She is even more popular in Germany than in her home country, Great Britain. Rosamunde Pilcher became an international bestselling author shortly before retirement age. Today, her name stands for a genre of its own on German television – for somewhat kitschy love stories, feel-good entertainment and a fairytale picture of Great Britain far removed from reality. Rosamunde Pilcher would have turned 100 on September 22nd.
Her commercial breakthrough came in 1987 with the family saga “The Shell Seekers”. The 800-page tome became a bestseller – not only in Great Britain, but also in the USA and Germany, where it was not published until 1990. To date, the novel has been translated into more than 40 languages.
Famous overnight after 45 years
When she became famous, Pilcher was already over 60 years old. “I became successful overnight, but it took me 45 years,” she later joked on the BBC talk show “Wogan.” She had been writing since she was a child. When she wasn’t writing, something was missing. “It’s just a part of me.” She was 18 when one of her short stories was first published in a magazine.
With the success of “Muschelsucher,” public interest in her older works increased. Rosamunde Pilcher published around 30 books, including a dozen short story collections, during her lifetime. Her last work, “Winter Solstice,” was published in 2000. After that, she retired from writing and enjoyed her retirement. She died in 2019 after a stroke.
At their core, her stories always dealt with the same themes: family, love and relationships – happy endings guaranteed. The action often took place in Pilcher’s homeland of Cornwall. Her books and the later film adaptations made the structurally weak region a popular travel destination, especially for Germans. In 2016, today’s King Charles, who was still a prince at the time and bore the title Duke of Cornwall, thanked Pilcher for this. His wife, today’s Queen Camilla, revealed that she was a fan.
From bestseller to ratings hit
The fact that many people today associate Rosamunde Pilcher with television rather than literature is largely due to Michael Smeaton. The German-British TV producer became aware of Pilcher in the early 1990s through an intern who had read “The Shell Seekers”. He and his colleagues visited the author in her adopted home of Dundee, Scotland. Over tea, they suggested a TV adaptation.
In 1989, “The Shell Seekers” had already been made into a television film with Angela Lansbury (“Murder, She Wrote”) in the lead role. “And Mrs. Pilcher didn’t like that film at all,” Smeaton recalled in an interview with the German Press Agency in London. “But we didn’t even know that the film even existed and that she didn’t like it.” Nevertheless, Pilcher was open to another film adaptation of her stories – this time for German television. “She was very pleased.”
“Stormy Encounter” was broadcast on ZDF on October 30, 1993, was a ratings hit and was the beginning of a success story. ZDF initially commissioned ten more films. However, Smeaton did not expect that Rosamunde Pilcher would still be running 30 years later. “We may have had in mind that we would make these ten more films,” he said. “But not that it would be 150.” In colloquial terms today, people jokingly talk about “Pilchering” when watching on Sunday evenings.
Beautiful people and beautiful landscapes
The films are famous for their beautiful landscape shots, which are preferably filmed in Cornwall – if possible in bright sunshine. With its beaches, cliffs and extensive green spaces, the area offers the ideal backdrop for the romances. “Beautiful people and beautiful landscapes in an all-round functioning love story,” is how production manager Beate Balser described the concept years ago in an interview with dpa.
While the first films stayed close to the novels, Pilcher’s short stories later provided inspiration. According to Smeaton, the author initially read the scripts. In the end, she trusted the German creators. She even left them her “little black book,” in which she had meticulously recorded ideas and titles over decades.
“We had to promise her back then that it was a treasure and that we must never pass it on in any way,” said the producer. The stories in the “little book” have long since been exhausted. “We are more likely to find them with her children now,” said Smeaton, who was friends with Pilcher until her death and maintains close contact with her family. “They cleaned up the house and found new old stories.”
It all depends on the “Pilcher gene”
Nowadays, old mini-short stories are being pimped up into larger TV stories that have to do justice to the British author’s style. “The Pilcher audience has a very fine sense of whether something is Pilcher or not,” says Smeaton, who speaks with a smile of the “Pilcher gene” that the authors of new stories must have. “They know what they can and cannot write.” Sex, nudity and violence are taboo – a happy ending, however, is a must.
However, the films have to keep up with the times. That is why, for example, there have already been love stories with homosexual couples. “That is something that Mrs. Pilcher would have written at any time,” Smeaton is sure. “She was a very progressive, modern woman. Although she was so old, she was very modern.” That was also due to her family. Pilcher had four children, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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