After picking a Kate Shackleton yesterday which was particularly evocative of Yorkshire I thought I’d mention a few more books set around the county
Let’s start with one of my very favourite Georgette Heyer’s – Venetia. Most of this is set in and around Venetia and Damerel’s houses in rural Yorkshire. Venetia is feisty and independent- but Jasper is one of Heyer’s best hero’s and among the most well fleshed out. Another Yorkshire set historical romance – but with a very different vibe – is Sarah MacLean’s Ten Ways to be Adored while Landing a Lord. Our heroine is running the family estate with very little money, and the hero is escaping from fashionable society to the country. This is the second in the Love by Numbers series.
When other people were reading Rivals, I was reading Barbara Taylor Bradford. And A Woman of Substance is set in Leeds and the surrounding countryside. I think this was the first book with sex scenes I ever read but it’s mostly a big old saga as Emma Harte raises herself up from housemaid to department store tycoon. I did read the rest of the trilogy and some of her others, but I think this – which was her big breakthrough was the best.
I mentioned it in the summer when I went to see the stage adaptation at the Open Air Theatre, but a reminder that Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is set in Yorkshire. I’m going to admit that I haven’t reread this since I was a child, so I can’t swear to how the original is aging… and of course there’s also James Heriot and his adventures in veterinary medicine.
Another book I read recently is Sovereign, the third in the Shardlake series, which sees Matthew following in the train of Henry VIII as he makes his progress to York. As well as a good murder plot it’s also really good at creating sixteenth century York – and given how much of old York still exists you can really conjure up the settings in your head. It was particularly good for me because my history supervisor at university was based in Kings Manor, which is one of the principal locations.
And finally several of the series I really like have installments in yorkshire – including Lady Julia Grey and Royal Spyness, but you really need to ahve read the others to get the most out of them.
Happy Humpday everyone!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
I’m a Lancastrian! However, A Woman of Substance was the first “grown up” book I ever read, and I love it.
I remember being somewhat confused by some of the descriptions in the sex scenes with whatshisface the American – something about falling backwards into water maybe?
I don’t remember that bit!
I’m rereading A Woman of Substance at the moment and have just watched the early 80s TV adaptation on Amazon Prime.
I’ve never watched the TV version – I am tempted though if it’s on prime… How has it aged?
The book and the TV series are very much of the time they were written, I think, late 70s and early 80s.
If you have a Prime subscription though, you may as well have a look and decide whether it’s worth watching the whole thing.