Christmas with Miss Read

An affectionate, humorous and gently charming chronicle…sometimes funny, sometimes touching, always appealing–NEW YORK TIMES
Her books avoid sentimentality and have an asperity like the tartness of a good apple–SUNDAY TELEGRAPH MAGAZINE
Here you’ll find delicious wit, quirky characters, the colourful intrigues of daily life, and certainly love and laughter… delightful–Jan Karon
Miss Read so understands and loves the country and can write to tenderly and humorously about the minutiae of village life without distortion or sentimentality–TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Miss Read, or in real life Dora Saint, was a teacher by profession who started writing after the second world war, beginning with light essays written for Punch and other journals. She then wrote on educational and country matters and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. Miss Read was married to a schoolmaster for sixty-four years until his death in 2004, and they had one daughter.

Miss Read was awarded an MBE in the 1998 New Year Honours list for her services to literature. She was the author of many immensely popular books, including two autobiographical works, but it was her novels of English rural life for which she was best known. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955, and Miss Read continued to write about the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green for many years. She lived near Newbury in Berkshire until her death in 2012.

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