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From Rev鈥檇 Richard Coles, cleric and broadcaster:

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If, like me, you were well into middle age before your Mum stopped sending you your one Valentine card each year, never fear; for a mere glance 听at the Lives of The Saints suggests we鈥檝e been sold a pup.

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There are in fact not one but two St Valentines remembered on this day. Both were Christians in the time of the Roman Empire, and both met sticky ends, martyred for the faith. This stories of their lives and deaths are a little confused, but one seems to have been arrested for refusing to worship the Emperor, never a career enhancing move in the fourth century, and the other, also thrown into prison for the same offence, there converted his jailer by curing his daughter of blindness, which so displeased Claudius the Goth that he had all of them beaten and executed. Typical Goth, raining on romance鈥檚 parade.

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How the Valentines came to be associated with love and romance, then, is quite a mystery; but it may be because today, the Ides of February, is also the day the Romans celebrated the festival of Lupercalia. On this day high born youths ran naked through the city hitting passers by, especially eligible females, with a sort of thong. Tonight it will more likely be the eligible males of our towns and cities who鈥檒l be twanged with thongs, but at least that makes a change from a boring old box of chocolates.

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Love, in spite of our enduring fondness for cherubs and red roses, is not so twee. Sources as diverse as St Valentine, the Bible and the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber insist that love, love changes everything, is stronger than death, and in an age when we鈥檙e reluctant to commit to lunch let alone another person, can still surprise us with its power to endure all that fortune and misfortune can throw at us. Happy Valentine鈥檚 Day.