The second Fairacre novel introduces us to more of the village characters with each chapter representing a month in the village calendar. Our narrator, Miss Read, relates all the village happenings with good humour, even when it involves the fact that the villagers are trying to marry her off or sheâs battling with her miserable cleaner at the school. Gentle, feel-good reading.
Miss Read, or in real life Dora Saint, was born 17 April 1913. A teacher by profession, she started writing after the Second World War for Punch and other journals and as a scriptwriter for the BBC. She is the author of many immensely popular books, including two autobiographical works, but it is for her novels of English rural life for which she is best known. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955 and Miss Read continued to write about the fictitious villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green until her retirement in 1996. She lives in Berkshire, and in the 1998 New Year Honours list was awarded an MBE for her services to literature. She died in April 2012.
