Fay Weldon

The fifth novel in the Dilberne family saga – in which the author traced the life and times of both Upstairs and Downstairs, from the end of Queen Victoria’s reign through the first half of the twentieth century – jumps now into the bright new female light of the twenty-first.

This is the story of Rosalind, the genetic daughter of the 9th Earl of Dilberne. Known as Rozzie to her few friends, she was born at midnight on January 1st, 2000: a true child of the new millennium. She’s officially the offspring of Sandra (a nurse) and Clive Smithson (a jobbing actor), but Rozzie’s real father was described in the sperm bank catalogue as: ‘6ft 1in, blue eyes, blond hair, BA (Oxon), action man’. Back in the old world of 1979, Lord Sebastian – at the age of twenty-two, and cheerfully drunk – had earned 25 quid by selling his spoonful anonymously (as the law then allowed) to an IVF clinic. Twenty years on – sold at half price as old stock – his seed unknowingly produced Rozzie. Rozzie, now discovering all this, is hell-bent on vengeance.

We’re told the tale by the Smithsons’ interfering neighbour Gwinny, a woman with a most interesting, if naughty, past of her own.

Published 4th October 2018