Barbara Cartland: the novelist reaching out beyond the grave

Name: Barbara Cartland.

Age: How dare you! A lady never tells. But, by appearances, anywhere from 60 to 302 years old. Though obituaries decided on 98 when she died in 2000.

Appearance: You wouldn't believe me if I told you.

Ah, go on! A meringue covered in chalk, topped with white candy floss, given spiders for eyes and wrapped in pink chiffon.

She sounds like a great English eccentric. That she was, sir, that she was. And a prolific novelist to boot.

Really? The Joyce Carol Oates of her day. Umm, in a sense. Though Cartland specialised in romantic fiction in which men were men, women were virgins and the plot was nugatory. She published 723 books in her lifetime and sold, she claimed, 750m copies altogether.

Ye Gods! But if this indefatigable lady finally became fatigable in 2000, why is she in the news now? Because, thanks to a new distribution agreement, the whole oeuvre, including the 160 manuscripts she left behind at her death (103 of which can be accessed via barbaracartland.com, 57 of which have never been published before) are to be made into e- and print-on-demand books.

I think I feel a swoon coming on. Could you loosen my stays? No. Barbara would not approve. Chastity was ever her watchword. In her books, anyway. She herself was quite a goer in her day.

By "goer", d'you mean … I mean she gave "daring" parties as a high-society hostess in the 1920s and 30s. She married Alexander McCorquodale in 1927 and divorced him in 1933 amidst claims and counterclaims of adultery.

Cor blimey! She later claimed their daughter – Raine, who went on to become Princess Diana's stepmother – was in fact the daughter of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and married McCorquodale's cousin Hugh, who died in 1963. She then maintained a long friendship with Lord Mountbatten of Burma until he was murdered in 1979.

That's a Corquor of a story! One which never made it into any of her books, alas. Although I can't say I have read every one. Or indeed any one.

It's funny how someone can sell nearly 1bn books but you never meet anyone who has ever read one. Or picked one up. Or seen one. Delectable confections all, though, I am assured. Just like their creator.

Do say: "He drew her to him and crushed her to his manly breast …"

Don't say: Fifty Shades of Shite.