Other times however, in less rancorous humor, he’d admit at least the possibility of motives besides money for Julia’s behavior, and he’d speculate on what they might be.

“Could she be punishing me for not offering something more serious all those years ago?” he said on the phone one morning. “Not pushing her to dump the boyfriend and ride off into the sunset with me? I know things fizzled out between her and ­Gerald Woolley in the end anyway . . .”

I waited while he reflected on this.

“So actually maybe that’s what she’s angry about,” he mused. “Not my casual attitude in itself, but the fact that our fling screwed up her relationship with the guy she might have married. Do you think that could be it?”

“It’s possible . . .”

“I was definitely careless about people’s feelings in those days. It never occurred to me not to make a move on someone just because they were involved with someone else. And then as soon as I was bored I’d cut out. That was the code back then: every man for himself. Every woman, too, by the way. And Julia certainly gave the impression of being as tough as anyone else, in that department. But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t such a great code anyway. I’m certainly open to being persuaded that it wasn’t. I think I half-knew it was problematic even at the time, though I won’t pretend that slowed me down. The truth is I regret a lot of things I did when I look back. I could be charming when I wanted, and I’m pretty sure I was fun and interesting to be around. But I wasn’t kind. I wasn’t interested in kindness. Kindness was for people who couldn’t get laid, in my book. Sex was what mattered, not being kind. Maybe that’s what I’m really being punished for, karmically speaking . . .”

On the legal front, meanwhile, things were moving fast. Within days of his father’s application, a temporary injunction was granted against publication of Julia’s book. Renata, who shared the high-principled, somewhat pugnacious temperament of that vanishing generation, saw this as a challenge to her ­integrity as a publisher, and vowed to fight it. A court date was set. Sir Alec and his team mapped out a dual strategy, mustering arguments in readiness for a trial, if it should come to that, while also taking steps to expedite their preferred solution, which was to get Renata to back down before proceedings began.