Ooooooooh Errrr!

The power of love: 100 years of romantic fiction
It was a perfect match: two publishers with a taste for romance and an eye for a market. A century on, millions of readers are still besotted with Mills & Boon. But what is their secret?
Saturday, 2 February 2008

This one was in the Independent and is so vitriolic I'm laughing. I can't quickly see who wrote it, perhaps they're too ashamed to put their name to it, but I would love to know what agenda they have going on. Can't stop to comment on it either as I'm too busy making my millions! :)

Has a sheikh ever read a Mills & Boon romance? Sheikhs feature a lot in these million-selling novels, but are seldom found reading books in them (too much wooing and stamping and looking cruel); but were they to read Desert Rapture or The Moonlit Oasis or The Falcon's Mistress, would they be surprised to discover how often they fall in love with rather ordinary-looking British women, with coltish virgins and plain-but-plucky athletes? Would they be interested to learn how invariably they're described as possessing strong jawlines, high cheekbones and jet-black eyes?

A whole 80 years after Rudolph Valentino made female audiences swoon with his desert-based wooing, fictional sheikhs can still, mirabile dictu, be found ordering women around in Mills & Boon plots. So can other alpha-male stereotypes, especially cowboy ranchers, business moguls, billionaires (mere millionaires need not apply any more) and swarthy plutocrats of indeterminate employment, known only as "the Spaniard," "the Italian" and inevitably "the Greek".

They're all at the heart of a publishing phenomenon which celebrates its centenary on Thursday, and can boast some extraordinary statistics. Their books are translated into 25 languages and sell in 100 international markets. They have a stable of 1,300 authors around the world, many of whom make millions but most of whom prefer to lurk behind noms de plume. A jaw-dropping 35 million titles are sold every year worldwide, seven million in the UK. Flying in the face of public condescension (and mainstream publishing trends), they publish 70 new titles each month and pulp any unsold copies after three months. For an organisation concerned with melting hearts and stumbling moonlight confessions, they're ruthless as a sheikh.

Many stories attest to their efficiency. When the Berlin Wall was breached in 1989, and the people of East Berlin emerged blinking into the light of freedom, one of the odder gifts they received was a Mills & Boon novel. Harlequin, owners of the imprint, had watched the collapse of Communism with interest and calculated that, if there was one thing the newly-unshackled female population had missed over 25 years, it was romance. They directed their West Berlin office to thrust 750,000 free copies of Penny Jordan's A Reason for Being into the chilly hands of East Berlin's lovelorn hausfrauen. It was a characteristic Mills & Boon move, combining shrewd commercialism with the chance to spread the narcotic fluid of boy-meets-girl through a lot of new veins. They've always known romance sells and they've sold it better – and with more focus and sophistication – than anyone else.

The company was launched in 1908 by Gerald Mills and Charles Boon, young entrepreneurs with £1,000 to spend. They meant to publish books on several subjects, including travel and crafts, but their first production was Arrows from the Dark by Sophie Cole – a romance. It sold modestly (1,300 copies in six years) but history, of a kind, was made. The house published early work by PG Wodehouse and Hugh Walpole, and made a name for itself as the "Promised Land" for new writers, where the efforts of fledglings would, unusually be welcomed. By 1913, Charles Boon had spotted where their natural market lay. "I am certain that the bulk of novels published are devoured by women before they can reach men," he told the Daily Citizen.

The company discerned a growing appetite among women readers for escapist reading and decided to concentrate on hardback romantic fiction. They had two unique selling propositions: their brightly-coloured, eye-catching jackets, picturing lantern-jawed heroes and fleeing beauties swept on to galloping horses by desert bandits; and the fact that their target audience was middle- and upper-class women, who would never have sullied their eyes with the "mill-girls' romances" of the late 19th century.

Depression and the Second World War did wonders for the escapism market. Romances flew off the nation's shelves with the speed of Hurricanes. On the back of every new M&B title, an advertisement pictured a well-to-do woman declaring, in Celia Johnson tones, "I always look for a Mills & Boon when I want a pleasant book. Your troubles are at an end when you chose a Mills & Boon novel. No more doubts! No more disappointments!" In other words, you always knew you were going to get a happy ending. With the decline of the circulating libraries, through which their early books were mainly sold, the company arranged for their books to be sold in newsagents all over the country. They also sold titles by direct-mail catalogue, and made a lucrative serialisation deal with Women's Weekly.

