Today is Valentine’s Day. Sweethearts around the country will be swapping cards and flowers. Sometimes it can be a very expensive day, but it doesn’t need to be. CityLibrary Search has tons of great resources to help you celebrate this festival of love. Here are five of our favourite romantically themed items from our collections.
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is the classic love story. If you don’t know the play, you will know the story: star crossed lovers from different sides of the track falling in love (think West Side Story or Buffy and Angel). If you are new to the play, this BBC recording from 1978 is a great place to start. Watching it this year will have added resonance as it was also the big onscreen debut of the great Alan Rickman.
- Pride and Prejudice is a great novel. There’s romance at the heart of the story, but the book contains much much more than that. In it you get a humorous view of the joys and pains of falling in love, a gentle comedy of manners, a sharp and ironic dissection of Georgian society, and let’s not forget that scene. Very few readers will forget when hunky Mark [sorry, Fitzwilliam] Darcy climbs out of the pond in his wet shirt and kegs #swoon. Set in Regency England, the novel still resonates and enthralls readers today.
- George and Mildred Box of Broadcasts has tons of great videos, often episodes of shows which aren’t available elsewhere. Choosing one couple from the great TV power couples was hard – Jack and Vera, Homer and Marge, Miss Piggy and Kermit etc – but we have chosen George and Mildred – one of the sweetest TV couples ever. If you have never seen it before, now is your chance.
- My Beautiful Laundrette directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi is one of the great classics of Cinema. Set in London during the Thatcher era, the film explores how the relationships of characters develop across communities, classes, generations and sexual identities.
- Wings of desire an angel in 80s Berlin falls in lurve with a mortal circus performer. So beautiful. Look out for cameos from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Peter Falk (aka Columbo). The stand out star is of course the State Library at the edge of the Potsdamer Platz where angels listen in to the readers thoughts.