Bennett has written a yearly diary for the London Review of Books since 1983. It is printed in the first LRB of the year and this month it is conspicuously absent. In his October 2022 entry he wrote "these days I’m often confused by what day it is, not to mention the date." I took it to be self-deprecation but given that his mother suffered from dementia, that he is 89 years old, and now the absence of his diary, it takes on a darker tone.