While their fortunes sky-rocketed, however, their reputation declined in the new age of television, rock '*' roll and Sixties radicalism. Mills & Boon as a generic concept seemed hopelessly outmoded, its romantic plots empty slush, its characters plaster mannequins, its whole ethos bland, vanilla-flavoured, elderly. Bookshops that stocked their titles consigned them to a ghetto shelf, as if embarrassed by them. Indeed, they often seemed interchangeable commodities to their readers. When I worked for a summer in a London library in 1976, I found a line of pencil marks inside the back cover of Moonlight Over Cordoba and told the boss someone was defacing books. "That's the Mills & Boon readers, poor old dears," she replied, "They put their initials in the back to tell themselves they've already read that one."

Despite the image problem, the pastel tide of romance has become oceanic. Today, Mills & Boon sell more than ever, in more countries than ever. From next week, they'll print books in India for the first time (beginning with the irresistible Virgin Slave, Barbarian King) looking to take a chunk of 300 million English-reading consumers. They've established a romantic presence in the lucrative Japanese Manga market. And they've just announced that they'll be launching, through W H Smith, a dozen titles in translation (such as Ksiaze Pustyni, Tejemniczy Ukochany or Mysterious Lover, Desert Prince) to cater for Polish émigrés.

I went to meet the top brass at their HQ in the appropriately named Paradise Road in Guildford, Surrey. In a building of breathtaking ugliness, the editorial director of Harlequin Mills & Boon Ltd – the grand panjandrum of worldwide romance – turned out to be Karin Stoecker, a tiny Canadian dame in her 50s with a briskly logical manner and no trace of stars in her eyes. "It's hard to talk about the Mills & Boon demographic because we have people from all ages and income brackets reading us," she said. "Forty years ago, authors and readers were from a higher socio-economic class, and now it's more widespread, but that has a lot to do with the way education has changed in the last 50 years. People read by life-stage and mood than for any other reason." Meaning? "When they have time on their hands. When you find yourself at home with young children, and you can't get out of the house and you'll read anything with adult words in it." She is under no delusion that Mills & Boon deal in literary masterpieces. "They're books you don't get too involved in. One woman said to me years ago, 'I love your books, I can put them down any time.' She meant she could also pick them up again and go right on where she left off, without thinking, 'Oh God, what have I forgotten?'"

The sea-change in the company's post-war fortunes was its decision to split its titles into genres, and to package and market them accordingly. "Before that," said Karin, "we just trusted the readers to know which kind of books they liked. Now, the mass market for romance is fragmented, and it's a matter of managing multiple niches." They rely on readers' advice, but rather more on the instincts of their authors, who invariably began life as M&B readers. Of the 12 niche imprints, "Modern" always features jet-set luxury, "Romance" deals in the now-traditional sheikhs, ranchers, billionaires and tanned Europeans (their titles are hilariously interchangeable: The Spaniard's Captive Bride, The Italian Billionaire's Pregnant Bride, Wedded at the Italian's Convenience and my favourite, The Sheikh's Convenient Virgin). "Historical" is love accessorised by ruffs, doublets and mob caps. "Medical" is basically Holby City with more heaving bosoms. The "Blaze" imprint promises readers fairly explicit smut, even going so far as oral sex (with ice cubes) and hot lesbian action. "I was on the team that worked on that," said Lesley Stone, a senior editor. "It was a spinoff from the Temptation series in 1995, which was light and flirty and fresh, and everyone liked the extra sex, so Blaze became a series by itself. Just like a TV spinoff." Did the readers actually say, "We'd like some soft porn, please?" Lesley looked aghast. "It's not soft porn. They just wanted it to be more realistic. People do go on holiday and they do have flings. They'll have sex, but it would still end up as a committed relationship, and it's still character-driven so it's still a romance."

Uniquely among publishers, the staff undertake to read every manuscript and treatment sent in by aspirant writers. Karin Soecker and a team of 20 editors take a day off each week to read them. "The most common mistake people make," said Jenny Hutton, a young editor who occasionally sounds just like a Mills & Boon heroine, "is when they've worked at the plot rather than really got to know the characters. You need a strongly constructed heroine to take you through the story and hero who the reader's in love with the minute he appears." But aren't romance heroes, from Mr Darcy onwards, complete bastards when they first appear? "But that's the talent of the author," said Ms Hutton, "You may have a hero whose life has gone wrong in the past, but the author can make you like him. You can have a flawed character but you can show his good qualities and how he's affected by the heroine, and how he changes through the story."

