From Marian Keyes to Jilly Cooper, Joanne Harris to Toni Morrison, Barbara Cartland to Gabriel Garcia Marquez: romantic novels are a broad church able to tackle a lot of big topics and hot potatoes. And yet a lot of people still get sniffy when it comes to romance.

We chatted to the bloody smashing Alison May, Chair of the Romantic Novelists’ Association – this year celebrating its 60th anniversary – about changing hearts and minds, inclusivity, literary love stories, that time Cliff Richard played Heathcliff, why Same Girl by Usher and R Kelly would make a terrible romantic novel, and the intriguing sounding “banging” line of Mills & Boon books called Dare. Crikey Moses.

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SIM Ep 343 Chops 150: The truth about romantic fiction with the RNA's Alison May