Perhaps it’s because I came to Pride and Prejudice through the Karamazov brothers and Heathcliff that I saw darkness in Mr Darcy. Or perhaps I allowed him to be darkened by a context unfair to foist on the nation’s favourite romance. However it happened, many years ago, I looked for a shadow and found it. Embedded in the light and sparkling novel I saw traces of an attraction to something – how can I put it? – deeply masculine, violent and powerful, which, if acted out rather than contemplated from an armchair, would be, at the least, disturbing.

Not long after I emigrated to America I encountered Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics. I read the book with eyes and mouth wide open. I couldn’t imagine anyone English, anyone I’d ever met, writing anything like this. I was looking into a mirror for the first time and seeing myself and my surroundings together. The Cambridge of Leavis and Williams seemed very far away.