There’s a song I remember from my childhood that begins: ‘Boys cry/When no one can see them.’ It matched a heartbreak story with an incongruously jaunty tune. On YouTube you can see singer Eden Kane performing it in 1966, exchanging flirty grins with girls in the audience, as though to endorse its message. It marked the end of his pop stardom. The song peaked at number eight in the charts, and he never had another hit. But however disappointed he may have been, I bet Eden, who wore a leather jacket and looked rugged in a fake American way (he lived in Croydon), never let the fans see him cry. 

Fashions in masculinity change, though. This summer numerous boys, and men, have been crying publicly. The Euros, Wimbledon, the Olympics – each has presented us with the spectacle of sportsmen weeping. Footballers on the losing side collapse to the ground when the final whistle is blown and cover their eyes as their shoulders heave. An Olympian stands on the podium (yes, he’s won a medal but only a silver one) barely able to hold on to the flag draped around his shoulders because his fingers are busy wiping tears from his cheeks. A superannuated tennis player leaves the court after his last match and everyone, from the even older stars in the audience to the dourest linesman, has a trembling lip. Far from waiting until they are alone and unobserved, heartbroken males now cry shamelessly and performatively on live television.

I’ve spent the last four years reading and thinking about 17th-century England for my new book on the Duke of Bucking­ham (King James I’s beloved). My story is full of weeping men. 

When King James’s previous favourite, the Earl of Somerset, came under suspicion of murdering his best friend by