I am celebrating my last chance to read fiction and tracing a decade of development by rereading The Alexandria Quartet. It appears that all that registered on my twenty year old mind were instances of aberrant sexual behaviour- child brothels, 'inversion', Pursewarden's incestuous passion for his sister and a multitude of convoluted and diverse extramarital relations. Questions of politics and ethics passed me by, (or at least made a very shallow impression) although on this current read they seem to be the most salient things- Mountolive's conflict between duty and personal affection, Pursewarden's suicide to escape same (or was it), the venal and eminently bribeable figure of Memlik Pasha, the prospect of Egyptian independence and the complicated relations between the Egyptians, French and English associated with it. I'm fascinated, looking at the pre-Israel middle East: a world which vanished at the end of the second world war, a commercial and social disposition of forces which has gone forever.

The romance element, on the other hand, strikes me as tedious and embarrassing this time around.Perhaps my interests are maturing- am I past the stage of looking up cunt in the dictionary and giggling? Or is it a corollary of marriage that I have stopped scanning the written page for references to Love, in the same way I have stopped (more or less) scanning the material world for prospective lovers?