The book jackets traditionally featured a blond woman, hair flowing in the wind, being clasped to the manly chest of a granite-jawed hero under a title like Wife on Approval. The book jackets traditionally featured a blond woman, hair flowing in the wind, being clasped to the manly chest of a granite-jawed hero under a title like Wife on Approval.
But Mills & Boon, purveyor of romantic fiction to the masses for 70 years, is to update its image for the 21st century. The pastel paintings are being swept aside in the name of modernity and the novels will now feature cover photographs of models posing as the protagonists.The company’s “new look for the millennium” will show girls in modern clothes in more modern settings. “They won’t be wearing combat trousers but we do have pictures of girls in vest tops – with jeans,” gasped a Mills & Boon spokeswoman.”It won’t necessarily be high fashion but the books will now look like a catalogue shoot for Marks & Spencer.

There’s one of a woman lying in bed being fed croissants by a man who’s naked from the waist up. We’re not going smutty but we want to give the books a new and fresh image.”The “radical departure” follows research involving thousands of women aged 25 to 60, which revealed that readers “unanimously wanted modern imagery which shows empowered women and leaves more to the imagination”, the spokeswoman said. This means the women are no longer pictured swooning in Rock’s, or Stone’s or Granite’s arms but might be walking beside him, sheltering from the rain under a jacket and smiling into his eyes.”There is one cover which shows a man pushing a pram, which is a lot more egalitarian than the old days and there won’t be so many ripped bod-ices and fainting ladies.”Mills & Boon, which sells nearly six books every second throughout the world, was founded in London in 1908 as a general fiction publisher and began issuing purely romantic fiction in the 1930s.Although the characters have remained firmly traditional, they have altered slightly to reflect changing times. Young women were making their own decisions without deferring to their parents by the 1960s, and 10 years later women had their own careers. But there was still no sex, although a passionate kiss was usually allowed by page 88.Sexual awareness began to creep in during the 1980s and by the end of the Nineties the novels had become “sensual, racy books where heroes and heroines face dilemmas of modern life”.One of the new titles to benefit from the photographic treatment is called Four men and a Lady A very modern dilemma indeed.. The histrionic embargo on copies of this book left this reviewer obliged to scramble through its 600 pages with unseemly haste – which leaves you feeling tetchy and ill-disposed.

Bloomsbury should beware: more of this kind of thing and they’ll alienate everyone. As for reports of rioting parents at King’s Cross, weeping children, bleary-eyed families keeping midnight vigils.. enough is enough. Is this literary fervour or a lemming-like rush for the hyped trophy?

The histrionic embargo on copies of this book left this reviewer obliged to scramble through its 600 pages with unseemly haste – which leaves you feeling tetchy and ill-disposed. Bloomsbury should beware: more of this kind of thing and they’ll alienate everyone. As for reports of rioting parents at King’s Cross, weeping children, bleary-eyed families keeping midnight vigils.. enough is enough. Is this literary fervour or a lemming-like rush for the hyped trophy?
So here is the trophy: what of it? I am a Harry Potter enthusiast, the grumbles above notwithstanding.

And I came to him by way of the child grapevine, well before the marketing men took over, so I know that the books do get a fervent response from children. And from adults – but we’ve always known that if a children’s book is any good, it is as readable for an adult as for a child.The Potter saga has all the prime qualities: a meticulously imagined fantasy world, an unlimited fund of witty and provocative invention, a cracking narrative pace. The mutterings that it is derivative – a hotchpotch of well-worn themes and characters from children’s literature – are misplaced Everything is derivative, looked at in one way. In critical circles, it is called intertextuality.Goblet of Fire has all the key ingredients. We kick off with the international Quidditch cup: gripping stuff, even for those entirely hazy about the dizzying rules of the game. Harry & co do not arrive at Hogwarts until page 154, after which we are quickly into the established formula of implied menace and insuperable challenges to our hero.