Laye was described by the legendary Austrian film director Max Reinhard as “that rare and Holy Trinity of the stage, a great singer, a great actress, and a great beauty”. She began in variety – a Gaiety Girl at 17 – and she never really left the West End, except, of course, for her sojourns on Broadway and in Hollywood. The first and last things we hear in this collection is the number that became her enduring signature tune – “I’ll see you again” from Noel Coward’s Bitter Sweet. She never did play the show in the West End, despite Noel’s implorations, on account that it was presented by Charles B Cochran who had paired her husband Sonnie Hale with Jessie Matthews, thus beginning one of show business’s most notorious affairs and ending her marriage. But she could not resist “the part of a lifetime” and played it across the pond to great acclaim. Rarely had a show title proved more fitting.

So what do we have here? Well, much that is familiar and treasurable, including the song that was written expressly for her by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein, “When I grow too old to dream” (in both her recorded versions, studio and soundtrack) which aches with nostalgia and shows off that pristine operetta voice of hers with its ingratiating portamenti and what can only be described as a charmingly old-fashioned way of drawing her audience closer in the hushed intimacy of the reprise. That was very much a stylistic gesture of the times.

But it’s the novelties and rarities here – many never previously released – that will appeal to the connoisseurs: wartime appearances with ENSA including a charged “Land of Hope and Glory” at Drury Lane in 1940 and “Love is my reason” at the Navy barracks in Chatham, Kent; a late appearance – her last in a stage musical – as Madame Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music at the Northcott Theatre, Exeter, where (despite muddy sound) she twinkles devilishly recalling her “Liaisons”; she does so again, this time with Harry Secombe, in a concert rendering of “I remember it well” from Gigi (she was 84 and remembered it very well); and a sweet impromptu sounding reprise of “If you were the only girl in the world” with Roy Hudd.

Most touching of all, though, are her last recordings in the studio. She was 91 and had lost none of her comic timing in a song by John Dalby, “Where have I put my glasses?” (her comic touch is too rarely celebrated) and an incomparably moving trifle, “Thank You”, where she effectively signs off from her loyal audience keeping it simple and discreet and, as was her way, so heartfelt.