You are currently browsing the archives for August 2011.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 entries.
This week, my lovely writer friend, Melanie Rose, and I visited Loseley Park in Surrey. It was used in the BBC 4-part adaptation of Emma where it played Mr Knightley’s home, Donwell Abbey, and it also had a starring role in the recent Andrew Davies adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. So it was very much a Jane Austen-themed day!
It has one of the most beautiful and romantic gardens I’ve ever seen. Here I am cuddling up to a Gertrude Jekyll rose bush!
But Loseley wasn’t the only film set I visited this week. On an evening walk with Molly, Roy and I managed to walk right through a film set! Quite close to us is a beautiful eighteenth-century farmhouse by a canal and it’s very popular as a film location – Bridget Jones’s Diary, 28 Weeks Later, and The Children of Men have all been filmed here, and we spotted David Jason there this week - filming The Royal Bodyguard which is to be shown on TV at Christmas.
As if this wasn’t enough excitement, I then visited the lovely Ashdown House where my writer friend, Nicola Cornick, gives guided tours when she isn’t writing her wonderful historical novels. Here we are, windswept on the roof! The views over the parkland are stunning.
Don’t forget, this is the last week you can buy my three fantasy rom coms on Kindle for just 86p each. And it’s also your last chance to enter my competition to win a signed copy of The Perfect Hero and a Jane Austen goodie bag!
Continue reading Film sets galore! »
We’ve had a very mixed week weather-wise in the UK but, on Friday, the sun came out and it was glorious. The fields were gold and green, and there were masses of sloe berries in the hedgerows. I love their deep blue bloom.
We visited one of my favourite villages – Turville. Tucked away in the rolling Buckinghamshire countryside, Turville is a hidden gem with pretty cottages and a rather famous windmill that was the home of the Potts family in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The village has also had a staring role inn The Vicar of Dibley, An Education and The Shell Seekers and it isn’t hard to see why beacuase it really is the perfect English village.
I have a weakness for roses and here are two beauties I spotted in Turville. Aren’t they glorious?
There are few things more quintessentially English than a country cottage with roses around the door!
Continue reading Coming up roses »
I adore old houses especially big, old country houses and I’ve set quite a few of my books in them too. So, this week, on a perfect summer’s day, I met up with fellow author, Melanie Rose, and visited Hatchlands Park which lies deep in the Surrey countryside – just a stone’s throw away from Emma Woodhouse’s Box Hill.
Hatchlands has the most amazing collection of keyboard instruments and we saw one that had once belonged to Marie Antoinette. We marvelled at the collection before walking across the parkland and having tea and cake in the stable courtyard. This part of the estate reminded me of my book, A Weekend with Mr Darcy, and my hero Dan Harcourt who lives in a room below a clock tower.
It was a lovely summer’s day and it thoroughly recharged the batteries and I now have all sorts of ideas for the latest country house in a new novel of mine …
Continue reading A perfect English summer’s day »
I’m delighted to announce that you can now download and read my three fantasy rom coms on Kindle: Flights of Angels, Three Graces and Unmasking Elena Montella. These three books have only been published in Germany so far where Flights of Angels was made into a film in 2008. But this is the first time they’ve been available in the English language. And there’s a special offer for August – all three books are available for just 86p. Happy reading!
Continue reading Summer Magic! »