Let’s be honest now: this is romantic nonsense. Beautifully written and well plotted with all Daphne Du Maurier’s gifts for bringing the Cornish countryside and coasts to vivid life on the page, but the story… Beautiful, headstrong woman caught in loveless marriage with upper-class boor (a marriage entered into on a passing whim), develops major-league crush on rakish (and for almost all the book unnamed) French pirate and then, probably, elopes with him at the end. It’s the female version of James Bond – a wish-fulfilment fantasy to fill a few empty hours.