Like Mineke Schipper, I am a widow, though I can’t see anything ‘taboo’ about that category, given that women have no say in being thrust into it. Schipper’s excursion into the ‘connected, global history’ of widows should really have been subtitled ‘The Last Feminist Cause’, because her goal is to make readers aware of what the majority of widows have endured – and still endure – ‘from Ancient Mesopotamia to Western Europe and everywhere in between’. 

What widows have endured, if they are not fortunate enough to have financial resources and family support, ranges from poverty, opprobrium and demonisation to shunning, banishment and death. ‘Why are we so reluctant to talk about it?’ Schipper asks, which did make me smile. Whenever women enter any new phase of life – menarche, motherhood, menopause, widowhood – the first thing they ask is, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?’ They tried, dear, but you weren’t listening.

Schipper wants us all to listen. Her book is not about the private suffering of heartsick widows (and widowers) or the health problems, loneliness and isolation that afflict both sexes in rapidly ageing populations; it is about the social and economic suffering that affects millions of women,