They were Hollywood's golden couple who were married twice and she always declared him to be the love of her life. But Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's heartbreaking romantic reconciliation will always remain a secret after she was buried with his last ever love letter to her.
Taylor, who passed away last week, received the letter from Burton just before his unexpected death aged 58 in 1984. According to reports from New York, having kept the letter safely stored next to her bed for the past 27 years, she was granted her wish to be buried with it, when she was laid to rest in Los Angeles last Thursday.
The screen siren, who was 79 when she died from congestive heart failure last Wednesday, has always refused to reveal exactly what her fifth husband wrote to her. However, she did reveal a small part of the letter to her biographers Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger: She told them: 'In it he told [me] what he wanted. Home was where Elizabeth was, and he wanted to come home.' Burton and Taylor were married between 1964 and 1974 and then again in 1975 for another year.
She received his final love letter, which he sent on August 2 1984, three days before his death, as she returned to her home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, from his memorial service and promptly burst into tears after she recognised his handwriting.
Burton wrote many love letter to Taylor, more than 40 of which she had published in a the biography Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century. The letters, many written when the couple were no longer together, contain repeated declarations of love. He wrote: 'I love you, lovely woman. If anybody hurts you, just send me a line saying something like 'Need' or 'Necessary' or just the one magic word 'Elizabeth', and I will be there somewhat faster than sound.
'You must know, of course, how much I love you. You must know, of course, how badly I treat you. But the fundamental and most vicious, swinish, murderous and unchangeable fact is that we totally misunderstand each other. You are as distant as Venus - planet, I mean - and I am tone deaf to the music of the spheres. I love you and I always will. Come back to me as soon as you can.'
The couple made 11 movies together including 1963's Cleopatra, where the couple met, and 1966's Whose Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. When asked if Burton was her favourite husband, Dame Elizabeth joked: "Lets put it this way - he's the only one I married twice. Attentive, loving - that was Richard - from those first moments in Rome we were always madly and powerfully in love. We had more time but not enough.
'[When I met him] Richard came on the set and sort of sidled over to me and said: "Has anybody ever told you that you're a very pretty girl?" 'I thought, Oy gevalt, the great lover, the great wit, the great Welsh intellectual, and he comes out with a corny line like that’.
Taylor, who passed away last week, received the letter from Burton just before his unexpected death aged 58 in 1984. According to reports from New York, having kept the letter safely stored next to her bed for the past 27 years, she was granted her wish to be buried with it, when she was laid to rest in Los Angeles last Thursday.
The screen siren, who was 79 when she died from congestive heart failure last Wednesday, has always refused to reveal exactly what her fifth husband wrote to her. However, she did reveal a small part of the letter to her biographers Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger: She told them: 'In it he told [me] what he wanted. Home was where Elizabeth was, and he wanted to come home.' Burton and Taylor were married between 1964 and 1974 and then again in 1975 for another year.
She received his final love letter, which he sent on August 2 1984, three days before his death, as she returned to her home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, from his memorial service and promptly burst into tears after she recognised his handwriting.
Burton wrote many love letter to Taylor, more than 40 of which she had published in a the biography Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century. The letters, many written when the couple were no longer together, contain repeated declarations of love. He wrote: 'I love you, lovely woman. If anybody hurts you, just send me a line saying something like 'Need' or 'Necessary' or just the one magic word 'Elizabeth', and I will be there somewhat faster than sound.
'You must know, of course, how much I love you. You must know, of course, how badly I treat you. But the fundamental and most vicious, swinish, murderous and unchangeable fact is that we totally misunderstand each other. You are as distant as Venus - planet, I mean - and I am tone deaf to the music of the spheres. I love you and I always will. Come back to me as soon as you can.'
The couple made 11 movies together including 1963's Cleopatra, where the couple met, and 1966's Whose Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. When asked if Burton was her favourite husband, Dame Elizabeth joked: "Lets put it this way - he's the only one I married twice. Attentive, loving - that was Richard - from those first moments in Rome we were always madly and powerfully in love. We had more time but not enough.
'[When I met him] Richard came on the set and sort of sidled over to me and said: "Has anybody ever told you that you're a very pretty girl?" 'I thought, Oy gevalt, the great lover, the great wit, the great Welsh intellectual, and he comes out with a corny line like that’.