We asked Chat Gpt to describe the pub and ourselves in the style of Dick Francis. (All of the story is true, apart from the parts we made up).

 

Here you go . . . 

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The Lodsworth Legacy

Written by ChatGPT

It began, as these things often do, with a wrong turn.

Anna and Paul had been driving south from Hollywood, en route to a summer in Provence, when the satnav hiccuped somewhere near the South Downs. Their Pomeranian, Foxy, asleep in the back seat, snorted inprotest as the car bumped off the A272 and into a lane lined with cow parsley and possibility.

 

They stopped for lunch, just a quick one, at a sleepy village called Lodsworth. They never left.

The Hollist Arms sat at the village centre like a pub out of central casting-weathered beams, whitewashed walls, and a crooked sign swinging in the breeze. What it lacked in polish it made up for in character, and Anna-who'd dressed J.Lo, LeBron, and Shaq in outfits worth more than the entire village-saw something in its bones. Paul, a classically trained French chef with restaurants in LA, Vegas, New York, and Miami, smelledpotential. Also thyme, bay, and a faint echo of Normandy.

They bought it before the weekend.

Paul took the kitchen. He never bragged. Most regulars don't know he trained under Alex Mackay and Peter Knab at Le Baou d'Enfer in Provence. He won't tell them that the jus on their cottage pie is reduced for eighthours and mounted with Normandy butter. "Too French for Sussex," he'll mutter. Anna runs front of house with Foxy in tow. Guests adore her-both of them, really. Foxy has a favourite spot by the fireplace where she reclines like a duchess, often dressed for the occasion. On French Night, she wears a striped Breton jumper.

On game day, tweed.

Locals were wary at first. They'd lost good pubs to bad owners before. But trust grew in the small things:perfectly pulled Langham ale-brewed just down the road-served at the right temperature. A BBQ pork grilled cheese that made builders put down their pints and just chew, reverently. And then came the chicken and leek parfait, rich and smooth with a burnt onion crumb. Locals still talk about it.
The dining room evolved too. Bay window tables with soft light. Chop salads assembled like art. The cottage pie came back with fanfare: slow-braised beef shin, crisp mash, a moat of gravy so dark it might contain secrets. Paul never called it French. He didn't have to.

Anna describes Paul as "simply complicated."

The Hollist, now, is something between a country pub and a quiet revolution. Petworth House looms nearby,its stately corridors whispering aristocratic history. The roar of Goodwood and the thwack of polo balls at Cowdray remind guests that West Sussex is no backwater. But at the Hollist Arms, the action is slower. Measured. Tasted.

On Thursday nights, locals know to book. That's when Paul goes rogue: bouillabaisse, daube de boeuf,
pissaladière. Dishes he learned in Provence, in the days when food was the only language he spoke fluently.

The beer taps still shine. Langham Brewery, under new steward Charlie Long, pours the Hip Hop and South Downs Best with pride. The brewery's ethos-community, quality, character-echoes through the pub like a bassline.

Visitors say it's the food. The beer. The warmth. But those who've stayed longer know: it's the story. The onyou feel unfolding as you sip a pint by the fire and Foxy, without ceremony, drops her head onto your foot.

You didn't plan to stay.

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You just haven't found a reason to leave.

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Written by ChatGPT for the Hollist Arms

With warmth, wit, and a touch of French seasoning.

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For a bit of fun we asked Chat GPT to tell the same story at Jilly Cooper might write it . . . 

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The Lodsworth Legacy — As Jilly Might Tell It

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It all began, as all the best stories do, with an ex-boyfriend, a broken satnav, and a Labrador called Trevor. I wasn’t meant to be in Lodsworth at all. I was aiming for Cowdray, darling — for a weekend of gin-soaked polo and inappropriate flirtation — but ended up in a village so pretty it practically curtsied at you.

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Lodsworth. Think old stone walls, ancient oaks, and the kind of bucolic perfection that makes you want to throw your mobile in the compost and write poetry about hay bales. In the middle of it all sat The Hollist Arms, looking like the kind of pub where you might find an old duke under a newspaper, hiding from his third wife.

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Inside was all dark beams, brass handles and roaring fires — and Anna, who was pouring Langham Ale with the elegance of Grace Kelly and the gaze of someone who’s seen everything. She wore a scarf that suggested Milan and an expression that said Don’t push your luck, darling.

Anna ran the place with an iron martini shaker. Her husband, Paul, did unspeakably delicious things to chickens in the kitchen. Trained in Provence, cooked like a god, glowered like Heathcliff. He made chicken liver parfait that tasted of velvet and sin, onion soup that had clearly been weeping in sherry for hours, and burgers that made you feel slightly unfaithful to your dietician. Their Pomeranian, Foxy, despised everyone. She was exquisite.

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They weren’t locals, of course — no one interesting ever is. Anna had mixed drinks for LeBron, J.Lo and someone who might have been the Archbishop of Canterbury. Paul had cooked in Vegas, Miami, and New York, before taking a wrong turn near Dover and winding up here. They bought the pub on a whim. As one does.

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Naturally, there were polo players — Cowdray boys with sculpted calves and emotional immaturity. They drank negronis and flirted badly. One of them mentioned the old Hollist stables in the back — abandoned, possibly haunted, and once home to a horse that never made it to Goodwood. A horse called Hollist’s Glory, foaled in 1931 and erased from history like a scandalous aunt.

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I found the ledger in the rafters. There was blood on the pages. Figuratively. Probably.

There was also a boy — Thomas Ridley — who drowned under suspiciously poetic circumstances in 1934. And an old family — the Hollists — who once ruled Lodsworth like minor royalty. Their coat of arms still loomed above the fireplace, daring you to ask questions. The village didn’t like questions. It liked gossip, though. And secrets.

