Love Books

“Love,” wrote Ovid, “is no assignment for cowards.” Cultural critic Mia Levitin talks us through the history of seduction from the Classical era, through ballroom dancing, calling cards and into the present age of swiping on our mobile phones. Here she recommends five of the best books for those braving the modern dating scene.

From Jane Austen to James Baldwin, the best love stories in literature recommended by Jenny Davidson, novelist, historian and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

What is love? Can you choose to do it? If love ends, was it really love? The author and academic Skye C Cleary selects five key texts that deal with philosophy of love, whether romantic, erotic, familial or platonic.

Love and marriage may go together like a horse and carriage, but what happens when the horses are spooked and the whole procession is run off the road? Katie Kitamura, whose new novel A Separation charts the disastrous—and tragic—failure of a marriage, considers some of literature’s most heartfelt accounts of relationship failure

Systems thinking is key to figuring out how relationships work, says Mira Kirshenbaum, psychotherapist and clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute. She chooses the best books to help us understand modern relationship therapy.

The author of The Maid and the Queen takes us on an enjoyable ride through European history, looking at well-connected women who outwitted their husbands or asserted their independence.

Bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud prescribes some reading for love. Rekindle your relationship, remember first passions and beware obsessive love with help from these suggestions.

Television presenter Riz Khan chooses books on enduring love. Wuthering Heights, Remains of the Day, John Irving and Julian Barnes all make the list

War reporter tells us that her life is permeated with sense of loss and longing. She quotes her heroine Martha Gellhorn: "I have a sudden notion of why history is such a mess. Human beings do not live long enough"

The poet, novelist and author of memoirs explores parallels between faith in the divine and commitment to a worldly erotic passion, and books that show you can have purity within licentiousness