Diana and me

Damian Barr, the author of Maggie & Me, remembers his late friend, the writer and editor Diana Athill

- Diana Athill

There’s a tin tray in my kitchen - round as a penny and decorated with watercolours of little chickens. It lives on top of a cupboard where it won't get bashed and only I can reach it. I smile every time I get it down.

It was a wedding gift from a woman I love, her ghost by my shoulder as I write — not that she had any truck with the supernatural, or sentimental. Which is not to say she was unfeeling, only that she saved it for her memoirs, as clipped and English as a country house yew. She was never shy of the shears.

Diana was not quite 93 when we met. I was nearly 33. It was just after 6pm on Wednesday 19 May 2010. The nation was waiting to see how Cameron and Clegg in the rose garden would work out and I was standing between two drag queens outside Shoreditch House members’ club waiting for a cab. I walked to the corner and there it was. And there she was - bolt upright in the back. The star guest for my literary salon that night: legendary editor turned bestselling writer Diana Athill.