Faulks on Fiction: Yes, but what sort?

The BBC are celebrating 2011 as their Year of Books.  Quite why 2011 should be an important year for books I'm not sure.  In this house, every year is book year and we hadn't noticed that 2011 was more bookish than any other, but what ho, if the BBC wants to celebrate books we are more than happy to join them.

Rather ironically, given that there are demonstrations going on all over the country even as I write against the 400+ library closures coming about thanks to the government's funding cuts, the celebrations kick off this evening with the first in a series of programmes introduced by the author, Sebastian Faulks.  Faulks on Fiction will focus on four different character types in the English novel, starting with the hero and moving through discussions of the lover, the snob and the villain.

As is the BBC's wont, they have published an accompanying book and this morning I had an e-mail from one of our major book chains informing me that not only could I download the book itself for just slightly more than half price, but I could also claim four classics of English Literature free to go along with it.  Well, my kindle doesn't accept downloads from this particular company, but I thought if they were making this offer there was a fair chance Amazon was as well, so I nipped over to their site to see what was what.  

Amazon had the same offer, although it was rather more expensive.  They did, however, also claim to have a very much cheaper download of the Faulks without the accompanying novels and as I already have the other books concerned I eagerly clicked on the link,

only to find this:  yes, I was rather surprised too.  So, I went back to the original book + novel download and scrolled down the page.  The first part of the description was definitely about the Faulks but then I hit this:

Leanne inherits a halfshare in a former boarding school set in a remote part of Scotland. She gives up all that she knows to start her new life in the staff quarters of the school - then finds that the other owner, Adam, is a dominant male. His insistence on disciplining the erring female staff is at odds with Leanne's feminism and she's even more perturbed to find that she's aroused by watching the frequent punishments.

Setting this novel in a vast former boarding school gave me lots of scope for unusual castigatory settings. Miscreants are corrected in the staff rooms, classrooms and even the stables. The remoteness of the institute ensures that attractions build amongst the staff. The tension heightens when Adam, a first class advertising copywriter, starts to write copy for adult erotic toys - toys that, solely for the purposes of research, I forced myself to experiment with. These devilishly effective devices similarly take Adam's personal assistant, housekeeper, cook and other employees to their submissive depths and orgasmic heights.
Leanne initially tells herself that she'll have nothing to do with Adam's authoritative boundary-challenging sexuality, but her psyche and her libido have other plans.      

(Amazon website description (apparently) of Faulks on Fiction)

Well!  If that's what the BBC are intending to broadcast tonight all I can say is that there are going to be some very shocked viewers, either because of what they've seen or because of what they've missed!

I e-mailed Amazon and asked them what was going on.  In fact, feeling rather indignant, I asked them if someone wasn't playing a particularly childish joke.  They assured me that this was not the case, that it was a genuine error and that the matter would be corrected, but I've just been over there now and the site is still as it was this morning.

So, what are we in for this evening?  I was actually going to record the programme and watch it tomorrow, but I'm not sure I can stand the suspense.  I may have to watch it as it is transmitted.  On the other hand if I have an hour of Lingering Lessons before I go to bed who knows what damage it will do to my beauty sleep.  The story will continue.......