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Enter Mr Bates. Mr Bates is the bowel specialist who operates with Mr Wong in cases of ovarian cancer, the pattern of whose metastases typically involves the bowel. A former Rhodesian, Mr Bates is large, alternately bluff and jovial; he belongs to a Scottish malt whisky fraternity. I first met him …

Love-making is never simply pleasure. Sex manuals or feminist tracts which imply the infinite plasticity of position and pleasure, which counsel assertiveness, whether in bed or out, are dangerously destructive of imagination, of erotic and of spiritual ingenuity. The sexual exchange will be as com…

Time and time again that evening, it was I who encountered the limits of my prejudices and inhibitions, not he. Champagne was the only drink, and the food was an initiation into sensual rites in which I had not until then participated—oysters, turbot, lemon soufflé. Patrick converted me before the …

[...] On this particular occasion, I was aware of an intense aura emanating from someone whom I had never seen before, an intense, sexual aura, aimed precisely and accurately at my vacant being. “A man,” I wondered, “could there be a man in this meeting?” He looked weather-beaten, his flat, lined f…

However satisfying writing is—that mix of discipline and miracle, which leaves you in control, even when what appears on the page has emerged from regions beyond your control—it is a very poor substitute indeed for the joy and the agony of loving. Of there being someone who loves and desires you, a…