How novel: Barnes finds new love with his publisher

Few contemporary writers have been as garlanded with awards as Julian Barnes, winner of the Man Booker prize for The Sense Of An ending in 2011.

His private life, however, has been tinged with tragedy after his literary agent wife Pat Kavanagh died of a brain tumour in 2008, aged 68.

But now, at 71, he has formed a close friendship with 53-year- old Rachel Cugnoni, publishing director of Vintage. By happy coincidence Vintage sells the paperback version of his latest novel, The Noise Of Time. Neither Barnes nor Cugnoni

(pictured), previously married to fellow publisher Nicholas Pearson, is inclined to speak about the relationship.

Cugnoni will be aware of the fastidious life Barnes lived with Kavanagh. They worked together until 7pm each evening, breaking for a glass of wine and cigarette at lunch, and after finishing their day’s work, Kavanagh would bathe and listen to The Archers.

If invited to dinner, the couple would phone to ask what was being served, so they could take an appropriate bottle from their cellar, always leaving at 10.30pm and sending a flawless note of thanks. According to the late Sir John Mortimer, Kavanagh was ‘ hugely attractive to everyone: very sexy’. She even had an affair with novelist Jeanette winterson, moving out to live with her lover only to later return to Barnes.

The episode may have left scars. In his 1992 novel, Talking It Over, Barnes wrote: ‘Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.’

His bond with Cugnoni sounds promising, despite the fact she lives in South London while he remains north of the river. ‘He has introduced her to his passion for Leicester City,’ I am told, and last year Cugnoni acquired the world rights to the ‘definitive’ biography of ex-City boss Claudio Ranieri.