We told you how much we wuvved HA Ferdinand’s Mrs Tempest’s Marriage Bureau. Well here’s the new one and it’s just as weird and wonderful. It’s called The Baron and we caught up with HA herself to learn more about it.

WB: You say your books are comedies of manners. What does that mean?

HA: It means laughing at the stupid things certain people say and do.

WB: Isn’t that cruel?

HA: Is that a problem?

WB: Give us a summary of the plot.

HA: OK. Well, simply put, it’s about a mother and her very outspoken daughter and a young man they pick up, well he hangs on, only we don’t know why he hangs on, and they apply for a job at a stately home, although they’ve already got jobs but they thought it would be fun and an adventure, and when they get there they meet these people who are on a mission to save the world from itself, and she – that’s the mother – really likes them, only she doesn’t know…

WB: Hold on, hold on. It doesn’t seem that simple.

HA: No, it is really. All my books are.

WB: And they’re short. They’re all kind of short.

HA: Mercifully short, yes.

WB: Do you like writing them?

HA: Bloody love it.

WB: So, the characters in this one are just crazy. They’re like upper class commies. Does that happen a lot in the UK? I don’t think we get them in the States. Are they based on real people?

HA: Well you know how it is…you read things, you hear things, the next thing you know you’ve built a new fictional world and peopled it yourself.

WB: That’s a yes then.

HA: Can I just ask…you rated the last one “very wuvvly”. Does this one get the same rating or a “very, very wuvvly” or indeed a “very, very, very wuvvly”? What is the net worth of a wuvvly?

WB: It’s got a “very wuvvly”.

HA: Well thanks for that, I suppose.

WB: You really crack us up!