John Freeman, who died in December 2014, just before his hundredth birthday, is remembered today chiefly for his interviews with the likes of Evelyn Waugh and Tony Hancock in the TV series Face to Face. But this was only one, short episode in a remarkably diverse and distinguished career: decorated wartime soldier, left-wing Bevanite MP and rising junior minister under Attlee, editor of The New Statesman, senior diplomat (high commissioner to India and then ­ambassador in Washington), chairman of London Weekend Television and, in semi-retirement, professor at an American university.  His private life was equally varied: an apparently compulsive womaniser, he lost his virginity at 15 to “an undermatron” at school and in adult life his innumerable lovers included Barbar