Jonty Claypole

And then in 1791, she published this extraordinarily brilliant novel called A Simple Story.

I cannot recommend this enough to anyone.

And the plot of A Simple Story is basically Fleabag season two.

So check this out.

The heroine is a woman called Miss Milner.

She's 17.

She's very beautiful.

She very much subscribes to Cyndi Lauper's view that girls just want to have fun.

She's she's behaving in the way that no young lady is supposed to behave in the 1790s.

She's constantly creeping out at night to go and attend balls and flirt with young men.

Her mother died a few years earlier.

So there's only her father left.

So, again, this is all very fleabag.

And then when she's 17, her her father dies and her father in his will dies.

entrusts her care to his best friend who is a Roman Catholic priest so we're fully in Andrew Scott territory now yeah yeah a Roman Catholic priest called Doryforth who is 30 years old and incredibly hot yeah he's the hot priest the novel is about Doryforth and Miss Milner

entirely inappropriately falling desperately in love with one another and it becomes this totally gripping will they won't they read and eventually the temperature has got so hot and seamy that Doriforth decides he's going to have to leave the country for several years he's just got to get away and we then come to this totally gripping series of chapters which is a countdown before Doriforth goes and Doriforth

You know, he can't bring himself to say to Miss Milner, I love you because of, you know, his role as her guardian.

She can't bring herself to say anything to him.

They're both absolutely desperate with anxiety and love.

And the clock's ticking down.