I wrote a book! And you can pre-order it today!

I have been sitting on this news for months. MONTHS. And I am absolutely bursting.

I have written a book!

A real, beautiful, published book — with pages and photographs and a cover I cried when I first saw. It is called Secrets of an English Country House: A Year at Mapperton, and it goes on pre-order today, 19th April 2026.

So, I need to tell you everything!

What is this book?

Mapperton is one of England’s most extraordinary historic houses — a honey-coloured manor in the Dorset hills, home to the Earls of Sandwich for three generations, and the place where my husband Luke and I have been building something that feels, increasingly, like a life’s work.

If you’ve read my writing here, you’ll know I don’t just live at Mapperton. I am obsessed by it. Its history, its people, its gardens, its secrets — the stories folded into every room and corridor and archive box. I have spent years pulling those stories out into the light.

This book is all of them. Or the best of them, at least.

It follows a full year at Mapperton — season by season, from the frozen quiet of January to the warmth of late autumn — and weaves together the history of the house, the family who built it, the extraordinary collections inside it, the garden that surrounds it, and the community we are creating around it. It is the book I have always wanted to write about this place.

And the photographs. The photographs! I cannot wait for you to see it.

But let me tell you about Alberta.

Because two of the chapters belong to her — and they are the ones closest to my heart.

Alberta Sturges was an American heiress who crossed the Atlantic in 1905 and married the 9th Earl of Sandwich. She became the Countess. And she left behind something almost no woman of her era did: her voice. Thousands of letters, diaries, journals — written in her slanted late nineteenth and twentieth-century hand, preserved because she asked, in pencil, at the top of so many of them: Please return.

I first heard of Alberta when my father-in-law pointed to a portrait in the Staircase Hall — a striking society painting by Ambrose McEvoy — and said, almost casually: “That is my grandmother. She was an American.”

That single sentence sent me to the archives. Then to a Master’s degree in Country House Studies, with Alberta as my dissertation subject. Then to several years in the Muniment Room, surrounded by box files sorted by decade, reading her words.

She was funny, searching, sometimes brutal with herself. At twenty-one she wrote in her diary: “I dream of being a princess — to have a large chateau of my own, to be my own mistress.” Then, in the same breath: “An excellent princess you would make Alberta, with your wrinkled face and bitter heart.”

She was born in Illinois. So was I. She was drawn to yoga and spiritual practice decades before it was fashionable. So am I. Reading her letters across more than a century, the sense of recognition has never left me.

The book has two full chapters on Alberta. One takes you into the archive and the research — including the Alberta Research Project, our extraordinary global team of volunteers who have been transcribing her letters for years, and the Alberta AI that Luke built, which lets her speak again in her own voice, drawn directly from her correspondence. The other chapter is about the objects she left behind — including a tiny devotional book called Sursum Corda (Latin for “lift up your hearts”), filled with pressed flowers and handwritten prayers and one entry, beside a friend’s name, where she has written simply: “My godchild.” A child whose entire family perished on the Lusitania in 1915. No drama. Just quiet grief on a fragile page.

And then there is the Worth dress. I knew from an old inventory that Alberta had a 1914 gown from the House of Worth. We had searched and couldn’t find it. Then, three days after I returned from the House of Worth exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris, I was rummaging through a trunk filled with seventeenth-century armour, and at the bottom — a bundle of old textiles. I unfolded them, and there was the label: C. Worth.

I burst into tears.

The dress is black and gold brocaded chinoiserie satin, with a gold lamé bodice and tulle sleeves weighted with glass beads. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever held. And it is in the book.

Pre-order opens tomorrow — and there are real gifts

I wanted to make the pre-order worth something. So here is what’s on offer.

Pre-order before 23rd September 2026 from any UK or US retailer, then complete the form.

If you’re already a ‘Countess of Sandwich Society’ or ‘Mapperton Live!’ Patron:

• A place on an exclusive live, online Patron Q&A with me once the book is published

• A monthly digital scrapbook of beautiful unpublished images that didn’t make the book

• A special Patron-only downloadable signed bookplate

• One more surprise still to come

If you’re not yet a Patron:

• 3 months of free Mapperton Live! membership at Hogarth level (level 3), starting on launch day, 24th September 2026

• Entry into a draw for one of 100 places in a live, online Q&A with me once the book is published

• A signed downloadable bookplate — as soon as you complete the form

• A Christmas card from me and Luke, by post, in December

Pre-order from any UK or US retailer, then complete the form to claim your gifts.

Publication day is 24th September 2026.

I have spent years in that Muniment Room. Years learning Alberta’s handwriting well enough to copy her signature. Years trying to understand what it means to be a custodian of a place like this — its people and its history and its stories that might otherwise disappear.

This book is the answer I’ve arrived at.

I hope you’ll order and read it.

xx Julie

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Pre-order Secrets of an English Country House: A Year at Mapperton from any UK or US retailer before 23rd September 2026 and complete the form to claim your gifts. Published 24th September 2026.