Just as many a father quotes Preacher or Isaiah, so my father quoted literary critic Kees Fens. "Fens says" was almost impossible for him…. (…).

„Fens says that Thea Beckman is not well!”

That was a heavy blow, one that perhaps hit me even harder than the others. In The Wheel of Fortune, a book set during the bloody Hundred Years' War, there was a sentence I'd been rereading with bated breath for weeks. I'd even written "Page 83" in paper-thin letters on the endpaper.

The illiterate swashbuckler Bertrand du Guesclin, commander of the French army, expresses his admiration when his young friend Matthis Cuvelier, a shy poet who cannot stand the sight of blood, comes to visit him in prison. "'Just to see how I was doing, you entered the camp? Damn, that took courage,' says Bertrand. The men smile at each other. They both know that Matthis' courage is not a matter of strong arms, contempt for death, and a ferocious bloodlust, but the constant overcoming of his childhood fears."„

Thea Beckman, the writer, put both kinds of courage, overcoming the English army and overcoming shyness, on the same level.Nicolien Mizee

A version of this article appeared in NRC Handelsblad on Tuesday, July 28, 2015.