James Beal sounds as if he’d have liked to be there.

Over bottles of wine at an Italian restaurant, they put their arms around each other and hugged like old friends.

But the Sunday lunch in west London was in fact the first time JK Rowling had met Maya Forstater, whose legal battle has had a profound effect on them both.

Friendships can form in advance of [and even without] meeting though. They can, and they make first meetings much easier than the cold open kind.

Rowling organised the lunch, at The River Café, Hammersmith, for campaigners, including the Labour MP Rosie Duffield and the philosopher Kathleen Stock, who have been targeted by the trans lobby.

As have so many people. The trans lobby is more belligerent than it is…well, anything else.

After pictures of the lunch started emerging online, trans activists began criticising the group as “evil”. They also highlighted that guests from a lesbian feminist activist group, Get the L Out UK, had attended. Rowling was pictured hugging one of them, Lianne Timmermann.

Hugging a lesbian??? Will she stop at nothing?

The Times includes a photo with a key. Even the Times doesn’t know who the amiga in the top left corner is. Maybe River Café staff or owner or the like?