This was The Subversive Family (1982), by Ferdinand Mount, former political editor of The Spectator, described by Gilbert as ‘a curious looking academic work’ by ‘a conservative columnist’ that she would never have ordered had she known who he was from the start. However, the Mount thesis, that marriage protects and preserves families, and individuals’ determination to resist state interference and control, came as a huge relief, and in the nick of time. She is now happily married.

The Subversive Family does not, however, feature in Kate Figes’ 28 pages of notes and bibliography. After Gilbert’s lively, informal, romantic odyssey — and she does make her story entertaining, and the research palatable — it would be easy to dismiss Figes as stodgy and laboured, as she weaves together her 120 interviews with assorted couples, young and old, straight and gay, happy and unhappy, against a well-organised historical and sociological background. But although her book is indeed more serious, it is also more thoughtful, humane and authoritative. While the state of marriage as a conventional ceremonial or legal arrangement does not interest her much, she is thoroughly and hearteningly in favour of quasi-marital arrangements, not least as a source of security for children and comfort in old age. ‘You couldn’t devise’, she writes, ‘a more comprehensive and mutually advantageous state of being’. She deserves, but is unlikely to get, as many readers as Gilbert.

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