“The first time I rang Roberto De Simone’s doorbell, I wasn’t sure what to expect. He opened the door in a dressing gown, his hair wonderfully dishevelled as if sleep had only just let him go, and on his feet two white socks and a pair of loafers that completed the picture with an elegance entirely his own — unaware, and all the more authentic for it.

That was Roberto De Simone. And that photograph — the one I never took — is perhaps the most beautiful I carry with me.”