GR OnlineWeeks ago, unable to bear the strain, I withdrew from all American news, sticking my fingers in my ears and screaming like a six-year-old when Trump’s face popped up on my television. I reckoned that I had already done my part – a postal vote mailed to California in mid-September – and needed no additional agitation.

MemoirI LIKE TO look in mirrors, a predilection I suspect I share with many others – all of us too afraid to be caught out in our hidden vanities to admit it. It feels innate, the biology of my eye’s...