‘Reader, I devoured them’:

With ‘Wuthering Heights’ breaking box office records and ‘A Woman of Substance’ about to hit our screens, Kate Steele explains how these tales of the human heart are essential reading in dark times – and are a lot deeper than you think

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Last year I started reading romance novels. Lots of them. One after another. I’d never really read them before (unless you count Pride and Prejudice when I was a teenager). So what was I doing in my mid-fifties working my way through author after author as if my sanity depended on it?

Reading romance novels started as an instinctive reaction to going through a difficult time at work and home, and it quickly evolved into an act of resistance in dark times. In a world of war, the Epstein files, of the global rolling back of women's rights, and stories of deepfake porn, abuse and drink spiking - where The Handmaid’s Tale reads like an instruction manual - romance novels served to give me a glimpse into what the world could be like if we decided to take women’s happiness and pleasure seriously.

It’s no surprise to me that Emerald Fennell’s very personal take on Wuthering Heights, focusing on the relationship between a sexed-up Cathy and Heathcliff, has now become a global box office success, smashing records with the biggest opening in the US so far this year. You can see how this was always going to play out after the phenomenal success of Shonda Rhimes’s Netflix series Bridgerton, based on the books by Julia Quinn, which has been seen by over 82 million households worldwide. Next week will see the launch of Channel 4’s big new show A Woman of Substance - the 1984-85 adaptation of the same Barbara Taylor Bradford novel is still the most-watched drama in Channel 4’s history.

There is a thirst for romance.