Literature's Most Dangerous Couples

All right, all right - this is only five of them. But read on for the fights, the flirts, the meanies and the madness.

1. Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler from Gone With the Wind

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The heroes of Margaret Mitchell's epic, 'Gone With the Wind' certainly gave each other a hard time. Staircases, copious amounts of weeping, and in the film at least, Clark Gable's moustache.

Worth a read, worth a watch - worth giving a damn about.

2. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights

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“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”

'Nuff said. Plus, anything that gives us the excuse to share this GIF of Kate Bush...

3. Antony and Cleopatra

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Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton lent this literary duo the 'luvvy factor' when they played them in the 1963 movie Cleopatra, and - like Richard and Liz - the story of the exotic Egyptian Queen and powerful Roman general certainly has its dangerous side.

Treachery, betrayal, murder and ASPS ANYONE? pretty much sums these two up.

4. Tom and Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby

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We ALL know about Daisy and Jay, and whilst Gatsby’s love for DB is undeniably at the heart of Fitzgerald's masterpiece, it is the fractious marriage between Daisy and the loaded, obnoxious Tom Buchanan and her ultimate betrayal of Gatsby that leads to the lamentable deaths of three characters.

5. Ridley and Link from The Beautiful Creatures series

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Throughout the Beautiful Creatures series, Ridley and Link flirt n' fight, love and, indeed, hate each other at various points BUT the simmering tensions are underpinned by a genuine understanding.

Their relationship may not proffer the romantic swoon-fest that Ethan and Lena bring to the table, but in R&L the reader finds a couple with a complex and believable relationship.