Read an Excerpt
The Lovers' Book
By Kate Gribble St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2008 Michael O'Mara Books Limited
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-2094-0
CHAPTER 1
In the Beginning There Was Love
'Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.'
Honoré de Balzac
Exchanging stories about falling in love is a little like that Cadbury's Crème Egg slogan. How did you meet yours? Everybody has their own story to tell. Here's a collection of unusual routes to romantic bliss taken by real-life lovers.
Against the Odds
It's a truth universally acknowledged that you can't help who you fall in love with. And, sometimes, love isn't easy. Yet as the proverb goes, love will always out. That was certainly true in the case of June and Heinz Fellbrich. When they got hitched in 1947, their wedding photographs made headlines around the world – for June was a young British girl, and Heinz a German POW (prisoner of war).
On their wedding night, Heinz had to leave the celebrations early to be locked up back inside the POW camp. The newlyweds were regularly spat at in the street and received sackloads of hate mail. But they recently celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary.
June said she didn't regret a thing: 'I know it was worth it because I loved him and still do, and that's the secret of our married life – love.'
'The thing about falling in love, is that if you do it right, you never have to hit the ground.'
Kendall Lepitzki
Written in the [begin strikethrough]Stars[end strikethrough] Brochure
Kieron and Amanda Dudley met each other through work. Not so unusual, true. However, while in the line of duty at the Dunston Hall hotel, the pair, though just colleagues, ended up posing as newlyweds for the hotel's wedding brochure in September 2004. Almost three years later, they ended up holding their very own wedding reception there – this time for real!
We Just Double-Clicked
Many couples these days first meet on the Internet, via chat rooms or on dating websites. One pair found each other through online marketplace eBay, after singer James Blunt put his sister Emily 'up for sale'.
'Damsel in distress seeks knight in shining armor. Desperate to get to a funeral in southern Ireland, please help,' the ad read. Big brother James was determined to help out his sibling, who was distraught at the thought of missing an important memorial service because of transport disasters.
The highest bidder happened to be millionaire Guy Harrison, who flew Emily to the funeral in his helicopter (as you do). The besotted couple married in Hampshire in 2007.
Tip!
Every now and again, make a point of rereading the e-mails and love letters you wrote your lover (and received from them) in the early days of your relationship. The feelings of excitement, anticipation and overpowering emotion will come flooding back in an instant.
Love at First Sight
It's the great myth in romance ... or is it totally true? England footballer David Beckham certainly thinks so. He fell for his future wife, Victoria Adams, before the pair had even met.
In November 1996, he saw the video for the Spice Girls' single 'Say You'll Be There', and was instantly smitten with 'Posh'. He remembers: 'I pointed at the screen and told Gary [Neville], "That's the girl for me and I am going to get her." It was her eyes, her face. She's my idea of perfection. I was sure just from seeing her on that video that she was the one I wanted, and I knew that if she wanted me we would be together forever.'
And they both lived happily ever after ...
'We love because it's the only true adventure.'
Nikki Giovann
CHAPTER 2
The Science of Love
'The greatest science in the world; in heaven and on earth; is love.'
Mother Teresa
A racing heart, flushed cheeks, breathlessness, a shortened attention span, a debilitating fever: oh, the symptoms of love are far-reaching, and you're too far gone to care. But what's the science behind the physical effects of falling in love?
A Step-By-Step Scientific Guide to Falling in Love
Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey is one of the best-known researchers in the field of love's biochemistry. She has discovered that there are three key stages when it comes to falling in love, each of which is governed by a different set of chemicals. Here's a simple summary of her research, offering an insight into how some of those chemicals make us feel.
Step One: Lust
Fisher says this stage will 'get you out looking for anything'. Not the most romantic period, then. This stage is fuelled by the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone.
Step Two: Attraction
This is when that crazy neurotransmitter serotonin starts whizzing in our brains; it's joined by dopamine and adrenalin, the latter of which accounts for the racing heart and sweaty palms that all lovers experience.
During this phase, a loss of appetite may occur, and you'll probably need less sleep than usual because of the buzz you're getting from the feeling of attraction.
Step Three: Attachment
Not all love affairs progress to this stage, but if you're meant to be, you'll definitely be affected by the hormones oxytocin and the less-than-sexy-sounding vasopressin. Oxytocin is a hormone that increases trust and encourages bonding. It's released during orgasm, so the more often a couple makes love, the more likely they are to become inseparable.
Falling for Pheromones
Pheromones are invisible chemical substances unwittingly released by humans, as well as other mammals, which signal many things, including sexual desire and basic genetic blueprints. Health educator Deb Levine once dubbed the human pheromone 'the sexual scent of attraction'.
