Lydia is proudly independent (‘ do not feel the need to be completed by a husband, like the third volume of a novel‘), original (‘ There is no greater tyranny… than convention‘) and avowedly cynical (‘ Love is an infection best contracted and got over when one is young, like the smallpox and then one may rest secure from it and get on with life‘). Nine years earlier she caused a scandal by rejecting the proposal of her father’s eligible neighbour Mr Lewis Durrant, and now Lydia and Durrant have found a comfortable (if slightly prickly) equilibrium in which, unattached, they catalogue the absurdities of their social circle. Lydia Templeton has just turned thirty and has accepted her status as a bluestocking old maid.

The rest of the book channels Heyer with aplomb, boasting a plot that has certain echoes of her novels, but Morgan infuses it all with a modern consciousness that gives it a warmly witty spark, and stuffs it so full of bon mots that I was kept busy scribbling them all down. Indeed, I decided I was going to thoroughly enjoy it based on the final lines of the very first chapter. Jude Morgan has drifted in and out of my awareness these last few years, but it wasn’t until I settled down with An Accomplished Woman that I realised he’s rather brilliant at Regency comedies of manners in a Georgette Heyer style. While at home over Christmas, I spotted this novel on one of my mother’s bookshelves and promptly snaffled it without her knowledge (hi Mum!).

An Accomplished Woman by Jude Morgan