Guilty pleasure

Guilty pleasure (Radio 4)
Unmasking the English (Radio 4)

In 1908 Gerald Mills borrowed £1,000 (worth about £52,000 in today’s money) to set up a publishing company with his friend Charles Boon. Among their first authors were P.G. Wodehouse and Jack London, who would probably be horrified to realise that their books are now associated with a company that promotes titles such as Purchased for Pleasure and Tall, Tanned and Texan. But you can’t be snooty about a publisher who sells 200 million books worldwide every year (that’s one every six seconds according to a proud Mills & Boon editor). Or who once turned down a manuscript by Helen Fielding, who later went on to write Bridget Jones’s Diary (the title of her ‘romance’ was suitably entitled Fires of Zanzibar). In any case, my fortune (such as it is) depends on an inheritance derived from the sales of five M&B bestsellers written by a distinguished relative, and so it was duty, and duty alone which led me to Guilty Pleasure on Radio Four.