University of Nottingham - Lonely hearts no longer sad

The lonely hearts column was long viewed as the last resort of the desperate, but in the internet age it has become an increasingly acceptable route to finding love. Now the story of how we stopped worrying and learnt to love the lonely hearts column and its online equivalent, the dating website, has been told by a historian at the University of Nottingham in a new book. Harry Cocks, author of The Secret History of the Personal Column, said: "It struck me that the personal ad has come a long way. Once regarded as a slightly suspect way of finding the ideal partner, even as an admission of personal failure, it now seems to be an everyday fact of life."