A line from a story in a woman's magazine. A quote from a world in which love is always the sweetest thing, indeed the only thing. In this age of permissiveness, pop and the Pill, the honey-fresh, daisy-sweet, gift-wrapped values of love, romance and a happy ending in the last line are booming as never before. Serial rights, paperbacks and hardbacks are bringing hard cash to authors writing about the values - some would say - of a bygone day. But millions of readers want to buy.

The great ladies of the industry, like Barbara Cartland, with publishers' lists that look like Test score figures, sell both honey and virginity in a single paragraph of breathy prose. The old-established, like Bethea Creese, try to proselytise. The newcomers, like Max Barrett and Violet Winspear, work their way from basement flats by recognising that they are on to a good thing - believing just as firmly in the dewy-eyed actions of classic heroes and heroines.

In a programme that is part documentary and in part the antithesis of the Play for Today, Desmond Wilcox examines the world of romantic novelists. Ian Ogilvy as the hero, Liza Goddard the heroine, and Tony Britton the narrator, bring their works to life for us.

(Romance of an earlier generation. For the Sake of the School - Angela Brazil - 9.50 am Radio 4 Friday)