I loved this story and was absorbed until the end, having discovered it recently after listening to the author's interesting audio interview, provided with the course materials for the Open University's Advanced Creative Writing course, A363. In 1993 Mr Wroe's Virgins was adapted by Jane and made into a four part drama serial for BBC2, produced by John Chapman, directed by Danny Boyle, and starring Jonathan Pryce, Kathy Burke, Lia Williams, Kerry Fox and Minnie Driver.

My own instincts, reinforced by these two conversations, told me that if set in the present, such a book would be all too easily placed in the “women’s ghetto”. Did he really, as charged, use his position of power to take advantage of two of the women in his care? round the corner beckoning in her stiff awkward way — and then I heard her croak — `She is not pure!It’s an interesting premise, based around the real-life figure of John Wroe, a charismatic self-proclaimed prophet and leader of a religious sect known as the Christian Israelite Church which he established in the north of England in the 1830s.

He was accepted as Prophet by his Lancashire congregation in 1822 and received from on high the news that Ashton was to be the New Jerusalem. Wroe died in Melbourne, Australia, in 1863, aged 81, leaving the church affairs in the hands of his trustees.There is a rich vein of comedy in this beautifully written book which deals so profoundly with the attractions of idealism and the confusion between sexual and religious feeling. Of course, something like this is bound to fall to pieces eventually, so some kind of scandal is expected.