If it is the received opinion that Prince William and Kate Middleton were too young to be wed, then I would suggest that the received opinion is in error. Indeed, if it is the young Prince’s own view that 24 is too young to be married, then I would suggest this may be a mistake. The mid-twenties are a perfect time for a young couple to be married. Indeed, at 25, a woman is already past the peak of her biological fertility, which occurs at the age of 23.

It has become the custom among the middle classes not to enter into matrimony until they reach their late twenties or early to middle thirties. In working-class milieux, it has become the custom not to marry at all, but to cohabit without benefit of state or clergy, although this is usually because of the reluctance of the male to “commit”, rather than the female’s refusal of a stable contract. These social trends are among the reasons why marriage itself is decreasing.

Having failed to take the plunge in the salad days of their twenties, the thirtysomethings grow ever more picky and choosy, and the young women ever more concerned about their fertility choices receding: while the available pool of suitable males shrinks ever smaller.

Marriage is a relationship that requires the paradoxical virtues of both fortitude and flexibility, or courage and tolerance, and these characteristics are best found in the young. The young are brave; they have valour; they are ready to plunge into the whirlpool and take the risk. And surely the marriage of true minds and one flesh has its most radiant flowering in the full sunshine of youth’s idealism — not of maturity’s calculation?

True, mistakes can be made. Very young marriages may founder, but marriages in the mature years may fail as well. The Prince of Wales himself was 32 when he undertook wedlock, and that was no guarantee of success. Many individuals in their thirties are already, in the old phrase, “set in their ways”. Whereas in the freshness and pliability of youth, couples can grow together. And even should the youthful marriage not endure, much is learnt from the experience during those formative years.

I am sure it is wise that William should not feel pressurised to marry, but neither should he be pressurised out of marriage by vogueish ideas that later unions are always better. It is not necessarily so.

Of course, there may be many other private reasons why the near-betrothal of Kate Middleton and Prince William has not come to pass. The course of any love — true or untrue — never did run smooth, and quarrels, jealousies and other storms of the heart are par for the course. But let it not be because the couple are thought too young and green. Once past the early twenties, the sooner married the better, surely.