Did you know that you can listen to many of your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds?

Like, you're dead to me, where you can hear the latest episode 28 days earlier.

So catch it before it becomes history.

Good things come to those who don't wait.

Listen to your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

You're about to listen to brand new History's Secret Heroes.

Episodes will be released on Mondays, wherever you get your podcasts.

But if you're in the UK and can't wait, you can hear the full series right now,

before anyone else, first on BBC Sounds.

The 20th of June, 1981.

In a BBC radio studio, presenter Sue McGregor

was recording an interview with Ida Cook, chair of the Romantic Novelists Association.

I have a very clever editorist who says that in almost every woman's life, there was a period of her life when someone made her feel marvellous.

And if she reads a good, romantic story, she remembers that.

And it's a wonderful feeling. Cook had written over 100 romance novels. All were bestsellers

for her publisher, Mills and Boone. In particular, the Warranda saga about a charismatic

opera conductor.

I wonder if you think there might be a connection between your obvious love of what you do,

this sort of work, and your love of opera, because they're both, in a sense, fantasy worlds, aren't they?

It's tremendous romance, you see, terrific romance.

You see, when people say, oh, happy endings, they don't really happen.

...