The Horror of Love

Stephen King says "Love creates horror." AL Kennedy agrees. "As someone who often says 'I think' and almost never says 'I feel', I don't personally welcome love's ability to make me fear not only for myself, but others," she writes.

But love makes us altruistic, humane. "We would find it bizarre if a parent was more worried about dropping a vase than dropping their baby - even a Ming vase and an ugly baby. An absence of love within a family or a relationship is taken as a sign of something having gone very wrong," she says.

"But an absence of love in the world we help construct around us, that's regarded as a form of common sense. We are used to making decisions - or having them made for us - which would save the vase and not the baby."

Producer: Sheila Cook.