KEY POINTS:
Has a sheikh ever read a Mills & Boon romance? Sheikhs feature a lot in these million-selling novels, but are seldom found reading (too much wooing and stamping and looking cruel). But if they read Desert Rapture or The Moonlit Oasis or The Falcon's Mistress, would they be surprised to discover how often they fall in love with rather ordinary British women, coltish virgins and plain-but-plucky athletes?
Would they be interested to learn how invariably they're described as possessing strong jawlines, high cheekbones and jet-black eyes?
Eighty years after Rudolph Valentino made female audiences swoon with his desert-based wooing, fictional sheikhs can still be found ordering women around in Mills & Boon plots. So can other alpha-male stereotypes, especially cowboy ranchers, business moguls, billionaires (mere millionaires need not apply) and swarthy plutocrats of indeterminate employment, known only as the Spaniard, the Italian, or the Greek.
They're all at the heart of a publishing phenomenon which celebrated its centenary this week and can boast extraordinary statistics.
The books are translated into 25 languages and sell on 100 international markets. They have a stable of 1300 authors throughout the world, many of whom make millions but most of whom prefer to lurk behind noms de plume. A jaw-dropping 35 million titles are sold every year worldwide. Flying in the face of public condescension (and publishing trends), 70 new titles are published each month, and any unsold copies are pulped after three months. For an organisation concerned with melting hearts and stumbling moonlight confessions, they're as ruthless as a sheikh.
When the Berlin Wall was breached in 1989, and the people of East Berlin emerged blinking into the light of freedom, one of the odder gifts they received was a Mills & Boon novel. Harlequin, owners of the imprint, had watched the collapse of communism with interest and calculated that, if there was one thing the newly unshackled female population had missed, it was romance. It was a characteristic Mills & Boon move, combining shrewd commercialism with the chance to spread the narcotic fluid of boy-meets-girl through new veins.
The company was launched in 1908 by Gerald Mills and Charles Boon, young entrepreneurs with £1000 to spend. They intended to publish books on several subjects, but their first production was Arrows from the Dark, a romance by Sophie Cole. It sold modestly but history was made. By 1913, Boon had discerned a growing appetite among women readers for escapist reading and decided to concentrate on romantic fiction.
Depression and war then did wonders for the escapism market. On the back of every new M&B title, an advertisement pictured a well-to-do woman declaring: "I always look for a Mills & Boon when I want a pleasant book. Your troubles are at an end when you choose a Mills & Boon novel. No more doubts. No more disappointments." In other words, you always knew you were going to get a happy ending.
But while their fortunes skyrocketed, by the 60s TV, rock'n'roll and radicalism saw a decline in reputation. Mills & Boon seemed hopelessly outmoded, its romantic plots empty slush, its characters plaster mannequins, its whole ethos bland and elderly. Bookshops consigned them to a ghetto shelf, embarrassed by their presence.
Despite that image problem, the pastel tide of romance has become oceanic. Today, Mills & Boon sells more than ever in more countries than ever. From this month, it will print books in India for the first time, looking to take a chunk of 300 million English-reading consumers. And they have established a romantic presence in the lucrative Japanese Manga market.
Harlequin Mills & Boon editorial director, Karin Stoecker, is a tiny Canadian dame in her 50s with a logical manner and no trace of stars in her eyes. "It's hard to talk about the Mills & Boon demographic because we have people from all ages and income brackets reading us," she says. "People read by life-stage and mood."
Meaning? "When they have time. When you find yourself at home with children and you can't get out of the house and you'll read anything with adult words in it."
The change in the company's post-war fortunes came when it decided to split the titles into genres and market them accordingly.
Of the 12 niche imprints, Modern always features jet-set luxury, Romance deals in the ranchers, billionaires and tanned Europeans. Historical is love with ruffs and doublets, Medical is basically Shortland St with heaving bosoms.
The Blaze imprint promises readers fairly explicit smut, even going so far as oral sex (with ice cubes) and hot lesbian action.
"It was a spinoff from the Temptation series in 1995," says senior editor Lesley Stone. "It was light and flirty and fresh, and everyone liked the extra sex."
But she blanches at the idea of M&B dabbling in soft porn.
"It's not soft porn. They just wanted it to be more realistic. People do go on holiday and they do have flings. They'll have sex, but it would still end up as a committed relationship, and it's still character-driven so it's still a romance."
Mills & Boon staff undertake to read every manuscript sent in by aspiring writers. Stoecker and a team of 20 editors take a day off each week to read them.
"The most common mistake people make," says Jenny Hutton, a young editor, "is when they've worked at the plot rather than really got to know the characters. You need a strongly constructed heroine to take you through the story, and a hero the reader's in love with the minute he appears."
But aren't romance heroes, from Mr Darcy onwards, complete bastards when they first appear?
"But that's the talent of the author," says Hutton.
"You may have a hero whose life has gone wrong in the past, but the author can make you like him. You can have a flawed character but you can show his good qualities and how he's affected by the heroine, and how he changes through the story."
So have Mills & Boon heroes not changed much in 50 years? Are they invariably cruel and bossy?
"There may be a touch of ruthlessness about them, but really they're just taking the reins of the situation, and the heroine is the only one who gets in through the chink in their armour."
Shouldn't they be more charming, along the lines of Jude Law or Hugh Grant?
"Nah," says Stoecker. "You couldn't trust them to be faithful."
All right then, but what about the heroines? Most of the titles involve women being captured, ravished, stolen or "taken".
"I think there's a secret desire, particularly among busy successful women," Stoecker says, "that for one day they can abdicate responsibility from doing it all. That somebody else will make the decisions. The point of the hero is more about his having the power to make it happen. Really, it's all about the total abdication of responsibility."
Can that really be a modern women's secret desire?
"The heroine is much more in charge in the books now," Stone says.
"She's appalled by the sheikh's behaviour and says, 'But he can't do such a thing in this day and age.' But of course it will work out fine, because they'll fall for each other ... "
But where is the fantasy about female empowerment? Why isn't there a title like The Virgin's Convenient Sheikh, in which the tables are turned?
"The thing is," says Hutton "readers know the sheikh is, in fact, at the virgin's mercy because of her strength of character."
Wouldn't it be a brilliant sub-genre if the girl were the one who imprisons the irate Spaniard?
"But that would mean," says Stoecker "once again, the woman's got to do all the work. This is not a fantasy for women any more. Lose that idea right now."
- INDEPENDENT
