 Hello, my name is Andrea Glock, and I have chosen three of my favourite love letters and intimate exchanges from the British Library's collections to share with you. In an age of emails, tweets and texts that I love you, they invite us into a privileged realm and remind us why the written word is so special. This Book of Hours or prayer book provides one of the most evocative and earliest pieces of evidence for the King's Love Affair with Anne, for it contains a pair of love notes that they pen to each other. As we can see, Henry chose to write his message on a page depicting the Man of Sorrows in order to present himself as the Love Sick King. He wrote in French. If you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as I adore you, I shall scarcely be forgotten, for I am yours, Henry Rex, forever. Anne responded with a couplet in English, be daily proof you shall be fine to be to you both loving and kind. Anne's choice of page was also highly significant, for she wrote her message beneath an image of the Annunciation, with the Archangel Gabriel telling the Virgin Mary that she would bear a son. In doing so, Anne was telling Henry that she would succeed where his first Queen, Catherine of Aragon, had failed by providing him with the son and heir that he so desperately longed for. It's incredibly powerful to think that these two notes mark the beginning of a process that would cause severe religious upheaval and change the course of history. Dape of Fundus, the 50,000 word letter that Oscar Wild wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas, or Bosies who was known to family and friends, is I think one of the greatest love letters of history, full of depth of feeling and of love and forgiveness. Their affair had disastrous consequences for Wild, who was sentenced to two years hard labour for homosexual offences in 1895, the very same year in which he reached the height of fame and success with an ideal husband and the importance of being earnest, both being performed on the London stage. His letter written from Reading Jail is the bracingly honest account of a man held from the pinnacle of literary success to the utmost public degradation and of his soul searching and spiritual growth through the emotional and physical hardship of imprisonment. It is also a scathing indictment of the man whom Wild felt had helped to destroy his life and reputation, yet Wild could not bring himself to repudiate the passion of his life, writing that even though our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended in ruin and public infamy for me, yet the memory of our ancient affection is often with me, and the thought that loathing, bitterness and contempt should forever take that place in my heart once held by love is very sad to me. On the final page, Wild makes an impassion plea for reconciliation, telling Bosey that he hopes that their meeting will be what a meeting between you and me should be after everything that has occurred. In old days there was always a wide chasm between us, the chasm of achieved art and acquired culture, but there is still wider chasm between us now, the chasm of sorrow, but to humility there is nothing that is impossible and to love all things are easy. You came to me to learn the pleasure of life and the pleasure of art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of sorrow and its beauty. This item comes from the Pastan letters, the oldest surviving collection of private correspondence in English, written in the 15th century by three generations of the Pastans who were an important Norfolk land-owning family. The letter was sent by Marjorie Bruce to her future husband John Pastan in 1477 and his the oldest surviving Valentine in the English language. Marjorie addresses John as her right well-beloved Valentine and reveals the depths of her feelings, declaring, My heart bids me evermore to love you, truly over all earthly thing. Marjorie's letter is a remarkable survival for we have very few personal letters from the medieval period and even fewer by women. One of the wonderful things about this letter is that it gives a real sense of the relationship between a young man and woman wanting to marry. And if we look closely at the letter we can see that as a final flourish Marjorie's initials have been added in the form of a heart in much the same way a young girl might do today. These carefully crafted survivals of the past show us that human emotions and lovers preoccupations have changed very little over the last few hundred years, whatever the historical or social context. Feelings of joy, passion, jealousy and sadness, hope, longing, despair and contentment then as now ruled the human heart and mind. And in an age in which news and feelings no longer travel slowly in the post, they also remind us that there is simply nothing quite like receiving a handwritten letter from the one new love.