Only a bold and confident person would show up at the Blackfriars offices of the Times Literary Supplement in her mid-30s and propose herself as a book reviewer. This is what Rosemary Dinnage did in the 1960s, when its reviews were still anonymous. Intrigued, the assistant editor John Sturrock gave her a French book with a psychoanalytical theme, knowing her to be a linguist interested in analysis, if not already a patient.
What she wrote was “quite extraordinarily good, for someone who appeared never to have published a word before, let alone somewhere like the TLS”. On later reflection Sturrock could not believe that one so quiet and modest had made that move, unique in his experience: it must have sprung from desperation, because she