I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Not the When Harry Met Sally sort, or the infatuation/lust/heartbreak/revenge tedium on the radio that makes my 10-year-old daughter ask, with a look of pure nausea and disgust on her face, “Why are all the songs about love?”

I am late to the party at Downton Abbey; I only just began watching it two weeks ago on DVD and I just … can’t … stop. It’s distressingly absorbing. Yes, the acting is superb, the writing spot-on, the sets too much to be believed. The peek into turn-of-the-century Edwardian life—a life so radically different from our current age—is mesmerizing. I could stop there and say that I am ensorcelled by all of the above, but it’s more than that, I fear.