and -niece and 20 great-nephews and -nieces — as well as two stepchildren who I feel very aunt-like towards. A few years ago, one of my nieces was paid by the Sunday Telegraph to write about travelling somewhere with an aunt (shades of Graham Greene), and off we went for a day and a night to the Ritz in Madrid with a photographer and had a whale of a time. But I am not sure whether any of my nephews and nieces would write about me with quite the affectionate appreciation that Rupert Christiansen clearly feels for his Aunt Janet, whose death inspired this volume.

The Complete Book of Aunts is divided into sections such as ‘Mothering Aunts’, ‘Literary Aunts’, ‘Damned Bad Aunts’, ‘X-rated Aunts’ etc. There are two haunting stories by Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Gardener’ and ‘Mary Postgate’, in which the nephews die in the first world war. Both, in different ways, explore the bleak violence of mourning.

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