Life at Long Livery Hall

My new series of novels, The Erotic Tales of Long Livery Hall, is set in a fictional country house in Cornwall, England. In the first four novels, the house is owned by Brigadier-General Sir John Windlesham. He and his wife, Lady Angela Windlesham are enlightened employers who treat their staff well.

Was that realistic?

In the wake of the television series, Downton Abbey, there has been an argument in the British media about whether wealthy landowners treated their servants well. I find that rather a silly argument as it assumes all landowners behaved in the same way. They didn’t. Obviously I did a lot of research before starting to write the Long Livery Hall series and I discovered that there were good employers as well as bad. Which is logical when you think about it.

One of my distant ancestors was the lodge gate keeper at a large country house in nineteenth century Cornwall. When he became too old for the job, he and his wife were given a cottage on the estate and a small pension – at a time when pensions were very rare for poorer country folk – and his son was given the lodge gatekeeper’s job. I modelled Sir John Windlesham on that enlightened employer.

And so to the first book in the new series. Sir John and Lady Windlesham have a major problem – their daughter, Virginia, can’t get enough sex and she latches herself onto any well-endowed man who will take her to his bed. Book One in the series opens with Virginia lying naked on her back with a virile estate worker between her legs. Naturally, I leave nothing to the reader’s imagination as I describe their sexual coupling.

To learn more, keep an eye on the Whiskey Creek web site and look for details of the first book, due out in May.