Obsessed by my unrequited love

DURING a summer of travel before going up to Oxford, I had booked an Italian course at the Institute in Florence, and on my first day there I fell in love.

I was unaware that this particular obsession, lasting two decades, would sometimes threaten my sanity itself.

It was her face which started it, very pale, framed with almost black short hair and the brightest blue-green stars for eyes and a broad laugh. My feelings about her were and are too strong to be described. She would go up to Somerville College, Oxford, and be my contemporary for three years. Even after my marriage, I could not stop loving (hopelessly, platonically) the beautiful Somervillian — who was destined to die in her early 40s. My wife Katherine also had a deep yearning for someone else. While we were still getting to know each other, she’d confided that she was painfully in love, had been for years, with a Fellow of my college.

And during the first couple of years of our marriage, she could not stop loving (carnally) the ‘other man’.