I suggested that Mills & Boon heroes hadn't changed much in 50 years, that they were invariably cruel and bossy. "Oh I don't know," breathed Jenny. "There may be a touch of ruthlessness about them, but really they're just taking the reins of the situation, they're in control of what's going on, and the heroine is the only one who gets in through the chink in their armour." Shouldn't they be more charming, along the lines of Jude Law or Hugh Grant? "Nah," said Karin dismissively. "You couldn't trust them to be faithful. There was a time in the early 1990s, when what we might call the beta male dominated. He was much more the guy next door, like Tom Hanks. He probably worked for somebody and had all the stresses and neuroses of someone like that. But you deal with the kind of person in real life." "When you're married to Joe, or Dave, or Jeff," said Jenny. "You really want..." "Niarchos" said Karin with finality.
What was going on with modern Mills & Boon heroines? Most of their titles involved women being captured, or ravished, stolen or "taken" – generally imprisoned rather than courted.
"I think there's a secret desire, particularly among busy successful women," said Karin with determination, "that for one day, for two hours, they can abdicate responsibility from doing it all. That somebody else will make the decisions. The point of the hero is more about his having the power to make it happen, than his being ruthless and cruel. Really, it's all about the total abdication of responsibility."

But all this endless repetition of being captured and taken... Can that really be women's secret desire in 2008? "The heroine is much more in charge in the books now," said Lesley. "She's appalled by the sheikh's behaviour and says, 'But he can't do such a thing in this day and age.' And the sheikh says, 'Yes I can, because I rule this kingdom.' But of course it'll work out fine, because they'll fall for each other..."

Look, I said, Where is the fantasy about female empowerment? Why isn't there a title like The Virgin's Convenient Sheikh, when the tables are turned? "The thing is," said Jenny, "readers often know that the sheikh is, in fact, at the virgin's mercy because of her strength of character. He wants her and is thrilled by her and that's what people know they'll get out of the story."
But, I persisted, wouldn't it be a brilliant sub-genre if the girl were the proactive character who imprisons the irate Spaniard? "But that would mean," said Karin, "once again, the woman's gotta do all the work. This is not a fantasy for women any more. Lose that idea right now."
"Yes, ma'am," I said. Anything you say.

What an idiot! So glad I'm not writing that kind of nonsense for a living.

And the Daily Mail has us too!

Help! I'm addicted to Mills and Boon
By ANGELA EPSTEIN
Daily Mail

Racing around Tesco the other day, my trolley dash was brought to an unexpected halt by the sight of a striking couple whose compelling appearance snagged my attention. The man was tall, lantern-jawed (hollow-faced??? Is she sure????), the expression on his ruggedly handsome face unreadable but utterly mesmerising. Edging closer, I could see the fragile blonde by his side thought so too; for though the upward tilt of her delicate chin hinted at defiance, the way she leaned into his muscular body was suggestive of a woman almost liquid with desire.

The chemistry between the two was so electrifying that suddenly all thoughts of my weekly shop were abandoned and replaced instead by a desperation to know how such a captivating partnership had come to pass. And so with one fluid movement, I grabbed the Mills & Boon paperback on which they were cover stars and quickly concealed it in my trolley as though it were a topshelf magazine. (Now, Liz Fielding would be proud of me because I don't do that. In fact, I invariably end up giving the lady at the checkout my business card. :) )

Wedged in the cart between a multi-pack of loo rolls and a bag of King Edwards, the passion fuelled pair looked terribly out of place (after all the man on the cover, I was soon to learn, was a Greek shipping magnate who made Bill Gates look like small change). But at least my embarrassing purchase could be hidden from view.

Yes, my name is Angela and I'm a Mills & Boon addict. I've tried to suppress my shameful obsession for more than 20 years. But as the world's most famous purveyor of romantic fiction celebrates its centenary - founded by Gerald Mills and Charles Boon in 1908, the firm began to concentrate on romantic fiction in the Thirties - I feel it's time to come clean about my craving.

I know what you're thinking, that I'm just a sad, romance-starved fantasist, incapable of appreciating good writing. But I'm actually an emancipated woman with a frisky, adorable husband and a degree in English literature which enables me to quote vast tracts of Shakespeare.

