And I feel this is the case with all feelings – that they need to be admitted, even if only to yourself. But it’s telling that an early chapter centres on the concept of veils; in a nod to the story of Salome, she presents seven types of “veil” that serve to occlude or reveal meaning in marriage, and the reader is conscious throughout that she has chosen to draw a veil over the most intimate elements of her own relationship, or at least to offer only selective glimpses in the service of broader arguments. For anyone who has experienced, contemplated or rejected it, On Marriage offers a fascinating exploration of an institution that, for better or worse, “continues to shape and carry our human story”.

Marriage is unknowable to anyone outside it’: Devorah Baum and husband Josh Appignanesi with their children in 2016. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

And both my books regard that situation as becoming increasingly common to all people who feel themselves the subjects of a globalised world. Particularly when it becomes tyrannical, when you really can’t afford not to be witty – then we know something must be up, right? Because marriage doesn't always bring out the best in us, it makes us wonder what the best in us might be.

DB: I think perhaps one thing that I would say to that is that in the British culture, Jews are conspicuous by their kind of emotional incontinence. And I will certainly say that this is perhaps one of the reasons why, for all its faults, I think a kind of openness, fluency, and willingness to describe things is necessary. It’s an argument about feelings and a sort of warning, I think, as well – that to misread or misunderstand feelings can be a dangerous thing. The point, of course, is that a marriage is unknowable to anyone outside it (and often to the people in it), so that only the couple themselves know where the lines between autofiction, truth and comedy blur in these retellings.The feeling of being European has arisen, I think, in particular amongst Jews in this country, partly because some of them, since the Referendum, have discovered that they can go and get passports – from Germany, Poland. With Josh Appignanesi she is co-director, producer and performer of the films The New Man and Husband, which investigate the intimate dynamics of the filmmakers' own marriage. DB: The humour that I’m describing is a response of people who feel language is slippery, because they feel both inside and outside the culture they live in and the language they speak. Feelings - especially 'negative' feelings; feelings as framed by modernity/history, technology, literature, art, film and psychoanalysis. I'm an Associate Professor in English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of Southampton.

EV: I think it’s really interesting, this idea of feeling different, but also belonging, in a way, this double-bind. I think it implies that people feel there’s a danger in humourlessness, which shows just how much savagery there can be in humour. DB: Feelings are contagious – you can be a winner in a society, and still be caught up in envious feelings. Devorah Baum is the author of Feeling Jewish and The Jewish Joke: an essay with examples (less essay, more examples). Of course, Jews have done what they have done everywhere also in the UK – which is to transcend class.Baum herself has tackled the subject before, in a different medium; together with her husband, Josh Appignanesi, she is the co-creator of two films, The New Man and Husband, documentary (mockumentary?