A novel approach: Is the romance over in the ‘new’ Barbara Cartland manuscripts?

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

When Dame Barbara Cartland died in 2000, aged 98, her publishers estimated that she’d published 723 historical-romantic novels. The news that she sold 750 million copies of her books is sometimes greeted with scepticism by British readers who have never seen a single copy on sale in any bookshop; but her fame was undoubtedly global.

Now, here’s excellent news for her fans. No fewer than 160 unpublished manuscripts, known as The Pink Collection after the Dame’s favourite colour, are to be published. Just over 100 have been available for a while on her website. But there are 57 others previously unseen, titles unknown, content un-guessed-at.

What could they be like? Recent rumours have hinted that, in her later years, Cartland wearied of the repetitive romance format and attempted to “branch out” into other genres. I managed to get a sneaky glimpse at some of the blurbs…

S&M Eroticism

At the start of Fifty Hues of Puce, Lady Euphemia Harper is interviewed for the role of governess by Sir Gideon Throb, a distant cousin of her Uncle Miles’s. Among her duties is the unexpected Chastisement Hour, when she is obliged to thrash both gentlemen to a condition of excitement, while being inappropriately served tea by Ruby the parlourmaid. There follows a thrilling, if rather disgusting, journey into abasement, abandon and abscesses on the knee.

Gritty Crime

Chief Inspector Sir Roland McTaggart of Drumlanrig is a rozzer on the edge. His wife, Lady Marjorie, has eloped to Capri with Jocelyn “Jock Strap” Fraser. He drinks too much 16-year-old Bruichladdich malt and confides in his Border collie bitch, Catriona. But when a serial killer starts to eviscerate the local village virgins with a skean dhu, Roland must take charge. An Absolute Rotter kicks off a series of crime books that grip like Zara Phillips’s knees.

Vampire Twilight

At finishing school in Montreux, the Honourable Maud Fritillary is disturbed by the attentions of green-eyed, black-haired cad Dennis “Bunk-Up” Costello, a fellow student of Trust Fund Accountancy. As his attentions intensify, she fears he is bent on securing the key to Fritillary Hall. Dennis explains he is merely an undead vampire who wishes only to drink her life’s blood. Whew! But can she trust him? Lust in the Dusk brilliantly balances the pash and the cash.

Dan Brown/Kate Mosse

Feisty, silver-haired dowager Countess Leila Rowbotham of Mere teams up with Yale symbologist Ricky Longjohn to investigate the connection between Constable’s The Hay Wain, Eddie the Eagle, Cologne Cathedral, Battersea Power Station, Nostradamus, Ken Dodd and Bird’s custard. The Michelangelo Citadel combines adventure and romance in a way that will… Fill in the rest would you, my dear, I need a little nap…