Book on sex, attraction between over-60s couple becomes best-seller

Hilary Boyd's novel, Thursdays In The Park, explores the realities of forbidden attraction and sexual passion at an age when we tend to assume people long for nothing more than to be tucked up in a Slanket watching the Antiques Roadshow, the Daily Mail reported.

After a creakingly slow start in paperback, its launch as an online ebook at the end of the summer has provided an astonishing transformation in its fortunes.

By the start of this month, sales had comfortably passed the 100,000 mark, and it occupied the No1 spot in the Amazon book charts.

Translation rights have been sold in dozens of countries, and Charles Dance is negotiating to buy the film rights, and the chance to play Ray, the lean Lothario who sweeps our married heroine, Jeanie, off her feet.

Hilary has received scores of emails and letters from women of all ages thanking her for opening a window onto later-life passion.

"There's not a statute of limitations on people falling in love, or falling in lust, although you might be tempted to think so," the paper quoted Hilary as saying.

"Often portrayals of later-life romances are quite chaste. It's all hand-holding and a peck on the lips and talk of companionship. But Jeanie and Ray fancy each other rotten and that is very important. It's a markedly physical relationship, she added.

"I wanted both of them to have a physicality. Ray's very fit, he's got muscles, he looks good. I wanted the book to say: ‘Look, just because we're 60-plus it doesn't mean that part of our lives is over,'" she asserted.