Only at the end of this short, unusual memoir do we learn why it was written. One unusual aspect is that it is not clear in places whether it is the ghostwriter, Christophe Bataille, or Rampling herself who is speaking. Another is that it is not chronological and tells nothing of her glittering screen career.

It is mainly about her childhood and youth, daughter of a Royal Artillery colonel (who won a gold medal in the 400-metre relay at the 1936 Berlin Olympics) whose career meant his family led a peripatetic existence.

She was very close to her only sibling, her sister Sarah, who died by suicide at 23. “My sister died a violent death. I saw my family sink into silence. I took flight and became a stranger among strangers,” she writes, which may explain her detached, distant personality.

At the end of the memoir, she writes, concerning Sarah: “It seems that these words were not the hard road but a poem that was reaching out for you.” Poetic in places, yes, but in other places not particularly inspiring writing.