How, then, could my literary heritage and position as postmodern woman have been supplanted by an obsession with these soufflÈ-light, sausage machine fantasies? (Hmmmm. Thanks, I think ....) Well actually, the genesis of my addiction was profoundly ironic. Having spent my years as a student ploughing through mountains of classics at break-neck speed, ("read David Copperfield for Thursday" was a typical task), I couldn't face reading anything which smacked of high art or serious scholarship for years after I graduated.

And so, while on holiday, to enjoy my freedom before I joined the rat race, and in a state of acknowledged literary burn-out, I found myself picking up a dog- eared Mills & Boon romance from the shelf of my rented apartment. With patronising amusement I challenged myself to survive the first chapter. I ended up devouring the entire book, as well as the other yellowing M&B titles around the flat.

Reader, I was hooked.

After that, whenever I stumbled upon one of these paperback romances I couldn't resist flicking it open. In fact, when I began work as a trainee reporter a couple of months later, I found myself buying dog-eared copies from the open-air book stall near my office, hiding my furtive purchases behind my newspaper on the train home. As an intellectual snob, I was hideously embarrassed by my addiction. Yet still, I couldn't help myself.

So I raced through Darkness Of The Heart, pored over The Passionate Lover, and lapped up No Longer A Dream. It was an unfathomable compulsion. Particularly since I quickly discovered the narrative in each book observed the same pattern: young, spirited virgin collides with rich, successful sexually magnetic older man in a story seasoned with succulent adjectives.

They fight, they deny, they smoulder and despair before acknowledging their lifechanging attraction in a blizzard of passion and an inevitable marriage proposal. And yet the more I read, the more I found there was something sweetly addictive about the crisp writing style, the restrained glamour of the settings, the slightly out-of-date attention to detail found in the heroine's Broderie Anglaise bolero or her lover's avocado hors d'oeuvre.

This was a world which nudged reality but filtered out its grimier details.
Above all, I couldn't resist the hero.

A character flawed by his desire to possess his unsuitable conquest. Not such a stretch from Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, I weakly told myself. I even tried to write one myself, inspired to make an attempt after interviewing a matronly M&B author who spent her days as a shorthand typist and her nights decanting her wild imagination onto sheets of A4.

How difficult could it be? It was only when I found it impossible to stretch the uncompromising passion between "Rex and Jacey" (my hero and heroine) beyond the first two chapters that I realised writing for this publishing institution demands a rare touch.

Though I've long since returned to reading "good books" as well, I still can't resist my fix of Mills & Boon and often have two disparate titles on the go. Which is why, after yesterday's spontaneous purchase, my Greek millionaire and his conquered blonde were nestling together underneath Tess Of The D'Urbervilles. Now there's an eye-watering image - and perhaps the starting point for yet another bodice ripper. (We were going so well, but that term 'bodice ripper' is annoying. Who writes that???)

As below, the pink is me!

And we're in the Observer ...

And here it is:

Who said romance was dead?

In the time it takes you to read this page, Britons will have bought 100 novels by Mills & Boon, now in its centenary year

Francesca Segal
Sunday January 27, 2008
The Observer

'Men are so beaten into submission these days,' says Jilly Cooper. 'They're so wet and worried and confused that one simply has to reach into romance novels to find a proper hero.'
That prince of sales figures, Harry Potter, has shifted 400 million books in his 11-year career. But when you realise that 200 million Mills & Boon novels are sold worldwide every year, it's all too obvious that Jilly Cooper has a point. (Don't you just love that paragraph!!)

A Mills & Boon paperback is sold in a UK bookshop on average every 6.6 seconds. Compare this to our domestic market for literary fiction, where some critically acclaimed novels sell so few copies that the author might well have been better to bypass the publishers and knock them off on a photocopier. As it reaches its centenary, Mills & Boon is a truly astonishing phenomenon.
In 1908, the company was launched as a publisher of general fiction, as well as etiquette guides and manuals for modern living. One contributor wrote under the rather progressive pseudonym of 'Gentleman With a Duster', but its list also featured Jack London, PG Wodehouse and Hugh Walpole. It became clear very quickly, however, that romances outsold all else. The character of the list has changed immeasurably, but if the company has retained anything from those first years, it is its policy of encouraging new writers alongside its stars.

