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WE ARE in the thick of the so-called ‘party’ season. How is it going for you? So far, I have had a belter at one, blown out another and am looking forward to a few forays promising friends and fizz.

A good party can pep you up for days, buoyed by memories of laughter. But a dire party, or a lonely experience at one, can turn the breeziest socialite insular.

There is a welter of advice on party-going: what to wear, what not to talk about (Brexit, probably) and why to avoid fish canapés. All of which might be helpful, but can be patronisingly po-faced.

Most people have been attending parties since their first birthday and the etiquette does not differ dramatically from toddlerdom to adulthood: be polite to your host, don’t mob the star attendee, don’t consume so much cake/alcohol that you become sick, leave before a meltdown. But, above all, arrive with a positive party attitude.

The best party-goers in fiction are not necessarily those who host the most impressive shindigs — Jay Gatsby is a watcher, not a participant — but those most excited to be there. Tolstoy’s War And Peace begins with a party and uses social gatherings to introduce its principal players.

Natasha Rostova’s ‘tremulous’ excitement at her first proper Petersburg ball confirms her as an enchanting heroine. ‘She moved on almost fainting with excitement and trying with all her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that became her best.’

There is a harder brand of Eighties partying in Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, which begins with a chapter titled ‘It’s Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?’

Two generations earlier, Evelyn Waugh’s pitch-black inter-war ‘party novel’ Vile Bodies chronicled the debauched antics of Britain’s aristocratic Bright Young Things.

Wild child Agatha Runcible dies after hosting a cocktail party in the nursery home where she has been sent to rest and recuperate. Therein lies a warning. Partying, like everything else, is best in season. Out of season, rest up.