Friends at Thrush Green

Description

Thrush Green is buzzing with gossip, which everyone is keen to share with two ex-schoolteachers, who have returned to visit their friends in the village. The old schoolhouse has just been sold and the villagers are eager to welcome the new owners, the Lesters. Alan Lester seems to be perfectly pleasant, but rumours soon circulate about his wife, Margaret. Equal cause for speculation is the odd behaviour of long-standing resident Bertha Lovelock. And what of farmer Percy Hodge? Can he really be contemplating marriage to the rather wayward Doreen Lilly?

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.