When I was a two-year-old being “rambunctious in the dining room”, my father, a philosopher, seized the chance for some high-flown pedagogy. “Repeat after me,” he said, “charm is not a substitute for goodness.” I got halfway through this challenging precept then stopped as one who has stumbled on a joyous truth: “It is!” I insisted.

He was charmed enough to record this in his diary, where I found it decades later. Could he have been reading Jane Austen at the time? No one explored so brilliantly as she did the problematic relation of charm to goodness.