We hear so much about the dangers of skin cancer, or the more mundane problem of wrinkles and skin deterioration, that it almost seems hard to believe anybody would have a real nut-brown year-round tan, says Mary Killen, who writes the Spectator's Dear Mary column.

BBC: Can a fake tan ever be classy?

The obsession of the novel's characters with degrees of skin colour, or the lack thereof, threatens to force the heroine, a near-white black, to call off her planned marriage to a white jazz musician and instead to encourage the crude advances of a nut-brown man with three daughters.

ECONOMIST: Dorothy West