In my article Dozy Bints – Western Handmaids of Allah, I make much of the "swooner". A swooner is a Western woman whose heart goes pitter-patter and whose knees – and brain - go weak at the sight of a Son of Allah. This is nothing new – those liquid brown eyes, those sensuous yet cruel mouths have been mesmerising the English rose for at least a century. The BBC reports on Sheikhs’ appeal:
It is the stuff of escapist fantasy. A tall, dark and handsome type sweeps a cream-and-roses Home Counties heroine off her feet. In its 100 years of publishing, the exotic alpha male has been a staple of the Mills and Boon romance.
The tale of the passionate desert sheikh who sweeps secretary Janna Smith off her feet in Violet Winspear's 1970 romance Tawny Sands is perhaps the quintessential Mills and Boon story.
Violet Winspear? Not Violet Sheikhspeare?
"His tone of voice was softly mocking, but she knew he didn't really jest. He was Raul Cesar Bey and the further they travelled into the desert the more aware she was of his affinity with the savage sun and tawny sands."
Shocking, suggestive, the tale of their love was wildly popular with a generation of romance readers.
It is also typical of a taste for foreign pleasures when it comes to romantic fiction.
It's 100 years since Mills and Boon published their first book. Sold in 109 countries and translated into 26 different languages, it is arguably Britain's best-known publishing house worldwide.
From early in the company's history, its winsome heroines have looked beyond Britain's shores to find love.
Nobody can quite identify the very first Mills and Boon romance to feature an exotic hero or location. But Dr Joseph McAleer, author of Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills and Boon, says it was probably in the 1910s, following the lead of Hollywood cinema and its preoccupation with desert sheikhs and jungle escapades.
The fascination still exists today with the best-selling title of the June 2008 Modern Romance series being Desert King, Pregnant Mistress by Susan Stephens.
"Exotic locations gave great scope to authors to be a bit racier. It is usually an English person going into the tropics to experience this different culture," Dr McAleer says.
"But they never lose their moral foundation. The heroines normally wind up reforming the sheikh."
Good luck with that. Ooops.
