Just hitting the book shelves this week is a new strategy for saving England’s historic houses, which is almost literally exploiting the sentiment that “sex sells!”

All around the world last night (reported in the Guardian, One India, the BBC, Radio NZ), Mills and Boons (with the blessings of the English National Trust), announced a new literacy venture.  On Wednesday Juliet Lander’s new novel Scandalous Innocence will be launched.  It features (along with the traditional Mills and Boon steam), historic house Ham House, Richmond-upon-Thames, which is celebrating its 400 year old birthday, in additon to its literary outing (well at least its “literary” bedrooms from all accounts!).

I’m not terribly sure whether Beatrix Colomina had such a conjunction in mind when she edited Sexuality and Space or wrote Domesticity at War, but it’s highly likely that that Lander’s new venture into architectural literature will sell more copies, even if it is not as theoretically enlightening.

But what of New Zealand’s historic houses?

… and is the NZHPT thinking of encouraging our local novelists to rethink their amorous relationships to Highwic, Larnach’s Castle or even Antrim House …