Author and Vogue writer Plum Sykes is reportedly causing a major stir with her new novel set in the Cotswolds, as locals try to guess who the main characters are based on.

The book, Wives Like Us, sees the bored spouses of uber wealthy men ‘fight for social supremacy’, according to the Times.

According to the outlet, the Cotswolds’ setting of the novel is ‘certainly of the moment’, as fascination with the area has increased in recent years.

This, it explains, is largely due to the ‘stream of rich Londoners [who] started decamping there during Covid’.

Among those with properties in the area are Jeremy Clarkson, the Camerons, Richard Hammond, Dom Joly, Tony Adams, the Beckhas and Jilly Cooper among others.

Author Plum Skyes (pictured in June 2023) has reportedly caused a stir with her new novel Wives Like Us, which is based in the Cotswolds

The Cotswolds is fascinating to many people, largely due to the large number of prolific residents, including the Camerons who have a home in the area (pictured L-R: Plum Sykes; Samantha Cameron)

Additionally, King Charles’ niece Zara Tindall and her husband Mike have lived in Cheltenham and Princess Annes’ Gatcombe Estate, in the heart of the Cotswolds.

Originally from Kent, Plum moved to London, then to the Cotswolds in 2013 with then-husband Toby Rowland.

As someone who enjoyed riding, Plum says she noticed that in contrast to the traditional country look of wellies and Barbour jackets, she noticed more and more ‘overdressed women’ taking to the stables.

This, she describes, was like a ‘satire waiting to happen’, with everyone consumed with social anxiety and looking down on each other.  

Wives Like Us is based in a fictional area called the Bottoms, focusing on four female friends, and told through the perspective of friendly, gay butler Ian.

Main character Tata Hawkins, described as a footballer’s wife type (dressed in an ‘expensively sexy way wearing a Bottega Veneta calfskin jacket, platform gold heels and diamonds’) has just split from her husband Bryan, after she found a receipt for a diamond necklace, moving out of their shared house.

Other characters include American heiress and divorcee Selby Fairfax, who lives in the best estate in the Bottoms, and who everyone wants to befriend.

Aristocrat Sophie Thompson (complete with MP husband) and half-Venezuelan half-Swedish heiress Fernanda Ovington-Williams complete the main cast.

Plum Sykes with another of her glamorous acquaintances, editor and journalist Anna Wintour (pictured in New York in 2017)

Amid ‘outrageous Jilly Cooperesque shenanigans and histrionics’, Tata attempts to get back together with Bryan, and move back into her large, former home, all the while trying to set up Selby with a ‘mysterious oligarch’ character.

Plum herself lives around an hour away from an area known as the Tews.

She is friends with many prolific Cotswolds locals, which, according to the Times, ‘all of whom are namechecked as the ones her fictional wives set their sights on’.

Among this list is the founder of the Daylesford Organic Farmshop chain Carole Bamford, who Plum describes as the ‘absolute queen’ of the area.

Plum Sykes’ new novel Wives Like Us (pictured) has reportedly caused quite a stir in the Cotswolds, where it is set

Others include Jemima Khan, Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, and Winston Churchill’s great-granddaughter Clementine Fraser among others.

And finally, on the list of possible inspirations for the characters are American Amanda Brooks, owner of the Cutter Brooks retail chain, and Vogue stylist Tabitha Simmons. 

Described as ‘a perfectly placed social observer in this world’, Plum has remained tight-lipped about who Tata and the others are specifically based on.

But this hasn’t stopped speculation over the question. 

According to the Times, a Chipping Norton local said everyone is trying to work out who Tata is based on, adding ‘it’s creating quite the scandal, you know’.