Beside the grave you'll often find epistles, teenage attempts at romantic poetry scrawled on notepaper, and lovingly dedicated letters.

So wrote James Elroy Flecker in his 1913 poem, "The Golden Journey to Samarkand", which played upon exotic and romantic perceptions already well established in European minds.

As a country, we have produced some of the most romantic writing ever produced in any language - from Shakespeare's sonnets to touching love letters written by Winston Churchill.