It was Charles Boon who realised that the future of the company lay with women's fiction and during the First World War, as life became harder and men more scarce, he began to focus on the escapist romance novels for which the house is now known. And yet there has always been a pervasively sneering attitude to them, the name synonymous with saccharine sentiments, prehistoric gender roles and risible sexual euphemism. Why, with 3.2 million devoted readers in the UK and 50 million worldwide, has such snobbery persisted?

'I think it's partly because they're cheap,' says Joanna Bowring, co-curator of the Mills & Boon centenary exhibition at Manchester Central Library, 'and also because they're considered disposable literature. And they're almost exclusively read and written by women and so have never been taken very seriously.'

Mills & Boon is a very serious business. Its highly stylised category romances are published in 12 distinct series, whose content ranges from the innocent to the explicit; from cosy, domestic love stories to glamorous international dramas. A reader picking up a hot-pink Romance novel will never be subjected to the graphic, lust-fuelled scenes in a flame-covered Blaze story. Some follow the quaintly traditional path most associated with the novels - virgins, chaste kisses and wedding bells, while others have evolved to represent their current readers and show single mothers, divorcees and mistresses, the complex structures of modern families and relationships.

Their specificity is astonishing - one series, Medical Romance, is peopled entirely with hunky doctors and pretty nurses, while Modern Romance is filled with an alternating catalogue of Greeks, Italians and Arab sheikhs. Nocturne, launching later this year, will focus on the improbably narrow niche of paranormal passions.

Read one you enjoy and the colour of jacket will guide you to the others in the same series, sharing enough elements that you will never be disappointed. It is this repetition of both plot and characters that inspires criticism, but it is also what keeps readers reaching for the shelves or, in the case of subscribers, the letterbox. Committed readers receive up to 70 books a month by post and such is their faith in the consistency of the brand that they simply take what's new rather than selecting individual titles.

Like Disney, everything in the Mills & Boon universe is tightly controlled. Fans have learnt that they can depend on them completely for the security of a happy ending. As one subscriber from Fort Worth, Texas, explained: 'They give faith when you need it. You know everything will be all right and the man is not a swine.' They tap into a fundamental need for reassurance, a small domain of predictability in a world where bad things happen. This is the awesome power of the romance novel and the reason why the relentless attacks of literary snobs on both the prose and the frequent use of cliche is redundant. No one believes they're great literature, nor do they need to be. They're cherished for their simplicity. Sometimes, all we want is a break from wondering what's going to happen next.

'Romance novels provide a glimpse of what we feel life could be,' says another fan from Australia. 'The heroes are always thoughtful and confident and can always take care of the women they love.'

Over the years, a frequent objection has been that romance novels cause women to become dissatisfied with their lot, encouraged to expect a Lancelot when they ought to be happy with a more readily available Don Quixote. It is only when talking to Kate Walker, one of the company's most successful authors, that I notice the subtle sexism implicit in this concern and, indeed, in many of the oft-repeated attacks on the novels. Does romance encourage women to foster unrealistic expectations? Does science fiction give men unrealistic expectations about inter-galactic space travel?

'I think,' corrects Walker, 'that the readers are aware of their escapist value - and that we've never actually met a sheikh or a Greek billionaire. And in any case, the problems that I give the characters are familiar ones that can't be solved with money or power. In that sense, it's the same issues your plumber could have with his missus, but in a glamorous setting.'

Walker has been applying this formula since 1984 and in that time has sold more than 12 million copies of her books in 67 different countries. But, like a great many Mills & Boon writers, she began 'because it's a job that a woman can do to support herself for independence while having a family. There are very few publishers that have such a strong female history. Even the heroines have traditionally been working women, not housewives. Yes, it was a company started by men, but the women have sustained it'.

Just as, in turn, it has sustained the women. 'A friend of my mother's had been abandoned by her husband,' says Walker, 'and she made a life for herself and her two kids by writing Mills & Boon novels. As a company in which women have always been so important, strong and professional, there isn't one to match it.'

But feminist critics have long attacked the books, citing retrogressive plots, passive women and the reinforcement of the dominant male. 'It means they haven't read one since the Sixties,' explains Walker. 'I couldn't write a passive woman if I tried. Yes, the men are strong, but my heroines give as good as they get.' (Hurray for Kate!!)

