The setting of 'His Lordship's Gardener' is a familiar one to me. I was born in Bedfordshire, and in my teens used to travel from my home in Ampthill to school in Bedford and back every day. Twice a day I negotiated Ampthill hill, either by car or on the bus. Sometimes, depending on the route that the bus took, I would find myself going round the village of Houghton Conquest, which Lyddington and Frances ride through on their way to Bedford. Silver Street and the town bridge are well known to me, as is The Swan, where I have enjoyed meals and drinks on a number of occasions. In setting my story in Bedfordshire, I was treading on familiar territory.

When my first novel was accepted, Robert Hale made a number of suggestions which they felt would make it more marketable. The first was that to make it less impersonal, the title should be 'His Lordship's Gardener' rather than 'His Lordship's Garden'. The second was that it should be shortened a little. The third was that I should change the period from mid-eighteenth century to Regency. I decided that because they clearly knew more about publishing than I did, I would fall in with their suggestions. The first change was the work of a moment. The second was not much harder. I had thought that the novel was a little too short, so I had padded out one of the later chapters with an interesting but unimportant incident. I simply removed this padding and the deed was done.

The third change was harder to accomplish. Gardens were still being remodelled in the early Regency period, but not exactly on the same lines, and not by the same people. Lord Bathurst, still alive in 1765, was long dead by 1811, so his reference for Thomas Sutcliffe had to be substituted by another. My hero would have worn a tricorne in 1765, but by 1811 he would have been wearing a beaver, and he would certainly no longer be wearing shoes with red heels in the evening. He would have eaten his dinner at a different time, too, even in the country. I therefore had to go through the whole book, checking and changing all these period details.

That was not the worst of my problems, however. During the novel, two characters observe a man being beaten at the cart's tail from the town gaol, on the corner of Silver Street, to the bridge and back. This punishment was certainly being carried out in 1765. Was it still taking place in 1811? I checked my sources and found, to my horror, that Bedford gaol was moved from the Silver Street site to its present situation at the turn of the eighteenth century. This might not necessarily mean that such punishments were no longer carried out in 1811, but I needed to check. I telephoned the Bedford County Archivist, and he did a little research for me. I was very relieved when he told me that although the gaol was moved, a lock-up remained on the corner of Silver Street, and beatings from there to the bridge and back were still taking place until the 1820's. My scene was safe.

I cannot conclude this section without a little confession. Although the published version is set firmly in the Regency, I still picture my hero and heroine in mid-eighteenth century dress.