- which in this case means, read Matzneff's "La prunelle de mes yeux" ("The apple of my eye"), his own diary of the affair, published 30 years ago. Vanessa was 14, not 13, to start with.

The diary is the account of a passionate (mutual) love affair; there is, for example, none of the unpleasant cynicism you find in the letters of Henri de Montherlant (member of the Académie Française) and Roger Peyrefitte.

Matzneff is not a pedophile, but he has been open about his interest in adolescents below the age of 15 (the title of one of his books) since the early 1970s.