Tilling (Sussex) and the spring of 1931, in which Emmeline Lucas ("Lucia") and Elizabeth Mapp clashed for the first time, "Lucia's Progress" (1935) and "Trouble for Lucia" (1939). The novelist Susan Leg, the subject of "Secret Lives" (1932), re-appeared in "Trouble for Lucia". The first Lucia book, "Queen Lucia", was published in 1920. It was followed in 1927 by "Lucia in London". Benson's "The Freaks of Mayfair" (1916) provided the genesis of some of the characters of Tilling. Specifically, "Aunt Georgie", a bachelor with a penchant for embroidery, provided the model for George Pillson, who, as with Lucia, with whom he entered
Tilling (Sussex) Algernon and Susan Wyse lived); Market Road was Malleson Street (Woolgar & Pipstow, the estate agents); and Watchbell Street was Curfew Street (the Trader's Arms). In Rye a lookout, presented by Benson when he was mayor in 1935, stands towards the River Rother and Camber, with a plaque noting that its donor had "immortalised" the town as Tilling through his books. The local newspaper in the TV version was the "Tilling Gazette" and in the book "Lucia's Progress" it was the "Hastings Chronicle" but in "Trouble for Lucia", this inexplicably became the "Hampshire Argus" (editor, Mr McConnell). (In Savory's adaptation