I have always been puzzled by society’s readiness to send their young men into battle, and that the young men go, and then tell such lies when they get home about what they saw when they looked on the face of battle. I hadn’t wondered about women, except to be glad that they were exempt from combat. Now comes Mischa Merz’s Bruising, which is about fear, aggression, and courage, and written out of her experience of one-to-one combat in the boxing ring.

I know Mischa. We share beaches and cups of tea over Anglesea summers. We have talked a bit about women’s boxing, but I didn’t have my heart in it: I was embarrassed by her fascination with the business of wilfully battering the faces and bodies of strangers, in public, with men looking on. It seemed a small step above mud wrestling to me. I was relieved and disappointed when I missed a sparring session she and her husband Peter staged one afternoon up at their beach house. My grandchildren, who saw it, were shocked by its ferocity.