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So I stayed. I drank. I flirted with the barman and possibly with Anna. I wrote things down in a little black notebook.

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And I tried not to fall in love with a village that was clearly up to something.

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It was a Tuesday when Rupert Campbell-Black arrived. You could tell by the way every woman in the pub instinctively sat up straighter and every man looked like they’d suddenly remembered their tax return was late.

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He turned up in a forest green Defender, smelling of saddle soap and scandal, his boots still muddy from a gallop across Cowdray Park. Naturally, he hadn’t booked. He never booked. Booking was for civilians.

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“Do you have a room?” he asked Anna, flashing that wolfish smile which had ruined marriages and probably two junior stables.

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“We have a bench in the garden and a Labrador who bites,” she replied coolly, polishing a highball glass that had likely once been in a Soho House.

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Rupert, undeterred, turned his charm on full beam. “Darling, you look divine. Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got the bone structure of a young Sophia Loren?”

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Paul appeared from the kitchen at that moment, brandishing a ladle like a sabre. Anna leaned across the bar. “That’s my husband. He used to own a restaurant in LA. He also once threw a steak knife at a food critic.”

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Rupert was instantly enchanted.

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Over dinner — grilled Sussex chicken with wild garlic aioli, BBQ pork grilled cheese, and triple-cooked chips made from potatoes so fresh they probably still had feelings — he regaled us all with tales of Goodwood glories, hedonistic hunting weekends, and a frankly suspect incident involving an heiress, a horsebox, and half a bottle of Talisker.

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Everyone was a little in love with him. Even Foxy, who only tolerated billionaires and pâté.

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Rupert stayed longer than planned, naturally. Lodsworth does that to people. It gets under your skin like strong cheddar or an ex-lover. He took to riding at dawn, drinking Grasshoppers at dusk, and making vague plans to buy the pub, or the village, or possibly Sussex.

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Anna, unimpressed, continued making cosmopolitans like the fate of the free world depended on it. Paul upped his game, adding beef shin cottage pie and French onion soup with toasted Comté to the specials board, the culinary equivalent of punching someone squarely in the trousers.

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And still the story of Thomas Ridley haunted the pub like the ghost of a first marriage. Rupert, it turned out, had known of the Hollist family. Distantly. There were whispers of an affair, a duel, a riding accident that wasn’t entirely accidental. The sort of stuff that never made it into the parish records.

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The locals said the Hollist Arms had always drawn a certain type — runaways, romantics, ruinously good-looking disasters. And as the summer bloomed and the Chapel Down rosé flowed and Anna’s Bloody Marys got spicier, something was being uncovered — something old, possibly dangerous, definitely worth writing down.

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Rupert leaned across the table one night, a half-empty glass of Lillet Blanc and Suze in his hand, and murmured:

“This place has bones, darling. History. Blood under the floorboards. And very, very good butter.”

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I took a long sip of Fairview Shiraz, smiled, and wrote it down.

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It was the Friday of French Night when things began to properly unravel — the way they always do when Rupert is involved and there’s both tarte tatin and free-flowing Cremant de Loire on the menu.

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The night had started innocently enough. Anna, in a red silk blouse and a mood, was mixing French 75s like a woman with a vendetta against citrus. The candles flickered in the bay window, Sødt’s warm rye baguettes filled the air with the scent of romance, and Rupert — naturally — had commandeered the best table, surrounded by two widows from Pulborough, an Italian dressage trainer, and someone who may or may not have been a marquess.

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“I say,” he drawled, “let’s go to Petworth House. I know the caretaker. Absolutely thrilling chap. Got locked in the cellars with Camilla Parker Bowles once during a charity gala.”

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Paul looked up from his chicken parfait, one eyebrow raised like a man who’s heard it all and kept the receipts.

“But it’s midnight,” I pointed out.

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“Perfect!” Rupert beamed. “That’s when the Reynolds portraits really glow.”

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Which is how, two hours later, we found ourselves climbing over a wall behind the Orangery, Rupert waving a bottle of Bollinger like a sabre, and Anna muttering, “If anyone gets arrested, I’m using my maiden name.”

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Inside, lit only by Rupert’s lighter and a torch app on a vintage Blackberry, we roamed the halls like debauched art historians. There was indeed a Reynolds — though Rupert insisted one of them winked — and someone spilled grasshopper cocktail on an 18th-century chaise longue, which we all agreed actually improved it.

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By 3 a.m., Paul was singing French chansons with a surprising baritone, Foxy had fallen asleep under the Gainsborough, and someone (possibly the dressage trainer) was trying to light the fireplace in the Marble Hall with a tear-out wine list from Les Caves de Pyrene.

We made it back to the Hollist in one piece — more or less. Rupert promptly fell asleep in the bar’s leather wingback, snoring like a contented racehorse. Anna tucked a napkin over his lap, muttering, “That man is simply complicated.”

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And I finally understood what she meant.

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Because somehow, between the potato deliveries still warm from Buddington Farm, the whisper of Langham Best on tap, the ghosts of lost landowners, and Rupert’s seductive, self-inflicted chaos, this wasn’t just a pub.

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It was a stage, and a sanctuary. A delicious mess of flavours and feelings, of history and cocktails, of secrets in the cellar and shoes left by the Aga.

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And through it all, the story of Thomas Ridley simmered, just beneath the surface — like a good stock, waiting for the right reduction.

Rupert, of course, claimed he had no idea who Ridley was. But he said it with the sort of smile that suggested he’d read the love letters, ridden the horse, and inherited the scandal.

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And probably left his cufflinks under someone’s mattress in the process.