An Intimate Education · A Comedic Tale of Open Hearts and Narrow Minds

Miss Marple meets Georgette Heyer. Anna Willman’s latest Regency romance takes a slightly different tack, with characters well beyond their youth but still finding themselves entangled in all the perils and complications of romance in the age of the Prince Regent.

Reared in a more permissive age, but now ending their careers in an increasingly conservative social milieu, these oldsters struggle with love and betrayal and comic misunderstandings.

This fast-paced tale begins when an irascible old rake retires to the countryside to write his memoirs, striking terror into the bosoms of a good number of matrons in the highest circles of society. What ensues is both hilarious and scandalous.

Reader, take note: Although this unconventional Regency contains no “unseemly warm scenes”, these elderly refugees from a more sexually rambunctious era face a number of compelling situations including infidelity, illegitimacy, incest, homosexuality, impotence, and the legendary promiscuity implied by the beloved Regency figure of the rake. Of course they must do so with all the wit and charm required by the decorous and elegant vocabulary of their age.

It should be added that the great Georgette Heyer did not shy away from sexual subject matters, addressing at various times homosexuality, illegitimacy, frigidity, and infidelity, though admittedly with great discretion and not all in a single novel.