Amanda Sewell was born in 1945, the daughter of a distant graphologist who kept in touch by writing, and a mother who kept in touch. When a month old she went to live in Hamburg, where her father worked for the Foreign Office. Things could have turned bland. Brought up by others, abuse was de rigeur – thoughtfully pummelling her into a poetic character.

She escaped to grammar shcool via that stock-in-trade, the wonderful 11+ teacher, and began to exercise demons in small magazines just as she was educated at the University of Birmingham and East Anglia.

After a career in Fine Arts working in the V&A and Paul Mellon Foundation, her sense of catalogue raisonnés began to shape her life.

Amanda Sewell’s appearance in book form has been awaited for over three decades after multiple appearances in the London Magazine.