Will Charles Moore sue over book?

Charles Moore (pictured), the former editor of the Daily Telegraph and official biographer of Lady Thatcher, appears to have had his tail tweaked in Simon Astaire's debut novel, Private Privilege, a racy yarn set in one of "Britain's finest public schools".

Among the book's characters is one Charles Moore, who has a homosexual crush on a fellow pupil and gets into some criminal activities concerning a stolen painting. The London Evening Standard quotes the following passage: "Charles Moore... broadcast to anyone who cared to listen that he was in love with Dixon and would do anything for him, and anything meant anything. This was not just teenage love, first crush, but more like a deranged infatuation."

Anyone who knows Moore, a married man with children and pillar of the Catholic church, would see no similarities. However, another description from Astaire, an Old Harrovian PR man who looks after the interests of Princess Michael of Kent, is closer to the mark. "Studious and scholarly, Moore would easily be seen from the outside as a diligent student who would fit well into the public school system before heading to honours at Oxford [the real Charles Moore, an Old Etonian, went to Cambridge]... The air of neediness that followed him told a far more complicated story."

The Standard notes a similar case. In 2006, the crime writer Jake Arnott featured a character in his novel, Johnny Come Home, called Tony Rocco, a one-time big-band singer turned impresario and sexual pervert. When a real-life Tony Rocco, who also happened to to be a former big-band singer and a figure of immense respectability, found out, he called in the lawyers. Arnott's book was duly pulped. Will Moore do the same?