I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed this. I really almost want to go through it with a highlighter and marking passages and quotes. I'm a hopeless romantic, it's true so it was always going to appeal but in the collection we have letters from authors, leaders, politicians, composers, scientists and monarchs. We have Henry the VIII sending a portrait of himself as a sign of his affection to Anne Boleyn, and Anne Boleyn sending a letter back to him years later as she's imprisoned. We have Queen Victoria writing to Prince Albert making sure he was aware of his place in life before they were married, and then another where she wrote to King Leopold utterly heartbroken after Albert died. There is Beethoven's famous letters to his 'Immortal Beloved' and letters from famous womanisers like Lord Byron and Robert Burns.

Not all the stories are about happily ever after and a shocking number of letters are addressed to mistresses and bit's on the side, but some of the most beautiful moments comes from guys like Nathaniel Hawthorne (this entries title is from the beginning and end of his letter to his wife), or Robert Browning (who refused to marry for the remainder of his life and spent the last 28 years of his life alone because 'his heart was buried in Florence'), or Mozart who spent his letters teasing and joking with his wife.

It's just a beautiful book that I'm already trying to resist re-reading just because I need to get back on track in terms of churning out the books a little quicker. ( )