Nancy dell'Olio: Englishmen can't flirt The Italian lawyer, who has previously had relationships with Sir Trevor Nunn, the theatre director, and Sven-Göran Eriksson, the former England football manager, said British men were "frightened of feelings." The problem, she argued, was due to their relationship with their mothers, while sending young boys off to boarding school, sometimes at the age of six, was also a factor. She had also received the impression they could be split into just two types. These were the "eccentric charmer" who relied on alcohol to give him the confidence for a "slurred attempt at seduction," and the "bumbling, inarticulate Hugh Grant sort, whose shyness, though endearing, suggested an underlying terror of women." Comparing British men with Italians, she noted that an Italian boy is "showered with devotion by his mamma from the day he is born," so it was no surprise he grew up convinced he was "the answer to every woman's dreams." The English mother's feelings were less explicit, she claimed. "The love for her son is polite, rather like your conversation," she wrote. It lacks the passion and the drama, and so much is assumed rather than displayed. But she praised Englishmen for their subtlety and charm, and suggested she was starting "to understand the charm of an English romance, played out beneath the surface."