‘Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.’

Legendary literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote to Vladimir Nabokov of Lolita, ‘nasty subjects may make fine books; but I don’t feel you have got away with this,’ and it was only a Humbertian strain of mixed fortunes and persistence that enable us to read the famed opening lines of his masterpiece.