We all have stories we tell ourselves about ourselves that turn out to be wrong. They aren’t always lies as such; they can be misrememberings, misperceptions, patter that ends up with the weight resting in the wrong places. For years, I put my ardent, but entirely unfocused, fascination with art down to the fact that my mum did an OU course in art history when I was nine or ten. I can remember the house filling up with glossy prints of works by Van Eyck, who I still love, and Delacroix, who I am only just now getting a taste for. I can remember the course numbers, like A101. I can remember looking at the booklets that came through the post with strange names: What could that mean?