Wit, warmth and romance set deep in the South Downs

It has all the things we love about a seaside England in the sun making us realise you don’t have to go abroad to find romance and adventure, she says. Maeve is an Oxford law graduate who worked in television and journalism before writing her worldwide bestseller Having It All which was translated into 26 languages. She has since written 14 contemporary and two historical novels plus one work of non-fiction extolling life’s small pleasures. Two of her novels have been shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year award.

Maeve, aged 73, said: “I live in London and Litlington in East Sussex though I grew up in Worthing on the seafront and went back to do research on seaside towns which is the setting of the book. I love seaside towns. My parents were popular GPs and have a bench on Broadwater Green

“This is my 18th and it’s a bit different. It’s a sort of Famous Five for Grown-ups with the final scene taking place in famous smugglers caves, but there is also humour and romance and it very much draws on my love of the seaside. An early reader said ‘Maeve makes you feel as if you’re right there with your toes in the sand.’ And we certainly need a bit of fun in the sun in the current climate.

“My main character Georgina is an antiques expert and she is invited back to the seaside town where she grew up to work for an old lady living in a romantic manor house. The condition is she has to pretend to be her companion while actually trying to track down valuable antiques which keep going missing – so she draws on her two school friends – feisty Eve and scatty Ruth to help her. It will appeal to anyone who wants a bit of sunny escapism with a bit of bite in in too. It was incredibly enjoyable to research at seaside towns along the south coast.”

Also in print, author Warwick Davis takes us back more than a century for a look at Health Care in Victorian Eastbourne (ISBN 978 9926161 5 1, £8.85, available from the Beachy Head Story, Beachy Head and direct from [email protected]).

Warwick, aged 70, said: “I am a retired principal biomedical scientist with an interest in social history and a particular interest in health care/ medicine. After researching family history and writing biographies for three generations of our families I became interested in how ordinary, everyday folk like myself lived. Much is written about the major historical events such as wars, monarchy, religion and architecture but what was life like for people like me? Can you imagine a health care system with no hospitals, no antibiotics or any medicines that actually worked, no anaesthetics or surgery nothing that we take for granted these days. Then imagine waves of deadly infectious diseases like small pox, diphtheria typhoid, cholera, measles and scarlet fever forever threatening at your door. Imagine anti-vaxxers trying to stop the immunisation against small pox – sound familiar? Imagine untrained nurses, expensive doctors with little scope to actually cure people. How did people manage? Why did Eastbourne become a health resort? Although aimed at Eastbourne the account could be relevant to any town or city in the country but Eastbourne was a high-class convalescent centre as well as a tourist attraction.” The book is the third part addressing ordinary life, the others being Everyday life in Victorian Eastbourne and Everyday life in Inter War Years (1920-1940) Eastbourne.