Historic love letters from royals, rogues and romantics go on show

The Abdication document of King Edward VIII on display during a preview of an exhibition entitled Love Letters at the National Archives in London, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, Edward abdicated on Dec. 10, 1936. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

LONDON — Love is, famously, a many-splendoured thing. It can encompass longing, loneliness, pain, jealousy, grief — and, sometimes, joy.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, the many facets of passion are going on display in “Love Letters,” a public exhibition at Britain’s National Archives that covers five centuries.

Curator Victoria Iglikowski-Broad said that the documents recount “legendary romances from British history” involving royalty, politicians, celebrities and spies, “alongside voices of everyday people.”

“We’re trying to open up the potential of what a love letter can be,” she told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “Expressions of love can be found in all sorts of places, and surprising places.”

They also take many forms. The exhibition ranges from early 20th-century classified ads seeking same-sex romance to sweethearts’ letters to soldiers at war and a medieval song about heartbreak.

There’s also “one of our most iconic documents,” Iglikowski-Broad said, referring to a poignant letter to Queen Elizabeth I from her suitor Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Written days before Dudley’s death in 1588, it conveys the intimacy between the “Virgin Queen,” who never married, and the man who called himself “your poor old servant.”

The missive, with “his last lettar” written on the outside — spelling at the time was idiosyncratic — was found at the queen’s bedside when she died almost 15 years later.

Bonds of family and friendship

Love, in the exhibition, doesn’t just mean romance. Family bonds are in evidence in Jane Austen’s handwritten will from 1817 leaving almost everything to her beloved sister Cassandra, and in a 1956 letter in which the father of London gangster twins Reggie and Ronnie Kray, implores a court to go easy on the brothers, because “all their concern in life is to do good to everybody.”

The letter writers range from paupers to princes. In an 1851 petition, an unemployed 71-year-old weaver named Daniel Rush begs authorities not to separate him and his wife by sending them to workhouses. It’s displayed alongside the Instrument of Abdication through which King Edward VIII gave up the throne in 1936 so that he could marry “the woman I love,” twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson.

“There is a lot of connection in these two items even though on the surface they seem very different,” Iglikowski-Broad said. “In common they have just this human feeling of love … that the sacrifice is actually worth it for love.”

Other documents tell of love lost. There is a never-before-displayed 1944 letter from young British intelligence officer John Cairncross to his former girlfriend Gloria Barraclough, reflecting on what might have been. “Would we have broken off, I wondered, if we had known what was coming?”

Some readers may think Barraclough had a lucky escape — years later, Cairncross was unmasked as a Soviet spy.

Royal romance and tragedy

Some love stories tell of danger, heartbreak and tragedy. In one, Lord Alfred Douglas asks — in vain — for Queen Victoria to pardon his lover Oscar Wilde. The writer had been sentenced to two years in prison for gross indecency after Douglas’ outraged father revealed their relationship.

Nearby is a letter written in 1541 by Catherine Howard, fifth wife of King Henry VIII, to her secret beau Thomas Culpeper.

Archives historian Neil Johnston noted that the tone of the extraordinary letter is “restrained panic. She is warning him to be very, very careful.”

Catherine signed off the letter “yours as long as life endures.” That turned out not to be long. The king discovered the affair and both Catherine and Culpeper were executed for treason.

A letter by Queen Henrietta Maria to King Charles I – “my dear heart” – is a real rarity, since Britain’s royal family guards its private papers closely.

It was found among possessions left behind by the fleeing king in 1645 after a battlefield defeat for royalist troops in England’s civil war. Charles lost the war and was tried, convicted and executed in 1649. The letter ended up in Parliament’s archives, which last year was transferred to the National Archives.

“We don’t have very many intimate letters between monarchs like this,” Johnston said. “This is a little gem within the disaster of the English Civil War.”

“Love Letters” opens Saturday and runs to April 12. Admission is free.

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Jill Lawless, The Associated Press