When this newspaper asked me to write a weekly personal column I said I’d do it, if I could refract it through the icons who shaped me, a different one each issue. The section of my 2022 memoir Busy Being Free that seemed to resonate most (for readers and me) was the year my marriage collapsed, 2016, in the time spanning the deaths of David Bowie, Prince and George Michael. How I feared that if we didn’t file for divorce in a timely fashion, the icons of our youth would keep dying before they were due.
I decided this on a beach in California, where, before I returned to London, I was still living. Most people I know vacillate between believing their lives are meaningless and believing that their feelings affect the ocean tides.
