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) into a platonic marriage in "Lucia's Progress", originally lived at Riseholme (thought to have been modelled on Broadway) in the Cotswolds. In the final Benson Lucia book "Trouble for Lucia" Tilling seems to be no longer in Sussex but in Hampshire. In the 1980s, following the adaptations by Gerald Savory (1909–96) of Benson's novels for London Weekend Television (1985–86), in which Tilling was referred to as "Tilling-on-Sea" (a form unknown in the books), two pastiches by Tom Holt (b. 1961), based in Tilling, were published by Macmillan: "Lucia in Wartime" (1985) and "Lucia Triumphant" (1986). Holt also produced a short