Wives Like Us English 2025

'Outrageously Jilly Cooperesque' Sunday Times Style

No one knows better than Ian Palmer - Executive Butler - that social position is everything in the rose-strewn Cotswolds.

So when his boss, Tata Hawkins, flounces out of her (new-build) manor house after a row with husband Bryan, Ian is alarmed: for one thing, if Tata is on the social slide downwards, that means he is too; for another, he's lost his home and has nowhere to store his prized collection of vintage Gucci loafers; even worse, a vacuum among the Country Princess set has opened up for a new Queen Bee.

With the old-money Pennybacker-Hoare sisters plotting to rid 'their' county of Tata and her ilk, a bikini influencer on the prowl for a husband just like Mr. Hawkins, a glamorous American divorcee threatening to steal Tata's crown, and the heiress-next-door threatening to steal Ian, the Cotswolds are in chaos.

Can Ian restore Tata's country crown and reinstate her to the comforts of the Manor?

'A forensically well-observed narrative . . . a shiny satirette of country living where everyone is unmuddied but filthy rich.' The Times

'It may finally be time for Jilly [Cooper] to make way for a new chronicler of Cotswolds life.' Daily Mail