I was worried about Doris Lessing's Martha Quest series, partly because the heroine was treated with so conscientious a harshness, so honorable a lack of self-indulgence that she gave the impression of being a repellent person; and partly because the discipline of an overtly political framework destroyed a great deal of the writer's intuitive flexibility. With these short stories, under the title The Habit of Loving, I am no longer in any doubt whatsoever that Mrs Lessing is one of the best writers in England, male or female.

There are seventeen stories in the books, two pretty long and the rest fairly short. The title story is about an ageing theatrical rake who marries a young actress. His heart is broken when, after an affair with a partner younger than herself (Mrs Lessing, mistress of the intuitive art of knowing-and-not-knowing, merely lets us sense what the trouble is...