Indeed, it's now thought that pheromones play a major role when two people fall for each other. A 1999 article in Psychology Today revealed that the way others perceive our unique scent is a highly selective process, wired by genetics.
Rather unromantically, we usually smell best to a person whose immunity to disease differs most from our own. The theory goes that combining the two in-built genetic defences through reproduction will result in stronger, healthier children: the instinctive aim behind all sexual attraction.
So, the next time you inhale your lover's particular scent (which may well be your favorite smell in the whole world), remember that what you're reveling in is not only their olfactory trace, but also their pheromones ... pheromones which confirm, through your mutual attraction, that you and your partner are truly meant to be.
Scientific Studies
In 2002, Australian researchers disproved a 1970s theory that marriage drove women up the wall, instead finding that both sexes are happier when married. From a survey of 10,641 Australian adults, married women with children were the least likely to suffer mental health problems, while 25 percent of men and women were depressed when single.
In 2005, American scientists concluded that opposites did not attract, when their study of married couples found that the happiest marriages were those in which the partners were similarly matched in terms of personality and beliefs.
CHAPTER 3
Lovers in History
'Love conquers everything: let us, too, yield to love.'
Virgil
The heat of some lovers' passion is so fiery that it leaves its mark not only on them, but also on the rest of the world. The following couples have gone down in history as the most desperately-in-love duos of all time.
Mark Antony and Cleopatra
In the first century B.C., Cleopatra was Queen of Egypt, while Roman soldier Mark Antony was leading the emerging Roman Empire as part of the Second Triumvirate with Lepidus and Octavian.
They had first met in 46 B.C. when Julius Caesar first brought Cleopatra to Rome, and fate was to throw them together four years later when Antony visited Egypt to investigate Cleopatra on behalf of Rome. Instead he fell madly in love with her (even though he was already married). The lovers soon established a court of pleasure, luxury and indulgence in Alexandria, much to Rome's concern and disapproval, and are said to have married in 36 B.C.
Meanwhile, Lepidus had retired from power, leaving Antony and Octavian to lead the Empire. Though Antony came back to Rome briefly and spearheaded more fighting for the Empire's cause, he could not bear to be apart from Cleopatra, and soon returned to Egypt to be by her side, caring not a whit for Rome's increasing anger at his actions. In 32 B.C., the Roman Senate stripped Antony of his powers, and Octavian set out to destroy the two lovers.
The rival fleets engaged in battle off the coast of Actium in 31 B.C., but Antony was outwitted by Octavian, and forced to return hastily to Alexandria. Back in Egypt, the couple tried to defend themselves against the inexorable approaching force of the Empire's army, but were fighting a losing battle.
The captivating story of the Egyptian Queen and her Roman warrior lover inspired both Shakespeare's 1606 play Antony and Cleopatra and MGM's blockbusting 1963 movie Cleopatra, which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as the paramours.
It is said that when Antony heard false rumours of Cleopatra's death, he committed suicide by falling on his sword. Thus, with her beloved Antony gone and the heartless Octavian now in power in Egypt, Cleopatra, too, decided to take her own life. Famously, she allowed a poisonous asp to bite her, thus bringing an end to one of the world's most memorable love affairs.
Antony: I am dying, Egypt, dying; only I here importune death awhile, until Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips. [...]
Cleopatra: And welcome, welcome! Die where thou hast lived: Quicken with kissing: had my lips that power, Thus would I wear them out.
Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, Scene xv,
William Shakespeare
Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal
This real-life romance provided the foundations of the world's most recognizable monument to love: the Taj Mahal in India.
In 1612, the emperor of the Mughal Empire, Shah Jahan, married the young Arjumand Banu Begum, a Persian princess, who was renamed Mumtaz Mahal after the wedding. Mumtaz was undoubtedly the emperor's favorite wife and the pair were impossibly in love throughout their marriage.
In 1631, tragedy struck, when Mumtaz died while giving birth to their fourteenth child. Devastated, Shah Jahan determined to erect a beautiful building in memory of his wife. Work immediately began on the soon-to-be-celebrated Taj Mahal.
It took over twenty years to complete – and the sweat and toil of 22,000 workers and 1,000 elephants – but it was worth it. When the building was finished, it rose magnificently from its spot beside the Jamuna River, semiprecious stones laid into its exterior walls, a marble minaret in each corner, a towering dome, and gardens designed in a vision of Paradise. To this day, it is considered one of the finest examples of Indian Islamic architecture.
When Shah Jahan died in 1666, he was laid to rest beside his wife, in an underground crypt built beneath his enduring monument to her memory.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
Queen Victoria ascended the English throne in 1837, at the age of eighteen. Three years later, she married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The couple were deeply in love and remained so for the rest of their marriage, during which time they had nine children.
