Hi Harry,

Thanks for this but no problem - the spellings in My Learned Friend are all the correct UK versions. (Defense was just a spell check error in my message - I'll correct it now!) James is definitely a barrister/defence lawyer in the actual story and the publisher, Untreed Reads, always uses UK spellings for books set here.
Like you, I do prefer UK spellings for UK set books but your reply raises an interesting question for authors. I write a lot of stories for US magazines and some publishers do insist on American spelling. It's very difficult to object to this if you want to have them published - but I wondered what other authors (and readers) feel about this?

Thanks for raising it.
Heather