Romantic love has spurred a million pens to pour out passion and longing, but conjugal love has never been considered romantic. 'Successful marriages', wrote Lord David Cecil, 'have seldom inspired successful poetry.' Bel Mooney has set out to prove him wrong in a fascinating and entertaining book on love, harmony, betrayal and forgiveness, for married couples and would-be couples alike.This richly varied anthology follows the course of marriage from theories of Bertrand Russell and Sydney Smith's, to proposals, wedding days - and nights - the domesticity brought by daily life and the arrival of children, infidelity and forgiveness, up to the sad inevitability of the death of one spouse before the other. It will fascinate anyone interested in what Bel Mooney calls 'one of the greatest tests of character any of us have to face.'