The first is that it is never easy for men to grasp the depth and intensity of the love that can exist between women. Even the most heterosexual of men usually know that they have bonds of affection with other men that are indeed ‘passing the love of women’, even if they are not always comfortable in talking about them. Yet it is hard for them to acknowledge that women can have relationships which are as profound, partly because of men’s fear that women’s affection is in some way finite, and that the emotion which binds them to other women must necessarily limit that available for commitment to men.
This is not the stuff of penetrating biography. Perhaps it does not matter, and that ‘ladies of a certain age’, as he calls them, will not be reading anyway. Perhaps, again, it is only a matter of tone. Either way, though, it makes it a positive relief to get back to the bloodbaths of Blenheim and Malplaquet.
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