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This book tells the surprising history of our most intimate gesture: the kiss. Richly illustrated, it explores a millennium of kisses, asking how and why the kiss has retained its power over the centuries, and what it might mean today.

From the furtive kisses of fated lovers Heloise and Abelard to The Godfather’s ‘kiss of death’, Katie Barclay shows how the kiss can be romantic, peaceful, transgressive, intimate, erotic and more. There are kisses that are bad ideas, dangerous kisses and funny ones. New kisses are invented and old ones fall out of favour.

While the kiss continues to change, Barclay shows that we kiss fewer people, and less often, than we used to. The Kiss reveals a cultural inheritance transmitted in story and song, art and literature, and through the everyday kisses that we receive from our parents, or reserve for our lovers; when we kiss, we kiss with the weight of history.