Marriage
Why must medieval mysticism be treated as a malady?
Medieval women – they were ‘just like us’. Except that they weren’t. Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife is the first popular…
The Christian view of sex contains multitudes
Lower Than the Angels (that is the condition of man, according to the psalmist and St Paul) is a book…
I’m engaged!
I slept only between the hours of 5 and 6 a.m, thanks to self-induced terror tactics. My son Adam stayed…
An ode to the builder boyfriend
Relationships are about compromise and no wonder so many of us come a cropper in this department when we don’t…
Women beware women: Wife, by Charlotte Mendelson, reviewed
The claustrophobic bullying in this story of a lesbian marriage that sours is so well done it’s nauseating
A marriage of radical minds: the creative partnership of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson
Fanny’s influence on her husband’s work was considerable, perhaps especially in the fine late novellas, rich in ironies about imperialism and the exploitation of South Sea islanders
My father was the best of England
I always think of my father at this time of year. In particular, I go back to the summer of…
We’re serviceless, stateless – and still off grid
You need a personal public service number to get married in Ireland, but in order to get one, you need…
A sea of troubles: The Coast Road, by Alan Murrin, reviewed
The sudden return of the liberated Colette Crowley to the Donegal fishing village of Ardglas stirs fear and resentment in the closed community
Shalom Auslander vents his disgust – on his ‘grotesque, vile, foul, ignominious self’
Long derided as ‘feh’ by his Orthodox parents, the American writer admits to being his own hanging judge
The trials and tribulations of getting a plumber
‘Please, I’ll do anything,’ I told the plumber. ‘I’ll give you all the money I have if you just come…
Why am I so unlucky in love?
One of my exes is trying to get me arrested. I discovered this when I received an email from the…
I’m setting up a ‘climate crisis hub’
‘We thought the house would make the most fantastic centre for climate action,’ I heard myself telling the cat rescue…
The struggle to book my wedding in Ireland
‘How does anyone young and stupid manage to get married?’ I kept shouting at the builder boyfriend as I pummelled…
A mother-daughter love story
In her latest memoir, Leslie Jamison describes her pregnancy, experience of childbirth and devotion to her baby, returning repeatedly to the dilemmas of a working mother
No one could match Tess, to Thomas Hardy’s dismay
Hardy’s 38-year marriage to Emma Gifford was notoriously acrimonious; but even his much younger second wife, Florence, never seemed to measure up to his fictional heroines
A strong whiff of goodbyes: The Pole and Other Stories, by J.M. Coetzee, reviewed
‘The cogs are seizing up, the lights are going out.’ As Elizabeth Costello clears her desk in this collection of stories, we feel that Coetzee may be doing the same
‘We are stuck like chicken feathers to tar’: Elizabeth Taylor’s description of the fabled romance
The Burton-Taylor relationship was either one of the greatest love stories of all time or a suicide pact carried out in relentless slow motion
Never the doctor, always the nurse: the fate of women in post-war Britain
For decades, undereducated girls were thwarted before they even started in the workplace, living in the slipstream of men and drip-fed with a sense of their own uselessness
A born storyteller
Instead of swashbuckling, we get the Parisian art world, trout-fishing, unhappy couples and surrogate parenting – though the 20 stories for children are full of adventure
A whale of a problem
Restoring the painting ‘View of Scheveningen Sands’, an art conservationist uncovers a vital detail, leading her to regret the pact she once made with her husband
The lonely passions of Emily Hale and Mary Trevelyan
Tom Williams describes how two women’s hopes of marrying T.S. Eliot came to nothing
Richard E. Grant’s tribute to his wife leaves us shattered for his loss
Richard E. Grant pulls off a feat here. The title is twee but the content isn’t. With unselfpitying dash the…
