Why Yorkshire is the new Scotland!
I recently did an interview for the Single Titles website about my Fortune’s Folly trilogy and the interviewer, Julie Bonello, asked me a particularly interesting question. (All her questions were interesting and thought provoking but this one especially caught my attention.) It was this: “The trilogy is set in the fictional Yorkshire village of Fortune’s Folly. Regencies usually take place in London or Bath - what made you decide to create a fictional landscape in this particular British county?” I’ve set a number of books in Yorkshire. The first was “ The Chaperon Bride ”, of which I’m very fond, and which was set in the spa town of Harrogate. TCB featured the Welburn Men, a gang of radicals protesting against the establishment of tollhouses on the turnpike roads and the exploitation of travellers by unscrupulous local landowners. They were rick-burners and fence-breakers and I based their exploits on the real live Rebecca Riots. I picked up the theme of exploitation again in “ Unma...