Meanwhile many key things happen in the bath – hot baths for an abortion, an LSD trip, bath time with new baby. Meg’s marriage silently breaks up in the bathroom as both partners gradually resent the other’s intrusions – “Neither of them could say, `I want a door on the bathroom,’ because it was obvious that it would be tantamount to saying, `I want a divorce’ “.The cost of Meg’s obsession grows steadily higher, but Diski holds you close in, so that Meg is never an object of pity or scorn, her single- mindedness is indeed admirable: “You only had to know what it was you really wanted,” as she says to herself. Like other stories in the collection, this stands poised at the edge of satire, yet the perceptive nature of the detailing keeps the characters well within the realms of the possible.Jenny Diski’s writing has an intellectual assurance which does not, however, inhibit the emotional content. Although one or two of her tales are essentially cerebral games, essays in irony, such as the opening story about a princess and cubism, on balance she is clever without being dry. The woman who, experiencing intense pleasure for the first time, suddenly realises how dreary her life has been; the woman so possessed by irrational jealous fears that she destroys a happy relationship – these are real predicaments of trapped people.Her female protagonists find themselves floating in worlds over which they have little control, until eventually they are provoked into making some defiant stab at taking action.

When the mother of a teenage girl is suddenly asked those dreaded questions about sex and drugs, she feels herself sliding into panic: “Constance felt like dirty water swirling down a plughole. She could see what was coming, but what was to be done about it?” Desperately, she clutches at pragmatism rather than rectitude – and teaches her daughter how to roll a joint. Another woman, who becomes consumed by anxiety every time her MOT approaches, finally experiences a moment of clarity and intuition and simply sells the car.These drastic decisions are characterised by Jenny Diski’s deadpan, penetrating humour and delivered with the matchless timing which is her stock-in-trade. The cracked solutions devised by her characters do in the end answer to a certain internal logic, and, in their circumscribed lives, each flags up a small individual freedom that has been won.. Towards the end of her life, when she was not very mobile and drinking heavily, Barbara Hepworth would take a sleeping pill and then light a last cigarette in bed. The pill took 15 minutes to knock her out, the cigarette 10 minutes to smoke.

One night in May, 1975, the inevitable happened and she was burnt to death, aged 73. Since then, would-be biographers have been deterred from tackling the life of Britain’s – arguably the world’s – foremost woman sculptor by her Cerberus-like son-in-law, Sir Alan Bowness. The former Director of the Tate Gallery is not only married to one of her triplets, Sarah, but is her executor. Before her death Dame Barbara spoke to him about her biography, but for 20 years it has not been forthcoming. So it was brave of Sally Festing to press ahead with this unauthorised account, and decent of Bowness to give her permission to reproduce his mother-in-law’s work and words.

The result, although marred by stylistic lapses, is a revelation. Thanks largely to 70 interviews and a sympathetic sifting of many of the sculptor’s letters, a moving portrait emerges of a driven, ultimately fulfilled but rarely happy woman, who decided early on it was best to “devote oneself to work quite ruthlessly. My idea is to play it hard.”
Her family, studio assistants, dealers and friends had their admiration and affection for her stretched to breaking point: when, for example, she signed up with the dealers Gimpel Fils, she sent them an 11-page letter about the draft contract. Much of this philosophy came from her sternly ambitious but loving father, who became chief surveyor of Yorkshire at 40. He also helped inspire her lifelong love affair with landscape by taking her with him on trips around the country. At school, Barbara was exceptionally clever and diligent, excelling as much at the piano as at art.