At a recent gathering, I was delighted to be talking to one of the greatest actors of our times. I had known him years ago when he was just at the extremely successful stage and was interested to note how he had changed. He was slightly more glossy, certainly, but he had the same atmosphere around him, which, unusual for an actor, was one of high moral energy or even moral courage. Most actors I know, when off duty, have a bearing that is sheepish and apologetic, stricken even. A lot of them are miserable. (Not that that’s a crime.)

This one shone and he was keen to hear my news. I spoke of the pair of sisters at the heart of the novel I am writing who have been brought up to believe that one of them is “the kind one” and one of them is “the exciting one”. (Why do people do that? I have friends who were told as children one was clever and one was pretty and the so-called clever one became a fashion model just to spite the parents and the “pretty one” became an academic, and both are ever so confused.)

Ice broken, I hoped we might move on to Shakespeare, which was what I really wanted to talk to him about, and, more specifically, to kingship in Shakespeare, about which he could scarcely know more. I started to try out a little theory of mine inspired by a brilliant teacher I once had called Barbara Everett (the cleverest person I’ve met). Is it possible Shakespeare grew disillusioned with tragedy towards the end of his life — because nobody in his tragedies really learns anything? Cordelia, horrified at the harshness of her sisters’ treatment of their father in King Lear, says, “Mine enemy’s dog,/ Though he had bit me, should have stood that night/ Against my fire,” yet Lear himself never comes close to defining love and kindness in this magnificent way.

Was this disillusion the reason Shakespeare turned from tragedy towards the late romances?

But just as I was starting to tie myself up in knots (and not in a good way) with this notion, the great man began recommending a book he thought would benefit me. I had the frisson of being let in on a secret. I imagined some recherche-yet-illuminating work of French literary criticism or a philosophical inquiry into altruism. I visualised an ancient leather tome, the searching out of which would in itself contain a quest motif. Would it be, at the very least, a severely out-of-print novel, its dry and wood-smelling pages uncut? But not a bit of it. It was a self-help book, available from Amazon, which had helped his cousin.

“Great,” I said.

I googled the book on my phone. Its four tenets for life were: being impeccable with your word; not taking things personally; always doing your best; and not making assumptions. Could be worse, I thought. Yet the idea of not taking things personally troubled me for many reasons, principally, perhaps, because my feeling is it is the only really good thing about being dead. They can’t take that away from me, can they?

Project on mindfulness

The following day I retold this little exchange to a group of friends expecting them to be amused. “It’s quite something when people recommend you self-help books willy-nilly,” I said. “I mean, I practically write them. I mean, obviously, I don’t but, you know, I probably could, if I wanted to, and if someone else wanted me to, like, I don’t know, a publishing type or something. Was I not recently approached to consider a book project on the subject of mindfulness and did I not have to confess I was in two minds about it as I think living in the present has less to offer than allowing each moment to be imbued with memories of the past and anticipation of the future? That way, surely, you get three for one. Have I not written that we should try to behave 18 per cent more generously than we feel, but not more than 18 per cent or we will crack and then everyone suffers. Where am I going with this?”

“Slightly different,” one pal stemmed my flow, “but I was once asked out on what I thought was a date by a man, but it turned out that he just thought I seemed ‘very very lost’ and wanted me to join his Pentecostal megachurch.” Oh no!

“Sounds like having this book recommendation really got to you,” another friend murmured.

“Absolutely not. No, not at all, not really. I mean, maybe a tiny ... “

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t suppose you’d like to borrow Water off a Duck’s Back? It’s a guide to taking life in your stride ...

—Financial Times