While the heroines have evolved since the early days, the heroes remain much as they were a century ago. 'There's always been a subtle undercurrent of force throughout the books and that's never changed from the earliest ones. Even later, when other aspects are influenced by feminism and the shifting attitudes outside the novel,' observes Joanna Bowring, 'the men are masterful and stern.'

This was expressed rather less subtly by Violet Winspear, a popular writer who caused a furore in 1970 when she declared that her male characters 'must frighten and fascinate. They must be the sort of men who are capable of rape'. (How many times to you reckon we're going to read that quote this year???) A shy spinster who lived with her mother and a cat, it's easy to dismiss Winspear as out of touch with her contemporaries and her books did have unusually darker elements. But a quick glance at the titles of current releases in the racier and more cosmopolitan Modern Romance series suggests that dominance is still dominant. The Greek Tycoon's Unwilling Wife; The Billionaire's Captive Bride; The Desert Sheikh's Captive Wife; Surrender to the Sheikh; Taken by her Greek Boss - all of these are 2007 publications.

Stories in which male dominance remains the norm stand accused of setting back women's emancipation, our hard-won rights to a partner instead of a ruler. They are considered outdated, no longer representing what women of today really want, but none the less encouraging such desires to linger. The fundamental flaw to such an argument is that Mills & Boon has always been a minutely sensitive gauge, polling relentlessly and reacting instantly to the changing tastes of their readers. Whatever appears on the pages is there because the readers want it. (Oh yes!!)

This goes to the heart of what makes Mills & Boon's success so remarkable: while many of the details have evolved over the years, the core of the stories has remained the same. Every reader I spoke to expressed a similar sentiment - they reached for a romance novel for its promise of a happy ending. It's all there on the back of one of their earliest paperbacks - 'Your troubles are at an end when you choose a Mills & Boon novel. No more doubts! No more disappointments!'

It has been calculated that dedicated modern Mills & Boon readers will have seen their characters sharing some 30,000 embraces and tripping merrily to the altar at least 7,000 times, more than enough happily-ever-afters to cheer the most jaded of readers. Jilly Cooper puts it best: 'After all, life's bloody tough. Mills & Boon is much better than binge drinking.'

· Readers, Writers and Romance, an exhibition celebrating Mills & Boon's centenary, will be staged in Manchester Central Library from June, before touring the north west into 2009

And, in case you haven't guessed, the bits in pink are all mine!

Mills & Boon

Michelle Monkou is the second person this week to ask me what's the difference, if any, between Harlequin and Mills & Boon - so here goes.

Mills & Boon began in 1908 here in the UK. It published all kinds of fiction, including P G Woodhouse and brought Leroux's 'The Phantom of the Opera' to the UK.

The First World War brought about a market for an escapist romance read, which was consolidated during the depression and then then Second World War. By the 1960s Mills & Boon were publishing eight romance series titles every month.

It's in the 1970s that the Mills & Boon story becomes entwined with that of Canada's Harlequin as the two companies merged.

These days Harlequin and Silhoutte are both divisions of Torstar, which is a Canadian publishing and media company.

What we have is branding.

Here in the UK Mills & Boon brand recognition is incredibly high, so that's what they use. In fact, 'Mills & Boon' is even in the Oxford English Dictionary as 'a (type of) popular romantic fiction'.

Following this???

In the UK our shelves have both Silhouette and Mills & Boon books on them. My books have the Mills & Boon logo (above). In Australia my books are marketed as Harlequin Mills & Boon and in North America I'm simply Harlequin (right).

In the lead up to the launch of the new Romance line my 'Millionaire Dad, Wife Needed' was released in NA as a Silhouette Romance.

Globally it gets even more complicated, but it's all the same parent company.

And then we have the lines. I write Mills & Boon 'Romance' in the UK, 'Harlequin Romance' in NA, Harlequin Mills & Boon 'Sweet' in Australia, but my latest release, 'The Tycoon's Princess Bride' is Mills & Boon 'Modern' in the UK, Harlequin Presents in NA and Harlequin Mills & Boon 'Sexy' in Australia.

Clear as mud, isn't it. :)

I still hide the cover when I read a Mills & Boon

That's the title of author Fay Weldon's piece on Mills & Boon in today's Telegraph. And it made me smile because ... so do I. I've just received my hardback copies of 'Wanted: White Wedding' and I've got the most beautiful cover. I think my favourite so far. Both my hero and heroine are perfect. If Freya's dress is not as I described it I'm prepared to accept I'm being picky. But ... I'd still hide the cover if I were reading it in a public place.

