ed. Ursula Doyle: Love Letters of Great Men

What came first: the book or Sex and the City: The Movie?

Well, it was actually the movie. According to the Telegraph, after fans watched the film, booksellers were hounded for a copy of the book Carrie reads to Mr Big. Although the letters are real, the compilation never existed and so publishers went to work.

Yes I am a fan and when I saw Love Letters of Great Men, I nearly passed out. (What can I say? The avocation of blind consumerism becomes me.) Compiled by Ursula Doyle, this collection of beautiful prose and poetry comes from the heartfelt hands and minds of great men – or at least Great men as some of the men, well, weren’t so great. However, it will make you hanker after the times when declarations of love by feathered pen and parchment paper were all that connected men and women separated by great expansive seas. It will make you want to wish away these present days where romance has been reduced to an e-card and instead of wishing and wondering where your Significant Other is in the world, we now have the attractive prospect of pinning down your Dear Heart’s location with Partner Tracker advertised on MTV.

This book is a beautiful collection of letters; keep an eye out for Robert Browning’s letters – nay, his poetry, to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. His words are so lyrical you’ll wish the blur of limbs and lips you picked up at the pub would text you like that.