Albert became a valued adviser to his wife, particularly in the areas of diplomacy and politics, but in December 1861, at the age of forty-two, he died suddenly of typhoid fever.
Her beloved husband's death came as a terrible shock to Queen Victoria. She immediately withdrew from public life and sank into a depression. It was three years before she next appeared in public and five before she could be persuaded to open Parliament. For the rest of her sixty-three-year reign, she continued to mourn Albert and dressed only in black.
'My life as a happy one is ended! The world is gone for me! If I must live on ... it is henceforth for our poor fatherless children – for my unhappy country, which has lost all in losing him – and in only doing what I know and feel he would wish.'
Queen Victoria in a letter dated December 20, 1861, to Leopold I, King of the Belgians
Like Shah Jahan, Victoria wanted to build a monument in memory of her husband, and so she commissioned the famous architect Sir Gilbert Scott to create the Albert Memorial – officially titled the 'Prince Consort National Memorial'. Unveiled in 1876, and situated in Kensington Gardens in London, it is one of the most impressive high-Victorian gothic spectacles in existence, employing a Parnassus frieze, marble figures and gilded bronze statues to breathtaking effect.
On January 22, 1901, almost forty years after Albert's death, Queen Victoria followed her beloved to the grave and was laid to rest beside him at the Frogmore Royal Mausoleum at Windsor. Inscribed above the mausoleum door are Victoria's words: 'Farewell best beloved, here at last I shall rest with thee, with thee in Christ I shall rise again.'
* * *
Annie Oakley and Frank Butler
Annie Oakley was born Phoebe Ann Mosey in Ohio in August 1860. She was a self-trained markswoman who, by the age of fifteen, had made enough money from the sale of game she shot that she was able to pay off her mother's mortgage.
In 1881, cocky Frank E. Butler came to her state, boasting that he could beat any local marksman who dared take him on. As one half of a famous shooting act, Baughman and Butler, he had no doubts he would come out on top, but he had reckoned without young Phoebe Ann. She won their contest hands down – and Butler was smitten. Married the following year, Frank eventually gave up his own illustrious career in favor of promoting that of his wife, who took the stage name Annie Oakley (though she was always Mrs. Frank Butler in her personal life) and the world by storm as a star in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.
They were happily married for forty-four years until Annie's death in 1926. Frank, grief-stricken, survived for only another eighteen days before he too passed away.
The gun-toting pair were the inspiration behind the popular 1946 Irving Berlin musical Annie, Get Your Gun.
Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco
Grace Kelly's love affair had a fairy-tale quality to it, as the movie star who became a real princess. Born in November 1929, the actress landed her first role in the 1951 film Fourteen Hours. A year later, her appearance as Amy Kane in the popular High Noon set her career alight; later movies included Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955).
Her role in the 1954 film The Country Girl won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and it was while promoting this movie at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1955, that she encountered Prince Rainier, the handsome heir to the kingdom of Monaco. After a whirlwind romance, the two became engaged the following January and later married on April 19, 1956. Grace gave up her film career in favor of becoming Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. The couple had three children, Caroline, Albert and Stephanie.
In September 1982, Princess Grace died tragically in a car accident in Monaco. After her death, Prince Rainier opened a public rose garden in her memory: roses were his wife's favorite flowers.
* * *
Ronald and Nancy Reagan
The fortieth president and his wife enjoyed a happy fifty-two-year marriage. Indeed the actor Charlton Heston once commented that theirs was 'the greatest love affair in the history of the American presidency'.
Former Hollywood star Ronald met Nancy in the early 1950s while president of the Screen Actors Guild. At their first meeting he'd intended to leave early, owing to a busy schedule the next day, but they were still excitedly chatting at 3 a.m. Nancy once said of their courtship: 'I don't know if it was exactly love at first sight, but it was pretty close.'
The future president proposed in their favorite restaurant, Chasen's:
'Let's get married,' he fired off.
'Let's,' Nancy shot back.
The couple wed in March 1952, in Los Angeles, and later had two children, Patricia and Ronald.
In 1980, during Ronald Senior's grueling presidential campaign, their passion didn't flag for one moment, and they would always kiss as though it was for the last time. An NBC White House correspondent remarked of their embraces: 'We [journalists] would turn aside because we felt that there was something very special, private and wonderful going on between them.'
During Reagan's tenure as President (1981–9), the couple used to hide love notes for each other all over the White House, and walk hand in hand around the grounds.
In 1994, he announced he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease – and his primary concern, as it had always been, was for his wife. 'I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience,' he said.
Reagan passed away in 2004, aged ninety-three, after Nancy had carefully and lovingly managed what she termed his 'long goodbye'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Lovers' Book by Kate Gribble. Copyright © 2008 Michael O'Mara Books Limited. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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