as were the subsequent romances, all titled with female names: Bella, Imogen, Prudence, Harriet and Octavia. Octavia Octavia is one of Cooper's "name" books, which each bear a female character's name, and has been made into a television adaptation. It is set in Britain during the 1970s. The broadcast ITV adaptation was produced with a screenplay which was written by Jonathan Harvey. One character was modelled on George Humphreys, a Welshman with whom Cooper had an affair in the late 1950s. The Times noted that Cooper avoids the traditional romantic convention in which the heroine remains a virgin until the last page. Elizabeth Grey found the jokes annoying but still funny, and confessed to falling in love with the character of Octavia. An excerpt was included in The Dirty Bits For Girls (ed. India Knight, Virago, 2008), a collection of favourite "dirty bits" from novels Knight read as a teenager. Plot summary Octavia Brennan is a beautiful yet flawed young woman, living the high life in 1970s London. Though she is deeply flirtatious and has – by her own admission – slept with many men, she has never found happiness with any of them. After bumping into an old school friend, Gussie, and falling for her fiancé, Jeremy, Octavia is invited to spend the weekend with them on their canal boat. Characteristically, she convinces herself that Jeremy cannot possibly have real affection for the overweight and clumsy Gussie, and she is determined to win Jeremy by the end of the weekend. But when Jeremy invites Welsh firebrand Gareth Llewellyn along for the ride, Octavia finds her plans disrupted in more ways than one. TV production Production began on 17 September 2007, in London. Cooper was invited to make a cameo appearance as a guest at a party. Its broadcast was delayed according to a Broadcast Now article in early 2009 as a consequence of the recession – ITV put many of their dramas 'on ice'; postponing single dramas until later that year. The Guardian reported early in 2009 Octavia had no transmission slots for the forthcoming year and said, for accountancy purposes, its cost would not counted until the show was broadcast. Octavia had its first UK screening in 2009 with Tamsin Egerton taking the title role. The cast was: Tamsin Egerton as Octavia Brennan Patrick Baladi as Jeremy West Richard Coyle as Gareth Llewellyn Tom McKay as Xander Brennan