It’s another miserable day: the sky outside is a stubborn steely grey, and rain periodically lashes or drizzles against the A&B office windows. Those of us unlucky enough to have forgotten our umbrellas have reached our desks soggy and displeased, damning our bleak British weather.

But perhaps we shouldn’t condemn the precipitation too quickly. Often a rainy day can be the setting for the greatest of stories, and today’s downfall has brought to my mind scenes from some of my favourite books and films when rain, far from dampening the mood, makes the moment:

1) Middlemarch, by George Eliot. I was on a bus in Slovenia, in the middle of a violent thunderstorm, when I first read the stormy love scene between Dorothea and Will; as lightening flashes and rain falls outside, their love finally draws them together. I still think it is one of the most exciting moments of romance in literature.

2) The Notebook, by Ncholas Sparks. It’s shameless pathetic fallacy, I know, but is there a more romantic scene in film than when Noah sweeps Ally into his arms in the rainstorm by the lake?

3) Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy. An evening fall of rain allows Tess and Angel, their young love not yet ruined, to huddle together under a piece of sailcloth: ‘Creep close to me, and perhaps the drizzle will not hurt you so much.’ Well played, Angel.

4) Beauty and the Beast. Belle whispers that she loves the Beast just in time to break the spell in the rain-drenched finale of my most adored Disney film: the perfect ending for the tale as old as time.

5) Singin’ in the Rain. Well, I couldn’t miss this one out, now could I? ‘What a glorious feeling…’  (There’s actually a new stage production coming to the Palace Theatre in London in Feburary 2012.  More about that here…

So don’t wish the rain away just yet – there might be some more stories hidden in those raindrops…

Rachel Dewhirst, currently doing work experience with A&B