Hughes and Plath are poetry’s posthumous power couple. During their marriage, Plath tended to play second fiddle to him. In Al Alvarez’s The Savage God, he speculates about what it must have been like having two poets of their calibre under one roof: “When two genuinely original, ambitious, full-time poets join in one marriage… every poem one writes probably feels to the other as though it had been dug out of his or her own skull.” It must, at times, have been unbearable to see the Muse being unfaithful to you – with your partner. Photograph: Rex Features
Greg Doran met Antony Sher when they were both acting, 25 years ago, in the RSC’s The Merchant of Venice. Doran was Solanio, which involved spitting at Sher’s tremendous Shylock. Off stage, in Stratford, they fell in love. Doran is now artistic director of the RSC and the pair are an outstanding Shakespearean double act (although Sher is not unthinkingly reverential – there are Shakespeare plays he regards as not altogether top notch). Sher and Doran have always talked openly about their relationship, especially in the days before civil partnerships. Photograph: David Levene/the Observer
Existentialism is not the cosiest of bedfellows. And the relationship between Sartre (1905-80) and de Beauvoir (1908-86) was nothing if not complicated. They never married, had children or lived together. This was, above all, an intellectual alliance – they read each other’s work and influenced one another. But it also involved sexual entanglements galore – material for de Beauvoir’s fiction. In her first novel, She Came to Stay, de Beauvoir writes about a menage a trois that was, in life, more of a menage a quatre. Photograph: STF/AFP
Jay-Z, one of the world’s most financially successful rap artists, married mega-star singer Beyoncé in 2008 and today they are said to be one of showbusiness’s top-earning couples. In an interview with GQ magazine, Beyoncé explained that a marriage only works when both partners know how to hang on to their independence: “Your self-worth is determined by you. You don’t have to depend on someone telling you who you are.” Their daughter, Blue, was born in 2012. Jay-Z celebrated with a song, Glory, that included his baby daughter’s wailing as its finale. Photograph: Frank Micelotta/Getty Images
A “power couple” may be a simplification applied to these theatrically self-destructive painters. Frida Kahlo (1907-54) painted her marriage to Diego Rivera (1886-1957) into our minds for ever, in the 1931 double portrait. He also painted her in Ballad of the Revolution. He was 20 years her senior, overweight and given to drunken posturing. As an overture to their relationship, he pulled out a pistol. “I began to be interested in him, although I was also afraid,” Frida recalled. Her disapproving mother described their marriage as between “an elephant and a dove.” Photograph: Wallace Marly/Getty Images
“You don’t make friends, you make contacts,” Tina Brown is famously quoted as saying on arriving in New York, where she has edited the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and now Daily Beast. Harold Evans, Sunday Times editor for 14 years, was always more than a contact… they are a journalistic power couple at the summit of Manhattan society. They met, in 1973, through literary agent Pat Kavanagh. Evans is 25 years older than Brown, but they share editorial talent and, presumably, the thick skin needed to survive the downs (her doomed glossy monthly, Talk, for starters) that accompany the ups. Photograph: Rex Features
Pierre (1859-1906) was first drawn to Marie (1867-1934) because she stood out from the other girls, with her all-consuming passion for science. In the photographs that survive, their faces have a studied and studious look, their minds more on their experiments than on one another. In 1898, they discovered the elements radium and polonium – their remarkable work as radiology pioneers won them a joint Nobel prize in 1903. Today, their names are carved on a crypt in the Pantheon in Paris. They passed on the scientific gene: their children and grandchildren became distinguished scientists too. Photograph: Agence France Presse/Getty Images
Hillary Clinton has resigned from her post as the US secretary of state and is currently unprepared to say what it is she is planning for the future. But it is inconceivable that she is going to take anything resembling a back seat. As President Bill Clinton’s wife, she was First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001 – and, in her case, the title was always going to be more than honorary. In her first memoir, Living History (she has plans to write another), Hillary wrote: “Bill Clinton and I started a conversation in the spring of 1971… and more than 30 years later, we’re still talking.” Photograph: Adams Eddie/Sygma/Corbis
Jiang Qing – more catchily dubbed “Madame Mao” in the west – was the last of Chairman Mao’s wives. An actress and a major figure in the Chinese Communist party, she was one of the leading movers and shakers in the Cultural Revolution and it was alongside Mao that she prospered. After his death, in September 1976, her grip on the political reins began to slip. The following month her fall from grace was complete: she was arrested and accused of being a counter-revolutionary. She was sentenced to death, a verdict later commuted to life imprisonment. She committed suicide in 1991. Photograph: AP
Low-profile in private (part of their power is the ability to keep the press on a short leash), Spain’s hottest acting couple first appeared together when Penélope was a teenager. Their joint debut, Jamon, Jamon (1992), featured Bardem as a wannabe underwear model and would-be bullfighter (an arresting combination). But he was not ready to charge into Penélope’s life and it would be 15 years before they acted together again, and another three before they married, in the Bahamas. They have a two-year-old son, Leo, and it was reported last week that they are expecting a second child. Photograph: Everett/Rex Features
