I know the exact day when my future life as a critic was set on its course, because I still have the ticket stub to prove it. It was 5 June 1992 — seat D4 at the 8.15 p.m. screening, to be precise — when I went to the Curzon Phoenix cinema in central London with three schoolfriends to see what would become my all-time favourite film (and, subsequently, book), Merchant Ivory’s Oscar-winning masterpiece Howards End.