What the hell am I going to talk about? The presumption is, I think - presumably because we are all seen as being whores at heart - that authors should always talk about the book they are keenest to flog - which is invariably their most recent one. But that is precisely why I am stuck. For all its fascination, about which I can usually drone on for hours and hours and hours and hours, even I have to admit that the period of the Millennium was not exactly a GREAT one for romantic love. Of course, had I only eked out my narrative to cover Heloise and Abelard, then I would have had no problems - but alas, I did not. So what am I left me with? Well - there is always Fulk Nerra, the terrifying Count of Anjou, who discovered that his wife Elizabeth had been having an affair behind his back, wasted the entire city in which she had had her love-nest, and burnt Elizabeth herself at the stake. Or there is Edward the Confessor, who was subsequently canonised for - among other things - having stayed a virgin all his life - despite the fact that he had been married for much of it. Coming in at number one, however, in the most-romantic-man-of-the-First-Millennium hit parade, must be Peter Damian, a hermit whose writings would serve to spice up any Valentine's Day card. Women who slept with priests, he declared, were "titbits of the devil, refused of paradise, slime that fouls minds, blade that slays souls, wolfsbane of drinkers, poison of table companions, the stuff of sin, the occasion of death... harem of the ancient enemy, hoopoes, screech-owls, night owls, she-wolves, horse leeches... whores, harlots, kissing-mouths, sloughs for fat pigs, couches for unclean spirits, nymphs, sirens, blood-sucking witches."