I do not know Nicholas Haslam and do not move in circles – celebrity and high society – where I am likely ever to meet him. This, I think, will be my loss, for on the basis of his autobiography – which, like many who have penned such books before him, he styles a memoir – I judge him to be an interesting and engaging character. A sound egg, in fact.

There are those who do not share my view of Haslam, who do not see the point of him. It is unfortunate for him – perhaps even unfair – that it is from this sad assembly that most literary editors have recruited their reviewers of the book.

Redeeming Features (Jonathan Cape, £25) bears a title clearly inviting readers to conclude – or at least consider the possibility – that its author possesses some. Carping critics have judged that he does not, dismissing him as a frivolous flibbertigibbet, with nothing to his credit in terms of achievement save the accumulation – and this barely to be considered an achievement at all – of an address book stuffed with famous names.

But this is to ignore his valuable contribution to the worlds of interior design and fashion – important to the quality of all our lives – over many years. As long ago as the 1960s – as dressmaker Ossie Clark gleefully recorded in his atrabilious diary – Haslam and his partner Michael Wishart were called Hasbeen and Washout. Clark has long been gone to the great cutting room in the sky, but Haslam is still far from being a busted flush.

A.N. Wilson, a commentator usually to be relied upon, calls Redeeming Features “a truly felt, beautifully crafted, wise consideration of a full life, which paints an unforgettable picture of a vanished England and America”.

I agree. I also find the book exceptionally well-written, as might be expected from someone who keeps at his bedside (as reported in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday) a copy of Sybille Bedford’s novel A Legacy.

Here, for instance, is a sentence or two from his wonderful description of the sick and crippled Cole Porter at home in New York: “On the grand piano lay a stack of blank sheet music and a silver tub of sharpened pencils, but Cole would never again use them. One night, as he was carried past the piano, he paused. His little hand, simian dark against his pristine jewelled cuff, reached out to the keyboard and played a few notes, smiling as he did so. It was one of the most graceful gifts I have ever received.”

Of course, what has attracted most press attention to the book is its royal tittle-tattle, including the revelation that Haslam appears to have conducted a gay affair with Princess Margaret’s husband Lord Snowdon and enjoyed domestic intimacy with the young man, Roddy Llewellyn, who succeeded him in her favour.

I marvelled at the lawyers allowing such assertions, but I suppose in these days of ‘anything goes’ on the sexual front it can hardly be judged pejorative to claim that a man has had a gay fling. On the contrary, it is almost a badge of honour.