Dede Sophie

Congrats to lucky winner – RACHAEL! A Precious Jewel Synopsis : For Priscilla Wentworth, the path leading to Sir Gerald’s bed had been as filled with misfortune as it suddenly seemed charmed. But Priss couldn’t allow herself to believe she’d ever be more to a man like Sir Gerald than a well-cared-for object of pleasure. Now, despite Gerald’s deep distrust of marriage, neither scandal nor society’s censure can keep them apart—only the fear of trusting their hearts. I always like to describe myself as a writer of love stories rather than as a writer of romance. The two terms may appear to be more or less synonymous, but I see a definite distinction between them. I believe that love is far more powerful than romance and that we can sell ourselves short as writers if we are content to write romances at the expense of telling true love stories. A great deal, of course, depends upon how those two words are defined. Romance is that wonderful aura that surrounds a couple as they meet (even if

Deep in the West Sussex countryside, Highdown gardens has an enormous amount of horticultural history attached to it and rightly so. Originally a working chalk quarry it was purchased by Sir Frederick Stern in 1909 who, against the advice of the contemporary leading horticulturists created what would have been a world class garden in the wonderful countryside of what is now the South Downs national park.  Groundbreaking in his attempt to grow anything he could get his hands in his chalky soils, he managed to prove many of those around him wrong. Over the years he published several books on chalk gardens, on peonies and snowdrops and part-funding expeditions to China to bring back yet more exotic plants to try out at Highdown. He was rewarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s Victoria Medal and became vice president of said organisation. He was chairman of the John Innes Horticultural Institute from 1947 to 1961 and vice-president and treasurer of the Linnean Society from 1941 to 1958.[