I sometimes wonder if the lesson I received at that point about the destructive power of bad literature was among the factors responsible for my eventual choice of profession — to be a literary critic, you need to hold strong views on the merits or demerits of any given work, and care about upholding literary standards. If I’d been asked to review Peyton Place for the nuns, they’d have understood that I didn’t regard it highly, either as a work of fiction or a guidebook to the ways of lust.

Fortunately, Patricia was believed by her Catholic mother and Protestant father and supported by their ‘cheerful impiety’. Nora Craig, a lay teacher in a Catholic school, guided Patricia towards further education in a secular school of art and beyond. I hold strong views on Patricia Craig’s entirely meritorious book, which upholds literary standards, making apt references to poets such as Seamus Heaney, Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin and numerous other distinguished writers, while paying nostalgic tributes to her past where nostalgia is due, and missing no opportunities to exact her revenge on purveyors of ‘pietistic hogwash’.

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