Known for its flora, fauna, castles and manors, Gloucestershire has to date succeeded in courting the regal and literary. But now one well-known resident has described the county in terms more synonymous with an inner city than an idyll.
Joanna Trollope, doyenne of the Aga saga and resident of Cirencester, has departed from her traditional theme of rural romance and made social comment. She claims that children in the Cotswolds go to school without underwear and scavenge through bins.
Gloucester, Ms Trollope says, is "rough" and Cheltenham - renowned for its upmarket shops - has a drugs problem. The Forest of Dean is "peculiar", according to the novelist.
Her comments have baffled Gloucestershire tourism officials, particularly as Ms Trollope's foreword to a Cotswold and Cheltenham guidebook described the area as "beautiful". Ken Jennings, Cheltenham council's head of tourism, said: "I do not recognise Cheltenham from her description." Rachel Lewis, a tourism officer for the Forest of Dean, said: "We just hope people do not take her comments too seriously. I have never seen anyone knickerless in the Cotswolds and while she refers to the Forest as peculiar, it is just an ordinary, close-knit community."
The novelist said in an interview with Radio Times: "Children in these honey-coloured villages go to school with no underclothes. Teachers in the beautiful Cotswolds find pupils scavenging through rubbish bins. I'm certain we have teenage prostitutes. Gloucester is a rough city, Cheltenham has an appalling drugs record, and the Forest of Dean is a peculiar place."
The reputation of Gloucestershire as a rural idyll has attracted celebrities and members of the literati to move in or buy second homes. Prince Charles has his country home at Highgrove House, while the Princess Royal lives at Gatcombe Park. Richard Ashcroft, former lead singer of the Verve, owns a listed house in the hamlet of Taynton and Damien Hirst has a studio within the county.
The novelist Jilly Cooper, who has lived in Bisley near Cirencester for 18 years, said yesterday that Ms Trollope's comments were fitting.
"There are drugs and poverty in Gloucester and the county has got jolly rough areas, as Joanna knows very well. Cheltenham, Gloucester and Stroud are lovely towns but I hear rumours about drugs in some of them. But then Stroud has always been an artists' place and is very bohemian. Stroudies have always been fairly druggy.
"Where I live is ravishingly pretty. There's a fantastic post-mistress and a gorgeous village school. I have no idea if the children in it are wearing knickers or not. But there are problems in some areas with poverty." The writer Henry Porter, who lives in Blockley, near Broadway, believes that much of what Ms Trollope said is "dead right". He said: "I've known Cheltenham since I was a kid. It used to be genteel. But in the mid-1980s it began to remind me of parts of Liverpool in the 1970s. It started to have a lot of social problems."
