David Lodge: Author of Nice Work and Small World dies aged 89

In the same paper, Laura Freeman said: “His dons-off-the-leash novels are written in whirligig spirit: corridor creeping at literary conferences, mistaken identities, sexy twins, missed planes, scuppered plans.”

BBC Two’s 1989 adaption of Nice Work included the first use of the word “clitoris” on prime time TV, Freeman noted.

Lodge wrote in his second memoir Writer’s Luck that he regarded the move “as a feather in my cap”.

In 1992, Lodge published The Art of Fiction, an influential collection of essays on literary techniques citing classic examples from a wide range of writers including Henry James, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.

Lodge’s other books included Therapy, Deaf Sentence and A Man of Parts, and he was made a CBE in 1998 for services to literature.

That came a year after he was honoured by France’s Order of Arts and Letters.

Speaking at the Hay Festival in 2015, Lodge admitted that he was running out of ideas and he was now writing exclusively non-fiction.

“Writers who begin early like I did probably reach their peak in their 40s or 50s,” he said. “After that books become more of a struggle and take longer to write.”