Romance
Love in a cold climate: Snow Country, by Sebastian Faulks, reviewed
In the months before the outbreak of the first world war, Anton Heideck arrives in Vienna. Family life offered him…
The fossil-hunting is more interesting than the sex: Ammonite reviewed
Ammonite is writer-director Francis Lee’s second film after God’s Own Country, one of the best films of 2017, and possibly…
One night in the backwoods
The man I met in the moose-hunters' bar, and what happened between us
How the 'dating apocalypse' led me to vajazzle my armpits
Why I went looking for love in the armpits of strange men
Neil Jordan: as seductive a novelist as film-maker
The first and most important thing to say about The Drowned Detective is that it’s a very good novel and…
The sad decline of the teenage snog
Sometimes I sit my nieces down and treat them to tales of dating in the dark ages, before iPhones arrived…
Dear Mary: Must I have name badges for guests at my wedding?
Q. My husband-to-be and I both work full time. We are getting married from his family HQ and his kind…
How common is adultery? Much more common than getting caught
How many cheats? More data on members of extramarital dating site Ashley Madison were put online. How widespread is adultery?…
The uglier the man, the uglier the attitude
The uglier the man, the more he demeans women
Just how tough a sentence was 14 years for Libor-rigging?
Rogue traders Former UBS trader Tom Hayes was jailed for 14 years for rigging the Libor market. How long could…
Dear Mary: How can I flirt on the train when a man who knows my old habits is watching?
Q. Travelling on a train recently I happened to notice two former acquaintances, sitting together and very nearly opposite me,…
Dear Mary: My husband has shaved his head for a newspaper feature
Q. My partner, a leading political commentator on a national newspaper, recently agreed to shave off his hair at the…
The smartphone is like having a singles bar in one’s pocket 24/7
An American stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari, who usually performs in Los Angeles and New York, has found time to conduct…
Tinder went looking for fresh flesh – and accidentally found me
Can mobile dating apps move beyond the promise of a one-night stand?
Dear Mary: How I can I avoid being invited to any more country house weekends?
Q. Someone I was at university with but hadn’t seen much of over the ten years since invited me to…
Dear Mary: How can I lie about my age and still use my Senior Railcard?
Q. I was not brought up in England and don’t appear in Who’s Who. This means that there is no…
I wouldn't want to be a girl in the age of Tinder
Romance is being killed off by the brutal marketplace of dating apps such as Tinder
The rise of ‘living apart together’ – and why I’ve stopped doing it
The rise of ‘living apart together’ – and why I’ve stopped doing it
I swam up to a beautiful girl on the beach, and my life changed
I’m writing this from Portugal, where I’m staying with my old friend Sean Langan. His family has owned a farm…
Dear Mary: Learning to love a man who whistles through his nose
Q. What can you do when disorganised friends say they would love to come to a concert with you but…
What’s the point in being married if I can’t feel superior to my single friends?
I’m due to speak at an Intelligence Squared debate on Saturday and I’m worried that I might be on the…
Porn-agains: meet the middle-aged men - and women - warped by internet porn
It’s not just the young whose expectations of sex are warped by dirty videos online
L.P. Hartley’s guide to coping with a heatwave
Those of us who have been struggling to endure the recent heat should turn to L.P. Hartley’s classic coming-of-age novel The…
Right-wing women are sexier
A lust that dare not speak its name
Not quite romantic fiction, or literary fiction, or commercial fiction – but still quite good
Elements of Raffaella Barker’s new novel, her eighth for adults, suggest commercial fiction: a narrative that oscillates between the aftermath…
