In The Times UK - Cotswolds B&B owner Caron Cooper makes it big in Japan

She bakes her own scones, loves antiques and runs a B&B in a stone farmhouse on the edge of the Cotswolds.

What admirers of her cream teas and roast-chicken dinners might not appreciate is that Caron Cooper is also big in Japan. Fans cross the world to see her and she has been fêted on the red carpet alongside some of the country’s biggest pop stars. She has even had members of the Japanese royal family over to stay at her home, located in what has been described as “the prettiest village in England”.

Her unusual celebrity is the result of a chance encounter some 30 years ago which led to her B&B in Castle Combe, Wiltshire, becoming the setting for a Japanese animation series…