For me, being in the UK, it's the very lurid pink flashes across the front. These pink flashes being the result of a hugely expensive marketing process when the Romance line launched back in September 06. For others, I know, it's more about what they think other people will think if they're seen clutching a small romance.

Anyway, here's what Fay Weldon has to say. I did warn you it was going to be that kind of a year.

Well, good for them. Mills & Boon have made their centenary - 1908 to 2008 - and are still going strong. They endure literary and intellectual scorn, provide women with what they want, and it pays off.

Only love me, love me, love me and how happy we will be! sells 200 million books a year worldwide; that's six books every second from bookstall and corner shop, seldom from "proper" bookshops. And just as the 19th century saw Penny Dreadfuls - lurid tales for boys - blamed by the magistrates for the rise in crime, so feminists will blame the Mills & Boon romances of the 20th century for spouting "patriarchal propaganda" and even encouragement to rape.

I daresay it is true of Mills & Boon tales that they perpetuate female folly by suggesting that love and marriage is the answer to a woman's problems, and not the beginning of them, but I hardly think it is any worse than that. Are we not entitled to a little wishful thinking? Is it not better anyway to read, than to sit in front of TV watching East Enders shout, snarl and rape?

Shrewdly, Mills & Boon have kept up with the times. Since the Thirties, when they abandoned "proper" publishing and concentrated on romance, the nature of the heroine and the lover has changed. It started as pure romance - poor girl gets rich man; then in the Forties, and wartime, there was a boom in medical romance which still flourishes today on TV. The Fifties meant Hollywood glamour, with girls swooning in the embrace of exotic men, while the rebellious heroines of the Sixties are leaving home - in the arms of the right man, of course.

In the Seventies the girl becomes career-orientated; the Eighties and Nineties we find more open sexual content - and yet more feisty heroines. And where next? I suspect heroines, exhausted by too much multi-tasking, may just want to stay home and have babies.

There are two puzzles here: why does the success of Mills & Boon so incense some, and what is there about them that so attracts others? I, too, reading a Mills & Boon novel on a train, am tempted to hide the cover from public view. But why? They are often well enough written, if on occasion littered with exclamation marks. They are sanitised - but that in itself is an attraction. The reader of a modern Mills & Boon romance is in charge of her own responses. In the text the hero's "thigh muscles strain beneath tight jeans" - but it is left to the reader to decide whether that means an erection, or just tight jeans.

If the tension between potential lovers is that the girl "lost her innocence" to the suitor's father, the reader can interpret that as she wishes - rape, seduction or just a sexy conversation. And, my theory is, it's for this very reason the books appeal so: the books are interactive, so the reader is in control of the fantasy.

As Chesterton put it in 1901, writing about the rise and fall of the Penny Dreadful, "The simple need for some kind of ideal world in which fictitious persons play an unhampered part is infinitely deeper and older than the rules of good art, and much more important. Every one of us in childhood has constructed such invisible dramatis personae, but it never occurred to our nurses to correct the composition by careful comparison with Balzac." Nor should we literary folk try comparing Come Back to Me with Atonement.

Any novel takes a certain slice of life and deals with that. No novel can take on the whole pie chart of our existence and deal with all human experience. The more "literary" the novel, the wider the slice that is attempted, and the more likely it is to fail - and bore. The genre novel contents itself with dealing with a certain slice: the thriller deals with that part of our experience that involves danger; the detective story with our curiosity; sci-fi echoes out alienation in space and time - and so on. The genre novel "takes us out of ourselves" while the literary novel keeps us firmly and sometimes painfully in our own lives, informing us as to our own natures - which is why it is taken seriously and gets reviewed. The Mills & Boon novel takes a peculiarly narrow slice of female life, and so tends to get despised. But it sells.

My mother made a good living for a time writing romantic novels. People queued round the block for the next instalment of Velvet and Steel, by Pearl Bellairs. And my, it packed an erotic punch. Alas, she was one day struck by a pang of conscience: was it right, she wondered, to fill the heads of young girls with pernicious nonsense? She decided the answer was no, stopped writing romances, took a job in a biscuit factory and the family lived in righteous poverty thereafter.

And here's the link if you want to read it in situ and/or leave a comment.

So what do you reckon???