There is the late famous American film star Elizabeth Taylor and there is the (also late) distinguished English novelist Elizabeth Taylor, inhabitant of Buckinghamshire. David Baddiel, with uncharacteristic perceptiveness, has described her as the literary link between Jane Austen and John Updike. And Kingsley Amis, no less, once called her the best lady writer in England in the 20th century. Good on yer, Kingers! Two of her best-known novels, Angel and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, have been done on television – but there is another, A Game of Hide and Seek, which I consider her best – certainly the best novel about love ever written. Back in 1975, shortly after her death (agonising, from throat cancer), I decided to try to write an article about her for the CIA-funded magazine Encounter, now defunct. Its then editor Anthony Thwaite (an old colleague from BBC Radio Features – the last man...
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