The father first began to feel uneasy when he realised his son was going to be short whereas he was 6ft 2in. What's more, the boy did not look or act like him. "My doubts grew and as I looked into his eyes, more and more, I realised he couldn't be mine."

Some might think the father was a bit on the slow side. He had actually had a vasectomy before his partner became pregnant, but they had been living together for eight years and she was adamant there had been no-one else. "I don't think any man would expect a long-term partner to lie about something like that." He just assumed the operation had not worked properly.

Mr X, a successful businessman, actually helped to deliver the baby and lavished love on him as the boy grew up in the Warwickshire countryside, teaching him the art of bee-keeping, growing plants together and taking him on business trips during the school holidays. The man's own parents doted fondly on their grandson.

The boy was aged eight when the truth emerged. Acknowledging a deteriorating relationship with his partner, who showed little interest in her son, he had the vasectomy checked out. It was foolproof. Next step was a DNA test. This proved conclusively he had no blood link to the boy.

It was at that point that the woman walked out, married another lover and sent a list of demands to her ex-partner: £600 a month maintenance for herself and the boy, a Porsche sports car and a £280,000 interest in the £500,000 country home they had shared.

Mr X was devastated. He said later: The whole thing tore me apart and hurt my parents immeasurably. It will have done untold damage to the boy. What made it worse was that the real father lived in the same village and practically everyone was aware of the relationship. All the gossips knew who he was and say he lived nearby for years.

Grand passion is not normally associated with the British, particularly the English, whose national character is stereotyped as aloof, tight-lipped and cold. Wrong. Passion is not foreign to the British, as this article will show; what is unusual about this story is its mix of love and money, the element of personal enrichment which most Britons would recognise more readily in French or Irish history (family quarrels, land disputes, disinheritances, years-long silences, advantageous marriages, even murders) than in their own.

Mr X, 53, came to the conclusion that his former partner had acted out of deceit and avarice. "She got pregnant with someone else and told me the baby was mine so I would marry her. When the baby was born, she insisted I register him in my name and then she and her parents put pressure on me to marry her." He declined because he already had a broken marriage behind him. "When I refused, she decided just to live off me. I have learned since that it was common knowledge that she was having affairs while I was away."

When he got the financial demands from his mistress, Mr X decided to fight fire with fire. In a case that is making legal history, he rejected all her demands and filed suit in the High Court for £250,000 damages for her deceit in pretending the boy was his. He also claimed unspecified compensation for emotional injury to himself and his parents. A written judgment is expected soon.

The boy is now 12 and living with his mother, a physiotherapist, in a five- bedroom house in the North of England. His feelings are unknown and Mrs Y refuses all comment. Said Mr X: "I hope I can see him when he is old enough so I can explain."

The effect of passion on partnerships among the so-called reserved British is nowhere better demonstrated than in the highest echelons of the Government. Of the 20 men and women in Tony Blair's Cabinet, seven have been divorced and either remarried or now cohabit; three are married to divorcees, in two cases to people who left their previous spouses for them; and three are homosexual, two with long-term partners. Only seven Ministers have enjoyed a single happy marriage.

This situation caused some embarrassment recently when it came to writing a White Paper setting out the ruling Labour party's approach to supporting the family. Home Secretary Jack Straw (divorced, remarried) rejected pressure to include a declaration that traditional marriage was the best foundation for raising children. "It is very difficult to talk about marriage when you have been divorced yourself," he is reported to have told friends.

Divorced female Ministers in particular were hostile towards any statement giving special status to traditional wedlock, saying it would offend divorced or cohabiting parents. Finally, a consensus was reached and a statement agreed saying unmarried couples are equally capable of providing loving homes for children and that stability is more important than legal status.

Prime Minister Blair's own 20-year marriage to his barrister wife, Cherie, stands in stark contrast to the complicated love-lives of many of his Ministers around the Cabinet table: Foreign Secretary Robin Cook famously abandoned his wife after details were revealed of his affair with his secretary (whom he later married); Baroness Jay's marriage broke up as a result of her affair with Watergate columnist Carl Bernstein; Development Secretary Clare Short delivered a boy at 17 and gave him up for adoption, subsequently married and divorced, then married again to an MP who later died; Trade Secretary Stephen Byers fathered a child as a teenager and currently lives with his unmarried partner; Lord Irvine married a woman whose first husband was Donald Dewar, Labour's First Minister in Scotland.

Significantly or not, much of this high-level dalliance took place in the mature years. Perhaps the parties felt they were by then secure in their political careers or perhaps they felt modern moral standards permitted them to break free of the strictures that once governed social behaviour.

Certainly age has proved no barrier to passion.

When Gerald Boldon and Audrey Tiffin were playmates, they kissed in the playground and vowed to marry. Inevitably, life directed them along different paths and each married another. But recently, the two returned to their home town and bumped into each other, literally, in the supermarket. Discovering that their respective spouses had died, they rushed to Gretna Green, the Scottish village of quickie weddings, and fulfilled their never-forgotten childhood pledge.

Gerald is 66, Audrey 64.

The question is: Does a pension stir the passion? More than 500 people aged over 80, most of them living in old people's homes, get married in Britain every year. Usually, the families don't like it (there's always that question of splitting the inheritance) but mostly they recognise the unquenchable flame of love when they see it. Not to mention the green-eyed god, jealousy!

When Edith Hughes, 79, broke off her engagement to Cyril Knipe, also 79, for the third time, Cyril got so mad he attacked her bungalow with a paint-spray gun. He was caught because he managed to spray his own glasses with red paint and couldn't see to make his getaway. A sympathetic magistrate bound him over to keep the peace.