A POPULAR author is seeking help for her next work as she turns back the clock almost 200 years.

Sandra Wilson will be setting part of her novel in Georgian Weymouth and wants to build up a picture of what the resort looked like in the summer of 1813.

Sandra, who uses the penname Sandra Heath, has written almost 60 Regency romance novels but her latest offering, Winifred's Waltzes is the first to use the resort as a backdrop.

It will tell the story of a young woman from Weymouth who goes to seek her fortune in London and is introduced to the 'wild waltz' a dance which caused a great stir among the chattering classes at the time.

Sandra, 57, who lives in Gloucestershire, is the daughter of a Bridport man, the late Tom Edward Machin, and enjoyed holidays in Weymouth as a child during the 1950s.

Sandra said: "I thought I would revisit Weymouth for my latest work because I know it was a favourite haunt of George III who turned it into a fashionable holiday resort.

"I remember it was a lovely place.

"I spent many happy days on the beach and at my aunt and uncle's house in East Chaldon."

She added: "I wrote my first Regency novel in the 1970s and I've done about 60, most of which are published in America. I'm interested in that period because it was a very glamorous time, romantic and glittering.

"There's not much doom and gloom in my stories.

"But I like to get things right and this is why I'm asking people for help with my research."

Sandra has already sought assistance from the reference library at Weymouth and from local historian and borough councillor Doug Hollings, who has created a website which displays information and photographs he collected while researching the resort's Georgian seafront buildings.

But Sandra says she is still seeking more information about the Shrubbery, a garden area that once stretched from Gloucester Lodge to where the new town centre development now stands.

She said: "I am looking for an illustration of the Shrubbery area or any detail that could tell me what it might have looked like.

"I would like to set the first chapter in that area so it would be helpful to know just what was there."