Money, or the lack of it, is central to Hornby’s argument about why his artistic heroes were so prolific and driven to succeed. Dickens’ own childhood was, well, Dickensian: he was famously sent to a blacking factory as a boy; his father to a debtor’s prison. Prince, meanwhile, fled an unstable home environment as a teen to form a band in a friend’s garage.

Childhood poverty doesn’t explain the “genius”, but it does help us understand why Dickens and Prince, once they had made it, each took on an industry they believed was ripping them off. In Dickens’ case, he waged endless war on the plagiarism his works attracted in an age before copyright law. In Prince’s, a multimillion-dollar studio contract, with devil in the detail, led to him deliberately sabotaging his own work in protest, before changing his name to the bizarre, and entirely unpronounceable, “love symbol” in the 1990s.

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Yet even Hornby’s original insights get belaboured by authorial insertion. After giving us his two-bob’s worth on the arbitrariness of remuneration in the arts, he adds: “And yes, I know I’m in the top 1 per cent of earners in my profession, but I’m still entitled to ponder the economics of my situation.”

(This is the first time I’ve seen someone check their privilege using the words “but” and “entitled”, and it’s as tone-deaf as Gina Rinehart extolling the virtues of balancing the household budget.)

Coming to the end of the book, I found myself wondering about its audience. Fans of Dickens and Prince are unlikely to find many genuine nuggets new to them in the slapdash mix of biography and essay. Hornby’s appreciation is rarely sophisticated enough to constitute arts criticism, and some themes he does address are thoroughly short-changed – if you want justice done to the women in Dickens’ life and art, for one, you’d be better off listening to the sparkling erudition of Miriam Margolyes’ Dickens’ Women.

It feels, in the end, as if Hornby has written this one just for himself.

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