Baum looks at marriage from multiple angles, legal and political, social and narrative, its interminability and its dailiness . Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian View image in fullscreen ‘Marriage is unknowable to anyone outside it’: Devorah Baum and husband Josh Appignanesi with their children in 2016. What I’m really interested in is the way in which all feelings split us – and how we cope with that, what we do with that. I was one of the only Jews around and I had a very strong sense of my Jewish identity for that reason.

And, actually, during a period in British politics – when the word ‘Jew’ is trending on Twitter and people are googling the word ‘Jew’ and looking probably in all sorts of insalubrious places to find out what Jews are up to –, you have a very strong wish and desire to speak to other people going through the same thing, in a somewhat contained and close setting. So as they saw it, their choice was between condemning him for being bad, or showing a liberal understanding of why he turned out so bad. Because marriage doesn't always bring out the best in us, it makes us wonder what the best in us might be.

So that wasn’t a direct experience of aggressive, hostile antisemitism, but it was implicit in the acceptance of Shylock as staged Jew. DB: In the introduction to my book I’m interested in whether there’s much of a difference, really, between a word that you whisper – which tends to be the British way – and one that you’re required to shout out – in a declamatory, American way. And I’ve also known how to access joy, how to access feelings of awe and humility – through the religion. With Josh Appignanesi, her spouse, she is both co-director and performer in the documentaries The New Man and Husband. So, that would be a question: Have you ever experienced antisemitism in London, either blatant, or low-level?

Of course, Jews have done what they have done everywhere also in the UK – which is to transcend class. But at the end of all her analysis, a definitive understanding remains elusive: “Having thought so much about marriage, the truth is that I still don’t know what I think about it. But in terms of positive feelings to do with Jewishness, I’m a little shy of those [laughs], but I do have them.There’s almost nobody I meet these days where I can’t very quickly detect the form their resentment takes – that is, the way in which they feel they’re not being heard, as if they’re being somehow silenced or marginalised, or as if their case isn’t permitted. I had approached the book with a measure of doubt, wondering whether – being of an age with the author but never married – I would find myself excluded from its thesis. At the core of OCLW's new programme on Writing Jewish Women's Lives, our new series of afternoon literary seminars are a chance to discuss books by and about Jewish women.

As I understand it, feelings are extremely political – because they tell us a lot about power: who has it, and who doesn’t.

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”. For if the word ‘Jew’ is not fitting in comfortably with other words, if there’s a kind of pause before the word, a momentary decision about how to utter it exactly, then that tells us something. EV: When we talked to Ronald Harwood, he said England was the most welcoming country, that he has never experienced antisemitism. If somebody tells you a joke well and fresh, and you get a laugh out of it, that’s a real relief – and it’s a strengthening moment, as well.