ERIK VARDENI didn’t want Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (Fitzcarraldo, £14.99; Tablet price £13.49) to end.

I am more with you than I ever could have imagined,” Gibson says in the poem, written while facing a terminal illness.

I’ve read a lot of letters in your column about unhappy marriages, especially long-term ones. My partner and I have been ...