Actress Sarah Jessica Parker who plays the character Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. (Reuters)

London, July 28: An imaginary book of love letters which featured in the Sex and the City film is to be turned into a reality.

When the character Carrie Bradshaw read extracts from Love Letters of Great Men in the hit movie, booksellers were inundated with requests for a copy.

But there was no such book, until the British firm Macmillan spotted the gap in the market and decided to issue a new publication with the same title. It contains intimate communiques from historical figures including Pliny, Henry VIII, Mozart, Napoleon, Prince Rainier III and Oscar Wilde.

The love letters of great men range from the cloyingly saccharine to the mildly offensive.

Mozart wrote to his wife Constanze: “While I was writing the last page, tear after tear fell on the paper. But I must cheer up - catch! An astonishing number of kisses are flying about — the deuce! I see a whole crowd of them! Ha! Ha!... I have just caught three — they are delicious!”

Alexander Pope was more circumspect in his prose to his long-time lover Martha Blount: “It is true you are not handsome, for you are a woman, and think you are not, but this good humour and tenderness for me has a charm that cannot be resisted.”