As Valentines Day fast approaches, our authors reveal their favourite fictional romantic moments from books, TV and film. They’re sure to get your tears running and hearts melting…

• I have watched An Affair to Remember so many times that I can bore for Scotland on the subject. That moment, when Cary Grant finally realises why Deborah Kerr didn’t show for their rendezvous at the Empire State Building, makes me cry every time. ‘I was looking up. It was the nearest thing to heaven. You were there’. In fact I love this film so much that I’ve written a tribute to it into my May release, A Wife Worth Investing In. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRfar9x-Lsk – Marguerite Kaye

 

• This is a cheat since Moulin Rouge is technically not a romance (#HEAForever), but in the movie, Satine (Nicole Kidman) sighs and says ‘You’re going to be bad for business, I can tell’ before kissing the hero. It’s the moment she falls in love and I totally did, too – Therese Beharrie

 

• I love it in Casablanca when Rick Blaine says to Ilsa, ‘We’ll always have Paris.’ Unlike a traditional romance when the hero and heroine find their way forward together, Rick’s growth means he and his true love must part to allow Ilsa and her husband to work for the Resistance. Up until this point Rick has been entirely self-interested. His love for Ilsa has taught him about self-sacrifice for the good of the many. Sigh. It is deeply romantic – Carol Townend

 

• I know you’re thinking that this doesn’t count, but the John Lewis Penguin Christmas ad of 2014 melted my little hart until tears were freefalling in abundance. In public. It had everything; friendship, longing, loneliness, generosity, family, love, a soppy love song, penguins, Christmas, and a Happy-ever-after. What more could you ask for?! (Just in case you can’t remember it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSxOjBIjyhI ) – Pippa Roscoe

 

• I always sigh during the hospital wedding scene in While You Were Sleeping when Lucy looks passed Peter, the groom and points to his brother, Jack then says that she loves him. Jacks returns a smile. It gets me every time – Susan Carlisle

 

• One of my all-time favorite romantic moments in film comes in the 1930 version of Wuthering Heights. After Cathy (Merle Oberon) tells Heathcliff (Sir Laurence Olivia) that the milksop whom she is going to marry is in love with her, he looks soulfully into her eyes and says, “If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a lifetime, he couldn’t love you as much as I do in a single day. Not he, not the world, not even you, Cathy, can stand between us.” Wow! – Jenna Kernan

 

• For me it’s the little things—the scene in the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice Starring Keira Knightly when Mr Bingly follows Jane Bennet across a crowded ballroom and he touches the fabric of her dress without her knowing, just to feel closer to her. Or the ‘first kiss’ scene in the 1985 film A Room with a View—a barley field, Florence in the distance, and the way George cups Lucy’s face… Perfection! – JC Harroway

 

• Captain Wentworth’s letter to Anne Elliot, in Jane Austen’s Persuasion, never fails to make my heart melt. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.” Just gorgeous! – Janice Preston

Keep your eyes peeled for a Valentines special author Q&A this week!

By Sanjana Cunniah